Accounting Spend — What Your Accounting Team Does Here, Against What It Costs

This page is for one person: the owner of the business. It answers a single question — is what you pay for bookkeeping in line with the work being done — and it answers it from the work itself, not from time logged in.

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Part 0 — Who can see it

The Owner tab appears for exactly one login: the one Arcvue support has named as this company's business owner. Nobody else on your account sees the tab or the page — not an administrator, not the accounting lead, not the firm's people, not an auditor. It is a name, not a role. If you should have it and do not, ask Arcvue support to name you; nobody inside your company can.

The people whose work is measured are not told they are measured.

Part 1 — Setting it up: Who counts

The first time you open the page it measures nothing and says so, and the panel headed Tell Arcvue who does your accounting is the whole screen. Under Who counts you name three things:

• The firm — the vendor in your payables that is the accounting firm. Choose it from the list (it shows every vendor, active first; an inactive one is marked). Choose more than one if the firm bills under several names. Press Choose on a vendor to make it the firm; the row then reads The firm. A person you pay directly is not a firm and is not offered.
• The people — every active login on your account, accounting roles first, each with a three-way choice: Not counted, Firm (the firm's own login) or Staff (your employee doing accounting work). Outside seats such as an auditor are never offered.
• Idle threshold — how long a silence ends a working session. Fifteen minutes is the default; the same threshold applies to everyone listed.

Start measuring stays disabled until the firm and at least one person are named; the page says so beneath the buttons. Afterward, Who counts in the top right opens the same panel, where Save applies a change to every month shown and Cancel discards it.

Part 2 — Reading the month at a glance

Choose how many Months to show — three, six or twelve, ending with the current month. The month in focus is the newest one with anything in it, and the four figures at the top are that month's:

• Effective hourly rate — what the month cost, divided by the productive hours. This is the number to hold against the firm's quoted rate. It is blank until the month has both hours and a cost, and the line under it says which of the two is missing.
• Productive hours — with the number of sessions and working days.
• Work done — a count of things changed, and the kind of work most of it was.
• Cost, marked Billed or Stated — and beneath it the cost per item of work.

How the hours are measured

Every action a listed person takes in the accounting service is a timestamp. A run of actions closer together than the idle threshold is one working session; each session gets a two-minute allowance for the last thing done. Being signed in with nothing happening counts for nothing. Looking at a screen is never work.

How the cost is measured

The firm's bills for the month's work, added up. Each bill counts in the month it says it covers, not the month it is dated, which is often the month after: the service period recorded on the bill in payables when there is one, and otherwise the month its lines name — a line reading "operation for August, 2026" puts the bill in August. A bill whose lines name different months is shared out line by line. Only a bill that names no month of work is placed by its date. Voided bills are left out.

Part 3 — Who did the bookkeeping

Under the month's figures, Who did the bookkeeping splits the month's booking decisions between Arcvue and people. A booking decision is one transaction coded — a bank line, a card charge, a bill, an emailed invoice — one question settled, or one journal entry posted by hand. The large figure is the share decided by Arcvue on its own, with no person involved.

Arcvue on its own has three parts:

• Learned from your team — Arcvue repeated an answer a person gave on an earlier transaction from the same counterparty. This is the learning curve: every question your team answers once should stop coming back, so this part should grow month over month.
• Standing rules — a fixed rule that follows from how your company is set up, such as a vendor's standing account or a government payment. The line beneath names the rules that applied and how often.
• AI — Arcvue's AI coded it and nobody had to correct it.

People has three parts:

• Your accounting team — the people listed under Who counts.
• Others in your company — other logins, often an owner or manager doing bookkeeping themselves; each is named with a count.
• Arcvue support — changes Arcvue's own people made directly on your books, usually while setting up your workspace. They count with the people, never toward Arcvue's share, because a person had to decide them.

Beneath the parts is what each decision your team made cost: the month's cost divided by their decisions. If the team you listed made no decisions in a month that cost money, the page says so plainly, and says that work done outside Arcvue is not counted. Arcvue also posted counts the entries Arcvue made by itself — labor from approved timecards, payroll, depreciation and the like — for scale; they stay out of the share, because they run in the thousands every month and would make any company read as fully automated. Not counted names the codings Arcvue cannot fairly give to either side: ones with no record of what made them, and ones a person chose in another system, such as your bill-pay tool.

Month by month stacks each month's decisions by who made them, with Arcvue's share as a line on its own axis. Read it for direction: the learned and standing-rule parts should grow, and the people parts shrink, as Arcvue learns your business. If Arcvue cannot read who made the decisions, the section says why instead of showing zeros.

Part 4 — Hours and cost by month

The Trend chart shows firm hours and staff hours as stacked bars and the month's cost as a line on its own axis. A month that is mostly staff time reads at a glance, and so does a rising cost over flat hours.

Part 5 — The months table

One row per month, newest first, with Month, Hours, Sessions, Days, Work, By Arcvue (the share of the month's booking decisions Arcvue made on its own), Cost (tagged Billed or stated), Per hour and Per item. Selecting a row moves the focus to that month; everything below the table then describes it.

Part 6 — Who did what

For the month in focus: each Person, their Side (firm or staff), their Hours, Days, Work and Decisions — the booking decisions they made in Arcvue that month — then the kinds of work as bars — bookkeeping decisions, journal entries, payables, banking, billing, close, payroll, expenses, contracts — largest first. A listed person who made decisions with no time recorded still has a row. A month where nobody listed did anything says exactly that.

Part 7 — What the month cost

The firm's bills for the month in focus: each Bill, when it was Dated, its Status and its Amount, totaled as Billed. Under each bill is what placed it in this month: the bill's own words that name the month, the service period recorded on it, or a note that it was placed by its date because nothing on it names one. A bill marked Shared across months names more than one on its lines; its Amount here is this month's part, with the whole bill beneath. A month with no bills yet says so rather than showing a zero.

Stating a month's cost yourself

The current month rarely has its bill yet, and some bills cover several months. State this month's cost opens a box for the Amount for the month in dollars and an optional Note on where the amount came from; Use this amount makes it the cost the month is judged on, the figure at the top switches to Stated, and the bills stay listed underneath. Change the amount revises it; Judge on bills again clears it, and the month goes back to its bills. Nothing about the bills themselves changes.

Part 8 — When the numbers look wrong

A rate far above the firm's quote usually means one of three things:

1. The firm is doing the work somewhere other than Arcvue.
2. One of the firm's logins is not listed under Who counts — add it.
3. The bill covers more than bookkeeping.

A month with cost and no hours is a month where nobody listed did anything here. A month with hours and no cost is waiting on its bill, or the bill is under a vendor you have not named as the firm. A bill in a month you did not expect says why under it; if that reading is wrong, set the bill's service period in payables and it moves.

A share By Arcvue that climbs while the fee holds flat means Arcvue is doing more of the work each month and each decision your team makes is costing more. Many decisions under Others in your company mean someone you do not pay for accounting is doing it. A team with hours and no decisions spent that time on something other than booking.

Each of these is a conversation, and this page is the evidence for it.

Part 9 — If the page refuses

Only the named owner can open it. If you are refused, the owner named for this company has changed. Arcvue support sets it from the company's panel in the admin console; nothing on your own account does.