Workflows in Actuly, explained.
Every month the same work comes round for each company: sync the numbers, check them, review them, report on them. Actuly runs that work as jobs made of tasks. This guide covers where jobs come from, how their dates are set, what you do with each task, and how you hear about the ones waiting for you.
A company's Jobs tab in mid October. Each row is one job: how far through it is, who holds its tasks, and when it is due. Home & Garden Retail Co is an example company.
1. What a workflow is
A workflow is the checklist. A job is one run of it for one company.
Actuly provides the workflows: one to set each company up, one for each month's numbers, and one for documents. You run them as they are.
A workflow is a repeatable process split into stages, and each stage holds one or more tasks: sync the month's trial balance, check every account is matched, review the P&L, approve the period. A job is one run of a workflow for one company, with its own due date. Home & Garden Retail Co's October close is one job. November's is the next.
Stages run in order. The tasks in a stage open together, and the next stage opens only when every task in the one before is done. Some tasks are for a person, such as reviewing the balance sheet. Others Actuly does itself the moment their stage opens, such as rebuilding the performance reports.
A job starts in one of three ways. A schedule creates it ahead of its due date (section 2), which is how the monthly close runs once onboarding has set up its schedule. Picking where a new company's numbers live on the welcome panel, or finishing a connect wizard, starts its onboarding job. Or you start one yourself with New job on the Jobs tab, choosing who owns it (section 4) and giving it an optional name and due date.
Every company runs the same steps, because they all use the workflows Actuly provides.
Workflow
The checklist of stages and tasks, the same for every company. Monthly Close and Sync (Cloud) is one.
Schedule
Which workflow to run for a company, how often, and what the due date hangs off. It creates the jobs.
Job
One run for one company, with a due date. Its status is Active until every task is done, then Completed.
Task
One step in a stage, usually assigned to one person. Done with the button on it, or by Actuly on its own.
The workflows Actuly provides
These are the workflow names. A job shows its workflow's name unless its schedule gives it one of its own.
| Workflow | What it covers | How it starts |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding Xero, Onboarding Quickbooks, Onboarding FreeAgent | Takes a connected company through setup: finishing the connect wizard, building the GL dimensions, then scheduling the monthly sync. | Picking the software on a new company's welcome panel, or finishing its connect wizard. |
| Onboarding Excel | Setup for a company whose numbers arrive as files: company details, reporting dimensions, chart of accounts, trial balance, a check of your data, then scheduling the monthly import. | Picking Sage, NetSuite or Other on the welcome panel. |
| Monthly Close and Sync (Cloud) | Syncs the month's trial balance, checks every account is matched, refreshes the reports, then asks you to review the P&L and balance sheet and approve the period. | Its schedule, which the onboarding job sets up. |
| Monthly Close and Import (Excel) | The month's file imports: dimensions, reporting lines, chart of accounts and trial balance, a review of what came in, then a refresh. | Its schedule, which Onboarding Excel sets up. Those jobs are named Import Excel Data unless you change the Schedule Name. |
| Prepare Document | Confirms the accounts are ready, creates or picks a document, collects feedback on it, then approves and locks it. | New job, or a schedule. |
| Enter Non Financial Indicators | The month's indicator figures, then a refresh. For companies recording Indicators. | New job, or a schedule. |
2. Schedules
A schedule creates each job ahead of its due date.
Tell it what the due date hangs off and how often it repeats. Actuly works out the dates and shows you the next ones before you save.
Schedules live on the Schedules tab inside the company's Jobs tab. Add Schedule opens the dialog. Above the list, Quick schedules has a button for each workflow, and the ones with a default schedule open the dialog already filled in.
A worked example. Home & Garden Retail Co's monthly sync is due on the 15th, and you want the job to appear ten days earlier so there is time to chase anything missing. Choose Calendar Date under Schedule Based On, Monthly under Recurrence, a Day of Month of 15, and Create job before due date of 10 Days. Set up on 20 June 2026, the first job is created on 5 July and due on 15 July, the next is created on 5 August and due on 15 August, and so on.
Projected Jobs, beside the settings in the dialog, lists the next eight jobs as you change the settings: the day each will be created and the day it will be due. If the dates look wrong, a setting is wrong, so fix it before you save. An End Date stops the list, and the schedule, at that date.
Once a day, Actuly creates a job for every active schedule whose creation date has arrived. The job takes the schedule's due date, and the schedule moves on to the next one.
Who the jobs go to. Under People in the dialog, Job owner is filled in with you. Every job the schedule creates lands with that person, so change it if someone else will work the month. A Prepare Document schedule also asks for the document's approvers here. Section 4 explains both. Editing a schedule's people changes the jobs it creates from then on, not a job already running.
New Schedule
✕Projected Jobs
- 1.Created 05 Jul 2026→Due 15 Jul 2026
- 2.Created 05 Aug 2026→Due 15 Aug 2026
- 3.Created 05 Sep 2026→Due 15 Sep 2026
- 4.Created 05 Oct 2026→Due 15 Oct 2026
The schedule dialog. Projected Jobs updates as you change any setting. The real list runs to eight jobs.
What the due date hangs off
Schedule Based On has four choices. Recurrence then sets how often.
| Based on | The due date is |
|---|---|
| Calendar Date | The Day of Month you choose. A day the month does not have, such as the 31st in June, becomes its last day. With Yearly you also pick the Month. |
| Year End | The end of the company's year-end month, plus the Months after year end you enter. 0 is due at the year end, 1 a month after, and so on. |
| Quarter End | The Day of Month you choose in each quarter-end month, with the quarters counted from the company's year end. |
| Fixed Date | The Due Date you enter. If the schedule repeats, each next date steps on by the interval. |
Recurrence is Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, Custom interval (every so many months, which you enter) or One-off. A one-off schedule creates a single job and then switches itself off.
The schedule list. Each row shows the Anchor (such as "Day 15"), the Recurrence, the Next Due and Next Creation dates, any End Date, and a Status of Active, Paused or Expired. Pause stops new jobs without losing the settings, and Activate starts them again. Click a row to edit it. Delete asks first, and if the schedule has jobs still running, offers Delete & Cancel Jobs or Keep.
When a company is set up. Adding a company does not start any jobs on its own. Picking where its numbers live on the welcome panel starts the onboarding job, and its scheduling step creates the monthly schedule. For a connected company that step opens the schedule dialog with Monthly Close and Sync (Cloud) already chosen and its defaults filled in: due on the 15th, created 10 days before.
| Workflow | Anchor | Recurrence | Next Due | Next Creation | End Date | Status | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Close and Sync (Cloud) | Day 15 | Monthly | 15 Nov 2026 | 05 Nov 2026 | - | Active | PauseDelete |
| Prepare Document | Day 30 | Monthly | 30 Nov 2026 | 20 Nov 2026 | - | Paused | ActivateDelete |
The Schedules tab for Home & Garden Retail Co in mid October. Click a row to edit the schedule.
3. Jobs and tasks
Work through a job one stage at a time.
Click a job on the Jobs tab to open it. You see every stage, the state of each task, and the button that moves the next one on.
The top of the job shows when it started, how many tasks are done and when it is due, with a progress bar. Below are the stages in order with their tasks. A stage the job did not need, such as the opening balance stage when you answered No, is left out.
Completing a task. The button on the task says what it does: Confirm on a review, Fetch Data to sync the month's trial balance, Schedule to set up the next schedule, Done once you have looked over a page. When the last task in a stage completes, the next stage opens. When every task is complete, the job's status becomes Completed.
Tasks that run themselves. Actuly does some tasks for you, such as building the GL dimensions or refreshing the performance reports. They run the moment their stage opens and you only see them tick over. Fetch Data starts a sync that carries on in the background: the task shows Executing... and "Fetching data..." until the sync finishes, then completes itself.
When a task fails. It turns red with the reason under its name and a Retry button. In the example, Complete Accounts Matching has failed because two accounts are unmapped. Open COA Matching takes you to the mapping, and once the accounts are mapped the task tries again on its own.
Monthly Close and Sync (Cloud)
ActiveStarted 5 Oct 2026 · 1 of 7 tasks completed · Due 15 Oct 2026
Stage 1 - Data Sync
Stage 2 - Accounts
Stage 3 - Update GL Lines
The first three of the job's six stages. Matching has failed until two accounts are mapped, so the stages after it wait.
What each task state means
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Its stage has not opened yet. |
| Awaiting Action | Open and waiting for its assignee. |
| Executing... | Running now, such as a sync in progress. |
| Completed | Done. The task shows who completed it and when. |
| Failed | It could not finish. The reason is under its name, with Retry. |
| Cancelled | The job was cancelled before this task was done. |
Monthly Close and Sync (Cloud), stage by stage
- Data Sync. Sync trial balance from accounting system: press Fetch Data and the month's figures come in from Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent.
- Accounts. Complete Accounts Matching: passes when every account is mapped.
- Update GL Lines. Brings the GL Lines dimension up to date with the chart of accounts.
- Update Performance Data. Refreshes the performance reports with the new month.
- Review Results. Review P&L for the period, and Review balance sheet at period end. Each has a Confirm button.
- Approval. Approve the period dataset.
The buttons you will meet on a task
An open task carries the button that does its work. Only its assignee sees it, or anyone when the task is unassigned. Everyone else sees who to ask. The one exception is an approval task, where each approver sees Approve as well.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Confirm | Ticks off a check, such as Review P&L for the period or Approve the period dataset. |
| Fetch Data | Syncs the month's trial balance from the company's accounting software. The task completes when the sync does. |
| Open COA Matching | Takes you to the chart of accounts mapping for this company. |
| Schedule, Skip | Opens the schedule dialog for the next workflow, with its defaults filled in. Saving the schedule completes the task. Skip appears only when scheduling is optional. |
| Done | Completes a task that asked you to look over a page, such as the reporting lines or the trial balance. |
| Go to Dashboard | Completes the task and takes you to the company's Overview. |
| End Comments | Closes a feedback discussion. Anyone can add to the thread before then. |
| Approve, Continue | On an approval task such as Approve Document?. Approve records your own approval, if you are one of its approvers. Continue is the owner's, and closes the approval at whatever count has been reached (section 4). |
| Retry | Runs a failed task again once the cause is fixed. A failed sync may also offer Re-Authenticate, to reconnect the accounting software first. |
Undoing a task. Open the three-dot menu on a completed task and choose Undo task…. The dialog lists any later tasks that will need redoing too, and asks for an optional reason. You can undo your own task when nothing after it depends on it; anything else needs an admin. Undoing an approval clears the approvals recorded on it, keeps its approvers, and tells each of them it is needed again.
Cancelling a job. On the Jobs tab, an active job's row has Cancel. Confirm with Cancel Job and every task not yet completed is cancelled. Completed tasks keep their record.
The history. View history at the foot of a job lists everything that happened to it, oldest first: when it started, each task completed or failed, any undo with its reason, and who did each, with how long ago.
4. People and notifications
Every job has an owner, and each task follows them unless the workflow says otherwise.
A job's tasks go to its owner. A step can name someone else, or ask you to pick when the job is scheduled. An approval has a list of approvers as well as an owner.
The job owner is set when the job is created. The New job dialog and the schedule dialog both have a People section with a Job owner field, filled in with you, so a job you start lands with you and a schedule's jobs land with whoever set the schedule up. Change it before you save to hand the whole job to someone else.
Each task then goes to the first of these that applies:
- The person the workflow names for that step, if it names one.
- The person you picked for that step under People when the job was scheduled or started. A step that asks for one has its own row there, with "Same as job owner" as the default.
- The job owner. Every step in the workflows Actuly provides works this way.
- Nobody. Only when the owner is no longer a user and the company has no Account Manager. The task shows Unassigned, and anyone can do it.
Anyone else who opens an assigned task sees "Only Emyr Lewis can action this task. Reassign it to act on it." To hand one task over, open the three-dot menu on it, choose Reassign and pick a name. Admins also see Assign to me.
People on this job, folded at the top of the job page, is where a running job changes hands. It lists the owner, each step that has its own person, and each approval's approvers. Changing the owner moves every open task that was following them, including one you reassigned by hand. Changing a step moves that task alone. Every change is written to the history.
For example, Emyr sets up Home & Garden Retail Co's monthly schedule, so the scheduled October close lands with Emyr. Away the week it is due, Emyr reassigns Review P&L for the period to Tom, and Tom gets a notification saying a task has been assigned to him. Had Emyr changed the Job owner under People on this job instead, every open task would have moved to Tom.
Click your avatar to open notifications. Unread ones are shaded blue, and the red badge counts them.
Approvals: an owner and a list of approvers
An approval task, such as Approve Document? in Prepare Document, is owned by its assignee and approved by its approvers.
Approvers are picked when the job is scheduled or started, in the dialog's People section. The dialog will not save without at least one: "Choose at least one approver for: Approve Document?". Add or remove approvers later under People on this job.
Each approver approves for themselves. When the stage opens, every approver gets an Approval needed notification. The task lists them, with a tick and a time beside each one who has approved, and a count such as "2 of 4 approved". An approver presses Approve to record theirs.
The owner closes it. Continue belongs to the owner and completes the task at whatever count has been reached, even none. The history records the count: "Completed with 2 of 4 approvals by Emyr Lewis". So a completed approval means the owner judged it done, and the count shows how many signed off. The owner, or an admin, can also record an approval for someone who gave it another way, from Record approval for… in the task's three-dot menu. The history says who recorded it for whom.
Undo clears the approvals. The document may have changed, so undoing an approval clears what was recorded, keeps the approvers, and tells each of them it is needed again. A job that reaches an approval with nobody to approve shows "No approvers yet" with a Choose approvers link to People on this job.
Prepare Document
ActiveStarted 20 Sep 2026 · 4 of 7 tasks completed · Due 30 Sep 2026
Stage 5 - Approval
- ✓Tom Jones· 28 Sep 2026
- ✓Sara Khan· 29 Sep 2026
- ○Priya Patel
What the owner sees. Two approvers have approved, one has not, and Continue closes the approval now or after Priya's tick. Each approver sees an Approve button here instead.
What notifies whom
Your notifications sit under your avatar, the round picture at the top right of the app. They arrive as they happen, with no need to refresh the page. Clicking one opens the job it is about and marks it read.
| Notification | Who gets it | When |
|---|---|---|
| Task assigned to you | The task's assignee | When the job starts with their task in its first stage, when a later stage opens with their task in it, or when a task moves to them by Reassign or under People on this job. Never for a task you assign to yourself. |
| Approval needed | Each approver on an approval task | When its stage opens, when they are added to it, and again after the approval is undone. |
| Discussion open | The people listed on a comments task, where the workflow lists any | When its stage opens. |
| New comment | On a comments task, the people listed on it, its assignee and anyone who commented earlier. On any other task, the job owner, the assignee and earlier commenters. Never the person who wrote the comment. | Whenever a comment is posted on a task. |
| Task completed | The person who started the job, if a person did | When one of its tasks completes, unless they completed it themselves. |
| Task failed | The person who started the job, if a person did | When a data sync the job started fails. |
| Job overdue | The assignee of the job's first unfinished task that has one | Once, on the day after the due date, if the job is still Active. |
| Task invalidated | Whoever completed a task that an undo reset | When someone undoes an earlier task in the same job. |
5. Where to see everything
The Jobs tab for the detail, the Overview for what is next.
Three places, each answering a different question: what is running, what needs doing now, and what has happened since you last looked.
The Jobs tab lists the company's jobs. The chips across the top filter by status: Active, Failed, Completed and Cancelled. Active and Failed are on when you arrive, so finished work is out of the way. Click the Workflow, Status or Progress heading to sort by it. The due date is green while the job is on track, amber when it is due within two days, and red once it is overdue. A finished job shows the day it was done instead.
The Overview tab is the company's dashboard, and where Go to Dashboard takes you. Its tasks panel lists the company's active jobs, oldest first. The first is picked out, marked URGENT when others are waiting, with its current task and a Go to task link. A failed task shows Retry instead. The other jobs sit beneath with their current task, and Go to Jobs opens the full list. With nothing open, the panel says No tasks due.
Your notifications cover every company. View all notifications, at the foot of the menu under your avatar, opens the full list, newest first, with Show unread only and Mark all as read.
The tasks panel on the Overview tab. The oldest active job comes first, with the task it is waiting on.
What to check each month
Five minutes per company keeps the month moving.
- Amber and red due dates. On the Jobs tab, anything amber or red, or carrying an Overdue badge, needs chasing.
- Failed tasks. The Overview's tasks panel shows them in red. Read the reason on the task, fix it, then Retry.
- The monthly schedule. The Schedules tab should show it as Active, with the Next Due date you expect.
- A job owner on every schedule. Open the schedule and check People: if the owner has left, the jobs it creates land with nobody.
- Unread notifications. Each one opens the job it is about.
In short
Schedules create the jobs. You work the tasks. Actuly tells you what is waiting.
- A workflow is a checklist of stages. A job is one run of it for one company, with a due date.
- A schedule sets what the due date hangs off and how often, and creates each job early. Check Projected Jobs before you save.
- Stages open in order. Some tasks run themselves; the rest wait for their assignee.
- Tasks follow the job owner, unless the workflow names someone for a step or asks you to pick. An approval has its own list of approvers, and its owner closes it.
- The Jobs tab shows every job, the Overview shows what is next, and your avatar holds the notifications.
More guides
Keep going
Performance
Financial History, Performance vs Plan, and building Report Formats.
Dimensions
Where dimensions come from, Standard and Split, the Dimensions view, forecasting by dimension.
Forecasting
Versions, the three ways a line gets its numbers, special lines, and why everything balances.
Documents
Getting the data right, blocks, your own calculations, AI text and the AI Assistant, saving, locking and exporting.
Non-Financial Indicators
Setting them up, entering them each month, reading, forecasting and reporting them.
Dashboards and the Scorecard
The Overview, the Companies list, the Scorecard's colours, and keeping them fresh.
All help guides
Every guide, grouped by what you are doing.
Still stuck? Contact support and we will get back to you.