The Plain-English
FAQ.

We're targeting a launch later in 2026. Waitlist members are notified first — you'll get an email with early-access details and locked Founder's pricing before public launch. We're not committing to a specific date publicly until we're closer.

Yes, truly pre-launch. We're in active development. We don't have a public app, paying customers, or production-scale usage to point to. What we do have: BDB Project Tools live in production, the same team building both, and the same infrastructure we'll use for BDFIQ. Waitlist members get first access when we open early access.

Two reasons. One: we want to lock Founder's pricing for people who commit early before we publish retail. Two: we want to hear what features matter most to the waitlist before we finalize launch scope. We're not collecting payment information — just email and a few questions about your current setup.

A locked monthly price available to waitlist members at launch. The number is announced when we go live. Your Founder's rate doesn't increase for the life of your subscription — we don't raise prices on existing subscribers when new subscribers pay more.

Likely yes. Waitlist members will be invited first if we open a closed beta. Details are TBD as we get closer to launch.

Deliberate. Bank feeds break constantly — QBO users live with connection drops, duplicate transactions, and miscategorized auto-posts. Bank feeds also require storing bank credentials (or OAuth tokens) in a third-party honey-pot. BDFIQ uses CSV import from any US bank instead — fast, reliable, your credentials never leave your bank, and the cost doesn't get passed through to your pricing. Direct bank integrations are on the post-launch roadmap.

Not in v1. Native inventory is on the roadmap, not the launch scope. If you need real inventory today, Zoho Books or QBO Plus may be a better fit until BDFIQ ships its inventory module.

Not in v1. We'll integrate with Gusto, ADP, or similar payroll providers before we build native payroll (if we ever build native). Payroll is its own product category and we'd rather pair with operators who do it well than build a mediocre version ourselves.

Transaction categorization, voice-to-text for notes, and document parsing — all running on BDB's servers using Whisper and Ollama. No OpenAI, Anthropic, or other third-party LLM API. No customer transaction data crossing to an external AI provider. We control the cost and the data path.

Yes. Real double-entry accounting, real chart of accounts, real P&L (accrual and cash), Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, journal entry audit trail. Every report exports to Excel and PDF. Your CPA will recognize everything on sight — and (hopefully) stop charging you to clean it up.

Multi-entity is included. You can run two (or three, or five) legal entities under one BDFIQ tenant with consolidated reporting AND per-entity reporting. No "Enterprise" upgrade required, no separate file for each entity. This is one of BDFIQ's main wedges against QBO — Intuit doesn't do multi-entity at all without a separate Enterprise Suite product.

BDFIQ tracks sales tax by jurisdiction at launch — multi-state collection, reporting, and CSV exports for filing. Native integration with sales tax compliance platforms (TaxJar, Avalara) is on the roadmap, not v1.

Yes. Every report, every transaction list, every audit trail — exportable to Excel (.xlsx) and PDF. Your data is yours. We're not making it sticky by making export hard.

Both. BDFIQ is cloud-based and runs in any modern browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge. No download. No Windows-only install like Sage 50. macOS users get the same experience as Windows users.

Yes. The web app is responsive and works on phones and tablets. A native mobile app (iOS/Android) is on the post-launch roadmap, not v1.

No. BDFIQ is cloud-only, browser-based. We're not building a Windows install like Sage 50 or QuickBooks Desktop. The cloud is where this product lives — that's the point.

Limited offline support is on the roadmap (cache the last view, queue actions for sync). At launch, an internet connection is required. Browser tabs hold state, so brief connection drops won't lose what you were working on.

Founder's pricing is announced when we launch. Waitlist members get the locked Founder's rate for the life of their subscription. We don't raise prices on existing subscribers when new subscribers pay more. See our pricing page for the value-anchor context against QBO.

No. We're building real accounting software, not a freemium funnel. Free tiers tend to mean "your data is the product" or "this thing is dead in two years." If you genuinely need free, Wave Starter is real free for very small businesses — but it has no job costing, no class tracking, no multi-entity.

Likely just monthly at launch. We're not planning to play the annual-discount game (QBO/Xero use it to lock you in for a year, then ratchet the price). The number on the page is the number you pay.

Specifics will be in the EULA at launch. General posture: cancel anytime, no contracts. Pro-rated refunds for the unused portion of pre-paid billing periods where reasonable.

Yes. No long-term contracts. No early-termination fees. Cancel anytime. Your data stays accessible for the data retention window after cancellation so you can export everything to wherever you're going.

Industry-standard 12-24 months of read-only access after cancellation, so you can re-export anything or come back if you change your mind. Final retention window will be specified in the Privacy Policy and EULA at launch.

Yes. BDFIQ will support QBO file imports at launch. Chart of accounts, customers, vendors, products/services, opening balances, and historical transactions can all come over. Job costing structure needs a one-time setup since QBO doesn't track subcontractors as a real cost category — we'll have a migration helper to map your existing job/project data into BDFIQ's 3-track structure.

Any US bank that lets you download a CSV (which is all of them). BDFIQ parses standard CSV formats and the common bank-specific layouts (Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, US Bank, PNC, Truist, the big credit unions). If your bank uses an odd format, send us a sample and we'll add support.

Yes, with the same general flow as QBO migration — standard CSV/Excel exports from your current platform, mapped into BDFIQ on import. Xero's chart of accounts export and FreshBooks' transaction export both work. We'll publish migration guides per source platform at launch.

BDFIQ at launch is US-only. US chart of accounts, US tax categories, US bank CSV formats, US Stripe. Non-US support (multi-currency, region-specific tax) is on the post-launch roadmap if customer demand justifies the work.

United States. Our team is US-based and our servers are US-based. That's part of the founding covenant — we're not offshoring to optimize margin.

No. BDB is privately held by working operators. No venture capital, no private equity, no "growth at all costs" investor pressure. Written into our founding covenant: we won't sell to PE regardless of the number on the offer.

Joe — a US-based bookkeeper and fractional CFO who's been doing the books for small businesses for years. He built BDB Project Tools first after watching contractors get burned by QBO's job-costing gaps. BDFIQ is the natural sibling. See the About page for the full origin story.

No. BDFIQ stands alone as a QuickBooks Online alternative. If you also run BDB Project Tools, the two pair together for a closed-loop ops/books story — but BDFIQ doesn't require PT.

Same parent company (Best Decision Business Inc.), same team, same infrastructure. Project Tools is the field-service operations platform — live in production. BDFIQ is the cloud accounting sibling — pre-launch. If you use both, your PT data (jobs, estimates, invoices, receipts, labor hours) flows into BDFIQ directly. No QBO middleman.

Same parent company. Best Decision Bookkeeping is BDB's done-for-you bookkeeping and fractional CFO services arm. If you'd rather hand off the books than run them yourself, that's the option — and your BDFIQ subscription is included in the service bundles. See the bookkeeping bridge page for details.

Encrypted at rest and in transit. Multi-tenant data isolation per company. Daily encrypted backups (local + offsite). MFA on every account. AI processing happens on BDB's own servers — your transaction data does not get sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, or any third-party LLM API. Specifics in the Privacy Policy.

No. CSV import is part of why. We don't carry a Plaid/Yodlee/Finicity token honey-pot. Your bank credentials stay at your bank, where they belong.

On BDB's servers, in the United States. We maintain both local and offsite encrypted backups. Same infrastructure posture as BDB Project Tools (which has been running in production with this setup).

Email and ticketed support during US business hours. Knowledge base with how-to articles. Founder's-rate subscribers get priority queue. Live chat may follow once the queue justifies it — we'd rather staff support well than offer 24/7 chat with thin coverage.

On the roadmap. Not v1. We'll likely ship a read-only reporting API first, then transactional. We'd rather ship a small, stable API than a sprawling one that breaks.

Probably, post-launch. Once the product is live and customers have weighed in, a public roadmap makes sense. Pre-launch, we're keeping the roadmap close so we can ship what's needed without committing publicly to features we may cut.