How Kompass works alongside your accounting software
A short FAQ for finance managers. Kompass is the operational layer for projects, quoting, and project cost tracking. It does not keep your books, and it is not a replacement for your accounting system.
Does Kompass replace our accounting system?
No. Kompass does not keep your books. Your general ledger, statutory accounts, tax returns, and audit trail stay exactly where they are, in QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, D365, or whatever you run today. Kompass sits alongside it as the operational layer for projects and quoting.
So what does Kompass actually own?
Kompass owns the project view of money.
- On the value side: what was quoted, what has been delivered, and what is billable.
- On the cost side: what has been committed to suppliers and what has actually been spent against each project.
Together these give project margin, the value of the work set against its cost. Quote Items are the source of truth for the worth of the work. This is a forward-looking, project-shaped picture, which is different from the account-shaped record of money that has already moved that your ledger maintains.
Where is the dividing line?
- Kompass: quotes, project value, billable progress, what should be invoiced, and committed and actual project costs (purchase orders, supplier bills, and bill payments) allocated to the work.
- Your accounting system: the general ledger and chart of accounts, accounts payable and the purchase ledger, reconciliation, tax, period close, and the legal record of the business.
- The join: invoices and payment status pass between the two, and costs are coded to nominal accounts that match your chart of accounts, so both systems agree without either pretending to be the other.
Will it create a second set of books we have to reconcile?
No. Kompass is not a ledger and does not post journals. It hands invoice data to your accounting system. In some integrations, it reads payment status back, so the figures line up rather than diverge. There is no parallel set of accounts to keep in step by hand.
You now track purchase orders and supplier bills. Is Kompass becoming our accounts payable?
No. The purchasing features (purchase orders, supplier bills, and bill payments) exist to track project cost: what you have committed to a supplier, what they have billed, and what has been paid, all set against the project the work belongs to. Each line is allocated to a quote item and coded to a nominal account, so the cost lands on the right project and in a category that matches your chart of accounts. Your accounting system remains the accounts payable ledger of record. It still holds the statutory supplier ledger, runs payment runs, and handles VAT and tax reporting. Kompass records the project-facing cost picture and codes it cleanly for reconciliation, rather than replacing your purchase ledger.
How does the data move between the two?
Through a direct integration at the boundary. Kompass can push quotes and invoices out to your accounting package and (in some integrations) pull payment status back in, so once an invoice is paid your project view reflects it automatically. The data is entered once and lives in the system that should own it.
Why not just build full accounting into Kompass?
Because a proper ledger is a regulated system of record with tax engines, reconciliation, multi-currency handling, and audit requirements that change over time. You have already chosen a tool that does that well and that your auditors trust. Kompass adds most value by modelling the work, its worth, and its cost, then connecting cleanly to the books you already keep.
What does my finance team gain from it?
A live, accurate view of project value, cost, and margin feeding into the accounts, fewer manual hand-offs between operations and finance, and invoices and supplier costs that reach your accounting system already tied to the work that justifies them and coded to the right accounts. Your controls, reporting, and compliance stay where they belong.