Accounting export: the checklist and the bundle for your accountant

The Accounting export screen shows a checklist with four items: uploaded invoices (you confirm this yourself), matched bank movements, settled expenses and uploaded statements. Only the missing invoice confirmation blocks the export; the other three items only warn. Once it finishes, you download one ZIP with expenses, documents, statements and a summary, kept for 14 days.

Contents

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You land on the Accounting export screen at the end of the month, where a Checklist walks through four items before you download the Accountant's bundle in one click. Most of those four items are not really gatekeepers — only one of them can hold you back — and this guide walks through why, plus exactly what shows up in the file once you download it.

A checklist with three warnings — the export can still run.

The four checks, and why these four

Not every row on this list works the same way. Here is what each one actually checks, and why it behaves the way it does.

"I have uploaded every invoice for this month." Nothing else on this list needs your input the way this one does: it is a plain checkbox, not a calculation, and it stays that way because Lucanto genuinely cannot know whether an invoice is still waiting somewhere unwritten — that part of the picture only exists in your head. It is also the one row standing between you and the export button: leave it unticked and the block holds even if you try to trigger the export directly, since the server checks for the same confirmation the interface does.

"Every bank movement is matched." This one tallies whatever movements from the month still have nothing attached to them. An accountant looking at an unmatched line has no way to tell what it paid for, so the screen treats it as worth a warning rather than a dealbreaker.

"Every expense is paid." A warning here almost always points at cash. Three things set it off: an expense cash receipt still marked unpaid, a simplified receipt in the same state, and any expense at all that has gone past its due date — in each case the likeliest explanation is that the money left in physical form and no bank movement will ever account for it, exactly the blind gap this check is built to surface. Compare that with a supplier invoice that simply is not due until next month — completely normal, so it only shows up as information, never as a warning. That is also why the count is split into two buckets instead of a single number: lumping them together would make an everyday deferred bill look exactly as urgent as a cash payment nobody recorded.

"Bank statements are uploaded." A cash register is exempt by definition — it never produces a bank statement, so it was never going to be part of this count — and so is an archived account, since nobody is expecting fresh paperwork for a book you have already closed. What is left, and what actually gets checked, is every active account of your own that carries an IBAN. Connecting an account straight to your bank does not tick this row by itself — that connection syncs the transaction feed, which is a different record from the statement — but for a connected account Lucanto also pulls the statement itself from the bank automatically each month, so the row clears without you uploading anything.

Why most rows only warn

None of the three counted rows has any hold over the export button. They count, they colour, they explain — and then the export runs regardless. That is deliberate: a month that is entirely tidy by the time you hand it over is the exception rather than the rule, and a screen that insisted on one would spend most of its life standing in the way. When all three counted rows do come back clear, the list looks like this:

A checklist with no warnings — same screen, a different month.

Whether the list carries warnings or not, the "Export for accounting" button stays clickable — the single exception is that first checkbox. Leave the invoice confirmation unticked and that is the only thing greying it out.

What is in the bundle, and how long it lasts

Start the export and then close the tab if you want to — the work carries on without you, and Lucanto tells you the moment the Accountant's bundle is ready to grab. It needs that room: every document from the month goes through a headless browser to come back out as PDF before anything gets zipped up.

Downloaded, the bundle turns out to be a single ZIP holding four things: expense attachments in expenses, your issued documents in invoices, one statements/<account> subfolder per bank account, and a plain-text SUMMARY.txt recording the counts and the date it was built.

A finished bundle — the Download ZIP button and the counts of what it holds.

One thing is worth remembering here: the bundle stays downloadable for 14 days. After that Lucanto deletes it automatically, and if your accountant never got around to downloading it, running the export again is the only way back.

Frequently asked questions

Why can I not start the export until I confirm the uploaded invoices?

The other three rows all reduce to something Lucanto can already see — a match, a payment, an upload. Whether some invoice is still unwritten in a drawer somewhere is not information any system has access to, which is why it stays something you tick yourself. And because it is the one gap nobody but you can close, it is also the one thing standing between you and the export — checked server-side, so skipping the button in your browser will not help.

Why does an unmatched bank movement or a missing statement not stop me?

Because closing a month is rarely tidy. A statement might not have arrived yet, or a handful of transactions are still waiting to be matched — small, ordinary gaps that do not justify holding up your accountant. So the checklist just calls them out in colour and text, and you send the bundle anyway, with a note about what to fill in later.

Why is an unpaid expense sometimes a warning and sometimes only information?

It comes down to what the timing tells Lucanto. Nothing looks wrong about a supplier bill that is not due for another month, so that one stays quietly informational. A cash receipt still unpaid, or any bill already overdue, reads differently — most of the time that means cash changed hands and no bank movement will ever show up for it, exactly the blind spot this check is hunting for.

Why does the list count fewer bank accounts than I actually have in Lucanto?

Two kinds of account never show up in this count. A cash register has no bank statement to begin with, so there was never anything to check. And an archived account is finished business — closed, filed away, and nobody is expecting a fresh statement to appear for it. What is left is exactly your own active accounts that carry an IBAN, the actual group being checked.

Why does the export take time, and can I close the page while it runs?

Nothing about this export happens instantly, because a full month of documents has to pass through a headless browser to come out the other side as PDF — and that takes real processing time no matter how fast your connection is. Walking away from the tab does not interrupt any of it; Lucanto simply lets you know the moment the bundle is sitting there ready to download.

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