Business accounts for sole traders

keel is a household finance tool, not a business accounting tool. Business accounts in keel serve one purpose: catching personal transactions hiding in business spending. If you're self-employed — a limited company director, a sole trader, or running a side hustle — you've probably mixed personal and business spending across accounts at some point. keel helps you answer "what can my household actually spend?" without trying to replace your accounting software (Xero, FreeAgent, and so on).

Business expenses stay out of your household reports, budgets, and score. Personal spending that leaked onto the business card gets pulled in where it belongs.

How it works

Importing a business account

When you assign a statement to a business account, keel shows a merchant-grouped picker before importing. You choose which merchants are personal purchases — only those transactions are imported and categorised. Business expenses you don't select are never imported.

How it's organised. Transactions are grouped by merchant, not listed one by one. Each row shows the merchant name, transaction count, total amount, and date range — checking "Costa" selects all Costa transactions in one tap. Expand a row to see individual transactions if you need to deselect specific ones.

Pre-selection. keel pre-checks merchants it thinks are personal, marked with a "Personal?" badge:

1. Learned merchants — anything you confirmed as personal on a previous import
2. Known consumer brands — supermarkets, streaming services, coffee shops, transport providers

These are suggestions, not decisions. You can uncheck anything — Costa might be personal one day and a client meeting the next. A "Select all consumer brands" button lets you pre-check every recognised personal merchant in one go, then deselect the exceptions.

Signed amounts. Each merchant row shows a signed total — outgoing amounts with a minus sign, incoming amounts (refunds, credits) with a plus sign in teal — so unusual flows like refunds landing on the business card stand out.

One tip: leave transfers between your personal and business accounts unchecked in either direction. They're already captured on the personal side.

After import

keel runs AI categorisation on just the personal transactions you selected, then shows the standard import summary — the same review every account type gets. Anything you don't confirm there appears in your review queue for later.

keel learns your choices

Every time you confirm a merchant as personal, keel remembers. On your next import, that merchant is automatically flagged — no action needed. If you uncheck a pre-suggested merchant (telling keel it's actually a business expense), keel remembers that too, and after a couple of consistent classifications it asks whether you want to change the default. After 3–4 months of imports, the review becomes a quick scan of new merchants only.

Income classification

Income arriving in your personal account is classified into one of three types by tax treatment — regular (post-tax), pre-tax, or other — which determines how it counts toward your spendable income and whether estimated tax is deducted. See Income types for the full breakdown and why there are only three.

The spendable income card

Once you've classified at least one income transaction, your dashboard shows a "What your household can spend" card:

• Regular income (3-month average, or fewer months if you have less data)
• Plus variable income for the current month, after estimated tax (30% by default)
• Minus fixed commitments (your Housing & Utilities budget)
• Minus variable budget allocations
• Equals what you can actually spend

The tax rate is changeable in your profile settings, and the figure is always labelled as estimated — keel is not tax software.

Flagging business expenses on any account

You can flag any transaction as a business expense, not just on business accounts. On a personal account, this covers things like Facebook ads on your personal Amex or office supplies on your personal card.

When you toggle "Business expense" on:

• The category picker disappears — no category is needed
• The transaction is excluded from your household reports, budgets, and score
• keel remembers the merchant, so future transactions from it are flagged automatically

Toggle it off and the transaction returns to your review queue for categorisation, and the merchant rule is updated so future transactions are treated as personal.

You can also mark a transaction as a business expense directly from the review queue — each expense card has an overflow menu with "Mark as business expense" — without opening the transaction page first.

Business-funded personal spending counts as income

When you buy something personal on the business card and flag it as personal, keel treats it as an implicit drawing from the business. Your reports show it as both an expense in the right category (say, Eating Out) and an income row called "Business-funded personal".

This keeps your household income total honest. Without it, spending from business cards would artificially suppress your income and make your savings rate look worse than it really is. The figure is calculated automatically — no manual input — and only appears when you have business accounts with personal transactions on them.

The business section on your reports

If you have any business activity, your full report shows a "From your business" section:

• Personal spending from business — the total of personal transactions paid from business accounts
• Business expenses — pure business outflows, grouped by merchant
• Net from business — the total drawn from the business

Naming your businesses

If you run more than one business, keel can keep them separate. Go to Settings → Businesses to name each one ("FTS Ltd", "Rental portfolio", "Etsy shop") and map any business-type bank accounts to them. See Managing multiple businesses for the full guide.

Mapping accounts. Open a business and tap "Assign" against a business-type account — transactions on that account then default to that business automatically. Personal accounts aren't mappable here, because a personal card can carry expenses for any of your businesses; you tag those per transaction instead.

Archiving. If you wind a business down, archive it. All tagged history is kept, archived businesses still appear in historical reports, and you can reactivate any time. keel never silently untags historical data.

One business? You don't need to pick every time — anything you flag as a business expense is assigned to your one business automatically. The per-transaction picker only appears once you add a second.

No businesses set up? Business-flagged transactions stay unassigned. They behave the same way (excluded from household reports and score); they're just not grouped by business.

Tagging transactions to a specific business

With two or more businesses, keel asks "which business?" when you flag a transaction. This appears in three places:

• On the transaction page — a "Which business?" row under the Business toggle
• In the review queue — a sheet opens when you mark a transaction or merchant group as a business expense
• On a business's own page — a "Tag to {business}" section lists every untagged business transaction in your household, grouped by merchant, so you can tag them in bulk

keel learns as you go. Tag "Facebk Dublin" to FTS Ltd once and the next Facebook charge auto-tags without asking. After bulk-tagging you'll see a confirmation like "Tagged 14 transactions to FTS Ltd. Future Facebk Dublin and Google transactions will auto-tag" — that's keel naming the merchants it just learned. You can always override a specific transaction on its detail page.

Transactions on accounts you've mapped to a business are assigned automatically — you don't need to tag those individually.

Tagging income to a business

Income can be tagged to a business too. keel offers the picker automatically when you confirm pre-tax income (freelance, client invoices) in the review queue, since that's the type most likely to come from one of your businesses. Post-tax salary and other income don't auto-prompt — they could just as easily be from an external employer — but you can tag any income manually from the transaction page via "Which business is this from?"

"Personal income — not from a business" is the none option, for outside employers, gifts, tax refunds, and anything else that isn't from your businesses. keel remembers and won't ask again for that merchant.

Tagged income shows on the business's own page under "Income from", and feeds into that business's "Income contributed" figure alongside business-funded personal spending — so the figure reflects both drawings and direct income.

Seeing each business separately

With two or more businesses, the business section of your full report breaks down per business. Each gets its own row with a subtotal; expand it to see merchants, or tap Details → to open the business's own page. Any business-flagged transactions not yet assigned to a business appear in an Other row with an amber "N need tagging" hint — that's your signal to tag them.

Each business's page shows:

• Net household impact — the headline. Positive means the business contributed more than it cost your household this month; negative means the household funded it.
• Income contributed — personal spending funded by this business's accounts plus tagged income, with refunds netted off
• Business expenses — business-flagged outflows belonging to this business
• Year to date — the same numbers over the year so far
• Mapped accounts and expenses by merchant

Use the chevrons at the top to step back through any past month. The page is framed around household coaching, not HMRC reporting.

Reimbursements

When you pay for a business expense from a personal account — say, software for the business on your personal credit card — the business effectively owes you that money. (Full guide: Business reimbursements.) keel tracks it as a running balance per personal account, shown on the business page as an "Outstanding to personal accounts" card: "FTS Ltd owes Victoria's Amex +£280".

When money then arrives from a business account into a personal account with an outstanding balance, keel asks softly: "Could this be a reimbursement from FTS Ltd? £280 outstanding on this account."

• Yes, reimbursement — the transaction reduces the outstanding balance and doesn't count as income. keel learns the merchant so future transfers from the same source auto-tag.
• No, it's income — the prompt goes quiet and the transaction goes through the normal income flow.

The prompt only fires when keel is confident which business is paying you back — either because you tagged the transaction to a business, or because it arrived from an account mapped to one. It never guesses from patterns.

If a merchant later refunds something the business already paid you back for, the ledger flips: the balance goes below zero, meaning you now owe the business. keel shows this honestly — settling it is up to you.

Why it works this way

• Your personal account is the source of truth for household finances. The business account is an overlay that catches leaking personal expenses.
• Classification, not calculation. For limited company directors, income arriving in personal accounts is already post-tax. keel classifies it; it doesn't calculate tax.
• Business expenses don't get categories because personal spending categories don't cover business costs — "Facebook Ads" isn't groceries. The toggle is the complete classification; your accounting software handles the detail.
• Business expenses paid personally are not income. Paying for Google Ads from a personal card doesn't increase your household's spending power — it's a loan to the business. It shows as an informational outflow but never inflates your income. (This is deliberately asymmetric with business-funded personal spending, which genuinely does increase household resources.)
• Refunds net against drawings. If a personal purchase on the business card is returned, the refund reduces the "Business-funded personal" figure — the business didn't ultimately fund it.

Good to know

• Salary and dividends are treated identically — both are post-tax income landing in your personal account, so both are "Regular income". The distinction matters to HMRC, not to your household budget.
• Refund of a business-funded personal purchase: mark the refund as a refund — it nets against both the expense category and the "Business-funded personal" income figure, zeroing out both sides correctly.
• Spendable card with no budgets set: keel falls back to last month's actual Housing & Utilities spend as the fixed-commitments estimate.
• Your first month with no history: the spendable card uses the current month's income only, labelled "Based on this month's income."

FAQ

Can I track my business expenses in keel? No — keel is for household finances. Use Xero or FreeAgent for business accounting. keel only helps you find personal spending on your business card.

Do I need to import my business account? No, but it helps. keel works with just your personal accounts. Adding the business account catches personal spending that leaked onto the business card.

How does keel know my tax rate? It uses a default of 30% (a UK basic rate plus National Insurance approximation). You can change it in your profile settings. keel shows estimated post-tax amounts but isn't tax software — check with your accountant for actual figures.

I marked something as personal but it's actually a business expense. Can I fix it? Yes. On the import summary, each personal transaction card has a "Not personal" link. After import, you can change any transaction from its detail page.

Why doesn't keel show salary vs dividend separately? Because it doesn't change what your household can spend. All post-tax income is "regular income" for budgeting.

Why does keel ask if a transfer is a reimbursement? Money moving from your business to your personal account could be salary, a dividend, repayment of expenses you fronted, or just moving funds. keel can see there's an outstanding balance, so it asks. Getting this right keeps your income figure honest.

Does keel match reimbursements to specific expenses? No. keel tracks a running balance per business and personal account, rather than linking individual reimbursements to individual expenses. Most people care about "FTS owes the Amex £280", not which £50 covered which charge.

What if I was paid back more than I was owed? The outstanding balance flips negative — the business has now paid you back more than it owed. You can leave it as a running balance, or handle it in your accounting software.

Why doesn't keel show business income minus expenses? keel's income types are about tax treatment, not where the money came from. A £3,000 salary and a £3,000 business draw are both "regular income" — keel can't tell them apart, so the business section shows expenses only.