Ledgerbird Join the list

Free accounting for NZ sole traders. Easy to leave.

We built Ledgerbird to keep the books for our own business. It is double-entry accounting for one-person businesses in New Zealand: invoices, bills, GST and the bank. Run it from a web desk or from your own AI agent. Export the whole book whenever you like.

Join the waiting list See what it does today
  • Free, with no paid tier
  • The whole book exports any time
  • Xero files ready when you leave
The Ledgerbird desk on its invoices page: counts of drafts, open, part paid and settled invoices, filter chips, and a table of five invoices for Harbour Events Ltd and Kowhai Signs Ltd with their dates, states and NZD amounts.
The desk's invoices page, from our demo book.

Two ways in

Both work on the same books. Draft with your agent, then check it on the desk.

The desk

A quiet screen for each part of the books: invoices, bills, the inbox, the bank, payouts and the books themselves. Forward a bill by email and it is read and waits for you on Bill review.

The desk's bank page: a Wise NZD feed with a balance of 7,814.50 marked in sync, and an exception queue with two open lines, a 46.00 payment to Harbour Cabs and a 250.00 deposit from J Rivers.
The bank page: the Wise feed is in sync and two lines wait in the exception queue.

Your own agent

Ledgerbird has an MCP server, the standard way AI agents use outside tools. Connect Claude Code, Claude Desktop or any MCP host and it can run the books with 26 tools: invoices, customers, bills, bank exceptions, payouts, GST return figures, tax estimates and the Xero export. Anything that cannot be undone waits for your yes.

  1. You

    Send an invoice for $122 to Harbour Events for Friday's work.

  2. list_customers

    Found Harbour Events Ltd.

  3. create_invoice_draft

    Draft invoice created.

  4. Agent

    Draft for Harbour Events Ltd: Friday's work, $122.00 plus GST. Issue it now? An issued invoice and its PDF never change.

  5. You

    Yes, issue it.

  6. issue_invoice

    Issued INV-000005.

An example exchange. Then email the PDF from the desk.

Your data is yours

Your books should outlive any app, ours included.

Line drawing of an open archive box full of upright folders, one standing taller with a copper tab, its lid set beside it.

  • The whole book, one file

    Download every table, every invoice PDF and every attachment as one JSON file, whenever you like. No request and no wait.

  • A published schema

    The export follows the ledger's own schema, column for column, so anyone can read it without us.

  • An open engine

    The engine that posts every entry is open. You can check how your numbers are made.

The offline converter

One HTML file, about 50 KB. Open it from your own disk, choose your export and a period, and it writes the Xero import files in your browser. It asks no server for anything.

Download the converter

HTML file, 50 KB, works offline

Easy exit to Xero

When you outgrow Ledgerbird, move to Xero. If Ledgerbird is gone by then, you can still go.

Line drawing of an open door with hills and a path outside, and a packed archive box on a hand trolley beside it.

  1. Download the whole book

    On the desk, Books then Exports. One JSON file.

  2. Open the converter

    Choose the file and a period. It checks the sales and bills files against Xero's import template.

  3. Import into Xero

    Bring in sales invoices and bills as Tax Exclusive. Give the summary to your accountant.

The desk's exports page with buttons for Download the whole book (JSON) and Offline converter, then Files for Xero: sales invoices, bills and a summary, with a note to import them as Tax Exclusive.
Exports on the desk: the whole book, the converter and the three Xero files.

What it does today

Everything in the first list is built and keeps our own books. Nothing in the second list exists yet.

Built

Sales
  • Invoices and credit notes, with PDFs
  • Repeating invoices
  • Invoices emailed through Resend
Purchases
  • Bills and expense claims
  • Email intake: forward a bill and it is read and proposed for you to check
Bank
  • Wise bank statements, matched automatically
  • An exception queue for anything that does not match exactly
  • Payouts prepared as Wise batch files, paid by you in Wise
Tax
  • GST return figures, on the invoice basis
  • Income tax, provisional tax and ACC estimates
Exports
  • The whole book as JSON
  • Xero import files
  • The offline converter

Not yet

  • Public sign-up and hosting
  • More than one user
  • Payments-basis GST
  • Australia
  • MYOB invoice import
  • Bank feeds other than Wise

Tax figures are estimates for you and your accountant to check. They are not returns and not tax advice.

Why it is free

We built Ledgerbird for Gantry, our own business, and it keeps our books today.

Sharing it costs us little, so we charge nothing. There is no paid tier and nothing to upgrade to.

If more people join than we can look after, we will review how it runs. Your export and the converter keep working whatever we decide.

A small free tool that makes leaving easy is one you can trust.

Line drawing of a small workbench by a window: a laptop, a ruled notebook, a mug, a copper desk lamp and a pot plant, with hills outside.

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