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Clarity turns your everyday sales, expenses and costs into plain-English answers: are you actually profitable, is your cash going to run short, is a price too low, and what should you do about it. It reads what you enter and states things directly, “you’re on track” or “cash runs short in Week 7,” not a wall of numbers you have to interpret yourself.
Owner-operators who want a real financial picture without learning accounting first: retailers and market vendors, rental property owners, service businesses (consultants, tutors and similar), and home care providers. No bookkeeping background needed, Clarity explains itself as you go.
Am I actually profitable? Will I run out of cash? Is my pricing right? Who owes me money? What’s my labour actually costing me? Am I giving away too much in discounts?
Getting Started sets up your business, step by step, adapted to your business type. The tabs above (Daily Tasks, Understand Your Numbers, Manage Your Business, and the rest) are short, specific answers for “what am I trying to do right now” — that's this Help panel's actual job. The User Guide is the concise, connected explanation of how Clarity works as a whole, read start to finish once, then kept for reference. Not sure where to look? Start with whichever tab name sounds closest to your question — they're organized by task, not by feature.
📄 Download the complete User Guide (PDF, 24 pages)Getting Started is the practical, follow-along path for setting up your business — not a replacement for the rest of this Help panel. For how Sales, Expenses, and the rest connect, see the User Guide's How Clarity Works section; for a specific task, use one of the tabs above instead.
A welcome screen offers a choice: explore a sample business, start from scratch, upload an existing Margini file, import from your POS or QuickBooks, or upload any spreadsheet. Not sure? “Explore the sample business” is the fastest way to see what the app can do before entering anything real — and it’s risk-free: if you already had real data entered, it’s tucked away while you look, not erased, see below.
If you explored the sample business, your own data (if you’d entered any) was safely parked, not erased. A “↵ Return to my data” button appears in place of the “↻ Change Starting Data” button under Overview's “What to Do Next” (Other things you can do), and in Manage Data, click it any time to bring your numbers back exactly as they were. Ready to keep the sample data instead, or start fresh? Any other choice from the ↻ chooser below asks you to confirm first whenever it would discard real work with one click, whether that’s your own entered data or data still parked from an earlier sample preview. Just opened the chooser to look and don’t want to pick anything? Close it with the × in its top-right corner, nothing changes until you actually choose.
Follow the Setup progress card above: Revenue, then Expenses, then Fixed costs, then Inventory, then Pricing. Each gold bar is a step you’ve completed; once all five are done, the card disappears on its own with a one-time “✓ Setup complete” message.
Business details, then Products/Services (or Rooms/Clients, depending on your business type), Recurring Revenue where it applies, Fixed Costs, Employees, and an optional Budget target — each step only shown if it's actually relevant to your business, skippable where it isn't. Once setup is done, it walks you into recording your first Sales, Receivables, and Expenses, and reading Cash Flow, Financial Health, and your CFO Brief.
Plain-English explanations of how Clarity specifically uses each term, not textbook definitions. If a number on screen surprises you, check here first.
Business types, modules, multiple businesses, and your team — the settings that shape how Clarity fits your business. For importing data, see Import & Connect; for backup and sync, see Data & Recovery.
The sidebar is grouped by question, not by module name: Overview and More Numbers at the top (Overview is your everyday home screen; More Numbers holds extra detail — gross margin, processing fees, and similar — one click deeper), then Money (Enter Numbers, Sales Log, Who Owes Me, Expense Log, Fixed Costs, Cash Flow, Sales Channels), Profitability (Pricing), Plan (Budget, Scenarios, Tax Reserve, Money Routine), Business Setup (Inventory, Rooms/Clients, People & Payroll, Growth KPIs — the setup/configuration screens for your business type, not part of the daily money-in/money-out routine), Reports, and Manage (Settings, Manage Data) below — Money, Profitability, and Plan open by default since they're where you work day to day; Business Setup, Reports, and Manage start collapsed, tap the heading to expand. A tab appears the moment its module is switched on under ⚙ Settings → Modules and disappears the moment it's off. ⚙ Settings itself opens as a small floating panel by the gear icon, not a full-width bar.
Settings → Business lets you change business type any time without losing data — it relabels the app and may show or hide a tab or two (Rooms, Clients), but nothing is deleted; data tied to a feature that no longer applies goes dormant and comes back if you switch again. The same ⚙ Settings panel (gear icon, top-right of the header) covers business name, tax rate, reporting period, and currency (USD, GBP, EUR, NGN, INR, CAD, AUD, ZAR, or JPY — updates instantly). Use the dropdown inside it to switch between Business, Financial Preferences, Modules, Data Center, Account, Members, Activity & Audit History, Integrations, and Billing.
You picked one on the welcome screen (or it defaults to General). It changes what a few screens track, not the underlying math, and you can switch it later without losing data.
Open ⚙ Settings (Manage group in the sidebar) → Modules to switch any of these on. All ship off until you turn them on; start with what's relevant to your business, not everything at once.
The business switcher at the top of the sidebar (your business name and a ▾) isn’t just a label — click it to see every business on this device, switch between them, or + Add Business to start a new one from scratch. Each business keeps its own sales, expenses, modules, and settings; switching never mixes one business’s numbers into another’s. A business created before you signed in (or on a device that was offline) shows “Connect to your account” in the switcher — tap it once to link that business to your Clarity account so it shows up wherever you sign in. Not connecting it yet doesn’t lose anything; the business stays fully usable on this device either way. “Archive this business” in the same menu tucks a business away without deleting it — find it again under “Show archived.”
Under ⚙ Settings → Members, invite someone by email to help run the business with you — they need a Clarity account already (ask them to sign up first if an invite comes back “no account found”). Every invitation gets one of four roles, each opening up more than the last:
The person who created the business is its Owner — not an invitable role, and the only membership that can never be removed. Only Owner and Admin can invite or remove people; everyone else sees the member list read-only. Removing someone (“Remove” next to their name, or “Cancel” on a pending invite) revokes their access immediately; it doesn’t touch anything they already entered.
Under ⚙ Settings → Activity & Audit History, see a running log of what's changed on this business and who changed it — every sale, expense, receivable, payroll entry, and import, logged the moment it happens. Filter by category (Sales, Expenses, Receivables, Payroll, Imports, Other) or, once there's more than one active member, by person. Tap any entry to see its detail, including what an edit changed from and to.
This exists for accountability once more than one person can touch a business's numbers — it answers “who logged this?” or “who corrected that?” without having to ask. It's read-only: nothing here can be edited or deleted, and it doesn't affect your actual sales, expenses, or any other figure. Requires signing in (see Data & Recovery); it isn't available on a purely local, signed-out business.
Under ⚙ Settings → Billing, Owner and Admin can see the business's current plan and change it — choosing a plan and billing interval (monthly or annual) opens a secure Stripe Checkout page to complete the upgrade, and an active paid plan gets a Manage billing button that opens Stripe's own billing portal to update the card on file, view invoices, or cancel. Other roles can see the current plan but can't change it. A plan change can take a few seconds to take effect after checkout while Clarity confirms it with Stripe; the page will say so rather than leaving you guessing.
Always on — who works for you (including yourself, as an Owner) and what labour costs, no tax withholding, benefits, or time clock, just wages recorded correctly and once. Add a person, log hours and rate each pay period, then click Mark paid: that's the one step that writes the Wages expense, you never re-type it in Expense Log or in Fixed Costs. The Wages & Owner Pay figure on the Fixed Costs tab is read-only for this reason — it's the total of everyone's pay, always kept in sync automatically, so it can never be entered twice.
Each person also gets a cost treatment: Overhead (supports the business generally), Direct labor (directly delivers what you sell), or Mixed (a percentage split you set, e.g. 60% direct / 40% overhead). This only changes how Pricing treats that person's pay when working out overhead — their full wage always counts in your financial results either way, so nothing about your actual Revenue, Net Profit, or Cash Flow changes based on this choice. If you had Wages or Owner Pay entered in Fixed Costs before this existed, Clarity offers a one-time move into People & Payroll that preserves your existing total exactly — nothing is deleted or reinterpreted, and declining just asks again next time rather than losing the figure.
Made a mistake in an entry? From Payroll History, Edit lets Owner, Admin, or Bookkeeper roles correct that entry's hours or rate inline — if it's already paid, its mirrored Wages expense updates automatically to match, so the two figures never drift apart. Delete removes the entry entirely and is restricted to Owner or Admin, a stricter check than Edit, since deleting is never the right way to fix a mistake — use Edit for that. If a deleted entry was already paid, its mirrored Wages expense is removed with it, so nothing is left behind pointing at an entry that no longer exists.
Built into Sales Log, no separate module. Price the item on Pricing first, then in Sales Log or Enter Numbers select it and enter a Discount % — Final Price calculates live (Standard Price × (1 − Discount %) × Units). A complimentary sale is just Discount % = 100, not a separate "free" product: that keeps what was actually delivered accurate, for any business type. A discounted or comp sale shows a small tag ("15% OFF" or "COMP") in Sales Log so it's never mistaken for a mistake later.
For a client who pays you on a repeating schedule — a monthly retainer, a weekly session, an ongoing care plan. Set it up once from Clients → Recurring Revenue: choose the client, the amount, and whether it repeats weekly, every 2 weeks (biweekly), or monthly. Setting up a schedule doesn't record any revenue by itself, it's an expectation, not a transaction — Clarity tracks it in Who Owes Me automatically as each payment comes due. Click Mark Paid when the money actually arrives; that's the one step that writes the Sales Log entry, you never re-enter it by hand. If you already recorded that payment the normal way through Sales Log first, Mark Paid recognizes it and asks whether to use that existing entry instead of creating a second one — nothing is ever silently duplicated. Pausing or removing a schedule only stops future payments from being expected; anything already recorded stays exactly as it is.
A schedule can carry a standing discount %, for a client who always pays a reduced rate. It works the same way a Sales Log discount does — the amount you enter is the full rate, Clarity shows what actually gets billed after the discount, and the resulting Sales Log entry carries the discount just like a manual one, so it's counted correctly everywhere discounts are reported (More Numbers, Discounts Given, Business Summary Report). Changing a schedule's discount only affects occurrences generated from that point on; anything already billed keeps the rate it was actually billed at.
The Recurring Revenue panel itself collapses once you have no active schedules (or stays expanded if you do), and always shows how many are active and overdue even while collapsed. A search box inside it filters by client name, description, amount, or frequency — useful once you have more than a handful of schedules.
Most methods that bring in existing data ask you to choose Replace or Add to existing before anything is applied — nothing happens automatically. Bank Statement Import works a little differently: you review and classify each transaction, then Confirm — see below. All imports read your file locally; a bank statement's parsed transaction summary (not the file itself) is saved so duplicates can be caught on a later import and across your team.
Symptom, likely cause, what to do — for “something looks wrong.” For “how do I” questions, check Daily Tasks or Manage Your Business instead.
The most common things you'll do, most days.
What each part of the financial picture means, and why the numbers sometimes look different from what you'd expect.
Signing in uses your email and a one-time link; that, plus basic account details (when you signed up, your business name and type), is stored with our identity provider so we can recognize you — that's identity data, not your business's numbers. If you use Multiple businesses or Team members (see Module Guides), the business names, who’s a member, and each person's role are stored with us too — that's what lets a business and its team show up correctly wherever a member signs in.
What happens to what you actually enter — sales, expenses, products, fixed costs, people, payroll — depends on your plan. On Free, it stays in your browser on this device; none of it is sent to or stored on a Margini server by default, and nobody at Margini Financial can see your day-to-day numbers unless you choose to share a Backup file or your screen with us directly. On Pro and Business (and some early-access Free accounts), it's synced to our cloud database instead, so a sale logged on your laptop shows up on your phone, or on a bookkeeper's device, automatically — access is limited to the people you've actively added as members of your business.
If your plan doesn't include cloud sync, your day-to-day entries don't yet follow you between devices or browsers automatically — a sale logged on your laptop doesn't appear on your phone by itself. Use ↓ Backup / Cloud backup and restore on the other device (see below) to bring your numbers along, or simply keep entering on the one device you use for this business.
Cloud backup is available on every plan, separate from sync: turn it on and your financial data is encrypted in your browser with a passphrase only you know before anything uploads — we store the encrypted result, not your numbers, and can't read it or recover it if that passphrase is lost. Off by default; it's a recovery safety net whether or not your plan includes cloud sync.
Signing in is passwordless: whoever can click the link sent to your registered email is you, as far as the app is concerned. That's convenient, but it means losing access to that email address means losing access to your account — there's no password to reset instead.
⚙ Settings → Business → “Data & sync” shows exactly where you stand: This device only, Sync is on / Up to date (with a relative last-synchronized time and any pending change count), Offline, or Conflicts needing review. Offline isn't treated as an error — your changes stay safely queued on this device and catch up once you're back online. A conflict (two devices changed the same record) shows what changed on each side so you can pick which one to keep, nothing is silently overwritten.
A realistic picture of where the beta stands. Nothing here should surprise you once you've used the app for a week.
Real industry benchmarking once there's trustworthy data behind it; a dedicated property/room management view for Rental; Services Offered / Care Plans as first-class records.
The full Terms of Use and disclaimers that apply while you use ClarityApp — educational use only, not financial advice, where liability sits, and what happens if the app's status changes during the beta.
📄 Read the full Terms of Use & DisclaimersEnter your email and we'll send you a secure sign-in link.
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Which point-of-sale system are you exporting from?
Pulls your monthly fixed & operating costs (rent, payroll, owner pay, and the rest) from a QuickBooks Profit & Loss Detail report (CSV export). These feed your cash-flow projection and fixed-cost timing.
No export handy? Download a sample QuickBooks P&L to test with.
Upload a CSV or Excel export from your bank. Clarity will find the transactions, suggest how to classify them, and let you review everything before anything is added.
Doesn't have to be from QuickBooks or a POS. Upload any Excel or CSV file of your sales, expenses, and products. If your file has multiple tabs, you can map a different tab to each, all from one upload. You stay in control of what gets imported.