Accounting software for software and SaaS companies
Your revenue already lives in Stripe. Connect it with a read-only key and Argo Books turns every charge into a proper book entry: sales, processing fees, tax, discounts, customers, and refunds.
Free desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux. No account, no credit card.
Argo Books
Opening Argo Books on Windows
Windows may warn you because Argo Books is a newer app, not because it is unsafe. After the download finishes, here is the last step to open it:
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Open the installer. If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway.
You built the product. The bookkeeping should not be the hard part
Running a software business means your entire income statement is sitting in one place: Stripe. Hundreds of small charges, a processing fee on every one of them, refunds, tax on some of it, and a payout every few days that lands in your bank as a single lump sum. Most founders end up exporting a CSV every month and cleaning it up by hand. Argo Books reads it straight from Stripe instead, and it is the only free desktop accounting app that does.
Connect once with a read-only key
Create a restricted key in your Stripe dashboard with read access to balance transactions, charges, and payouts. Paste it into Settings, Integrations. That is the whole setup. Argo can see your Stripe activity and can never move a dollar of it.
Every charge becomes a real book entry
Not a lump sum. Each Stripe charge imports with the product name, the customer (created for you if they are new), the sales tax, and any discount you applied. Processing fees are recorded as expenses linked to the sale, so revenue stays gross and your margin is honest.
Payouts that don't get counted twice
Argo Books remembers every Stripe payout it has seen. When you import your bank statement later, the matching deposit is skipped instead of landing as a second copy of the same revenue. This is the mistake that quietly inflates a founder's numbers every year, and here it just doesn't happen.
Read-only, reviewed, and undoable
The key can only read. The sync is on demand, never automatic. Argo shows you a summary of the sales and fees it found and imports nothing until you confirm, and any sync can be undone in one step. You are never one wrong click away from a messy ledger.
The cost side of a software business
Hosting, domains, API credits, error monitoring, design contractors, ad spend. Snap or drop in the receipt and Argo pulls the vendor, date, and amount automatically. Tag it once and your real cost base is sitting next to your Stripe revenue instead of scattered across a dozen inboxes.
See the full Stripe integration walkthrough, or jump straight to the setup steps in the docs.
What Argo Books isn't
Argo Books does the books, not the billing. Filter revenue to any date range for your monthly or yearly total, which is your MRR and ARR if you bill monthly only. It won't split a yearly prepayment over twelve months, so a month where someone pays up front looks unusually big, and it won't report churn. Stripe's dashboard covers both. Stripe also keeps handling plans, upgrades, and failed payments, and you click sync when you want new activity pulled in. What Argo does is turn a pile of Stripe charges into books you can hand to an accountant, free, on your own computer.
Download FreeStart free, upgrade only if you need more
The Stripe integration is part of the core app, not a paid tier. Premium adds predictive analytics for forecasting where revenue is heading, unlimited invoicing for the enterprise deals you bill directly, and priority support.
FREE Plan
Just starting out, or you only need the basics? This is the place.
Free forever
- Unlimited products, customers, and sales
- See your numbers update in real time
- Keep every receipt in one place
- Send 25 invoices a month
- Scan 10 receipts a month, no typing
- Import 100 spreadsheets a month
- Import 25 bank statements a month
PREMIUM Plan
Want unlimited invoicing, bigger monthly limits, and forecasts you can act on? Go Premium.
Billed monthly
Billed annually at $150 CAD
Everything in Free, plus…
- Unlimited invoices and online payments
- Scan 500 receipts a month, no typing
- Import 500 spreadsheets a month
- Import 500 bank statements a month
- Forecast revenue and spot trends early
- Sign in with your fingerprint or face
- Priority support when you need it
Argo Books for your line of work
Frequently Asked Questions
You create a restricted key in your Stripe dashboard with read access to balance transactions, charges, and payouts, then paste it into Settings, Integrations in Argo Books.
The key is read-only, so Argo can see your Stripe activity but can never move money, issue refunds, or change anything in your Stripe account.
Each Stripe charge becomes a revenue entry with the product name, the customer (created automatically if they are new), any sales tax, and any discount. Processing fees are recorded as expenses linked to the sale. Refunds mark the original sale as returned.
Revenue is recorded gross with the fee as a separate expense, so your books stay standard.
No. Argo Books remembers every Stripe payout it has seen, so when you later import your bank statement the matching deposit is skipped instead of being added as a second piece of revenue.
This is the part people usually get wrong by hand.
No, and that is deliberate. You click Sync now and Argo shows you a summary of the sales and fees it found before anything is written.
Nothing is imported until you confirm, and a sync can be undone in one step.
Indirectly, and for a lot of software businesses that is enough. You can report revenue over any window you like: This Month, Last 30 Days, This Year, Last 365 Days, or a custom start and end date. If you bill monthly only, your monthly revenue total is your MRR and your yearly total is your ARR, read straight off the dashboard.
The gap opens up if you sell annual plans or one-time charges. Argo records an annual charge in full on the day it clears rather than spreading it over twelve months, so a monthly total spikes whenever someone prepays, and a true MRR figure normalizes that away. Stripe's own dashboard already gives you the normalized run rate, and there is no churn or cohort retention reporting in Argo Books.
No. An annual plan is recorded as revenue on the date the charge went through, not spread across twelve months.
If you are on cash-basis accounting, which most small software businesses are, that is exactly what you want. If your accountant needs accrual-basis deferred revenue schedules, Argo Books will not produce them.
Yes, forever. The Stripe integration is part of the core app, not a paid add-on, and the free tier includes 25 invoices per month.
Premium ($15 CAD/month) adds predictive analytics, unlimited invoicing, and priority support. No credit card to start.