How To Use Sunrise Accounting: 5 Free Tutorials

Welcome to the Fit Small Business free Sunrise Accounting Tutorials. Whether you’re new to the platform or could benefit from a more in-depth understanding of it, we have five courses to help you. Each tutorial includes an in-depth lesson, complete with text and images—and this first course covers how to set up your company in Sunrise.

You’ll find these guides much more useful if you have a copy of Sunrise—our leading free accounting solution for businesses needing only basic tracking of income and expenses—open so that you can follow along with your data. The basic version is free forever, but you can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Sunrise Plus to explore some of the paid features.

Visit Sunrise Accounting

We have the following free Sunrise Accounting tutorials:

TUTORIAL 01 How To Set Up Your Company in Sunrise

TUTORIAL 02 How To Create Invoices in Sunrise

TUTORIAL 03 How To Track and Pay Bills in Sunrise

TUTORIAL 04 How To Reconcile Bank Accounts in Sunrise

TUTORIAL 05 How To Print Reports in Sunrise

In the news:

Sunrise by Lendio has been renamed Lendio Accounting.

Tutorial 1: How To Set Up Your Company in Sunrise

We’re going to cover how to set up your company. This includes completing your company information, inviting additional users, setting up your notification preferences, customizing your chart of accounts, and connecting your bank and credit card accounts.

Step 1: Enter Your Company Information

The first step in setting up your company in Sunrise is to enter your information. You can access the Organization Information section by following these steps:

Step 1: Click the settings wheel next to your company name in the left menu bar.

Step 2: Select Organization Information.

Navigating to Organization Info section in Sunrise

Step 3: Complete the following fields:

Name and address: Enter your business name and address.
Business details: Select your business entity type, enter your tax ID number—which is either your Social Security number or your employer identification number (EIN)—your business start date, and number of employees.
Contact information: Your company’s contact details, including your phone number, fax, email, and website.
Logo: You have the option to upload a logo, which will appear on your company documents, such as client invoices.
Opening balance: Click on the Edit account balances link to update an account’s opening balance.
Accounting method: Select between cash and accrual for your company’s accounting method.

Step 4: Click the green Save button

Organization Details in Sunrise

Set Up Additional Companies

A paid subscription to Sunrise Plus includes unlimited companies, which allows you to seamlessly manage multiple businesses under one account. Only the account owner can add additional companies. To set these up, navigate to the Create Organization screen with these steps:

Step 1: Click on the settings wheel next to your company name in the left menu bar.

Step 2: Select Switch organization.

Step 3: Click on the green Create organization button on the upper right corner of the screen.

Step 4: Complete the requested information to set up your new company. This information includes Business Name, Industry, Description, and Country.

Step 5: Click Create.

Setting up an additional company in Sunrise

Step 2: Invite Additional Users

Sunrise Plus allows you to invite additional users, such as your accountant or employees. Only the owner of the account can send invitations.

Step 1: In the left menu bar, click My Business.

Step 2: Select Users.

Adding users in Sunrise

Step 3: Enter the email address of the person you want to invite and indicate whether they’re a coworker or an accountant or bookkeeper. (The only difference between the two is the navigation menu they’ll be presented with when they log in. Accountants and bookkeepers will see an advanced navigation menu, whereas coworkers will see the same default menu that you see.)

Step 4: Click the Send invitation button.

Once the user accepts the invitation, they’ll be able to create a password and start working in your account.

Invitation email sent to new Sunrise users.

Sending an invitation to new users in Sunrise

Step 3: Set Your Company Notification Preferences

You can choose to receive email notifications when certain things happen, such as coworkers commenting on invoices or customers signing your quotes. Also, you can enable or disable notifications for each event type, set your preferences for each of your organizations, or enable/disable all notifications from Sunrise. To navigate to the Notifications section:

Step 1: Click the settings wheel next to your business name in the left menu bar.

Step 2: Click Preferences under User Settings.

Step 3: View the notifications page, which displays the following default settings that are enabled:

Invoice paid by customer with credit card
Customer signs a quote
Task completed
Task created
Document request created
Document request completed
Document request reopened
Other user comments on items such as invoices, expenses, and transactions
Email delivery failed
Business Summary Email

To disable a setting, toggle the switch button to off.

Setting up company notification preferences in Sunrise

Step 4: Customize Your Chart of Accounts

Sunrise allows you to customize your chart of accounts by editing a current account, creating a new one, or deleting one that’s no longer needed.

Edit an Account

Step 1: In the left menu bar, scroll down to My Business and select Chart of Accounts.

Step 2: Find the account you want to edit, then click on the Edit icon to the right of the account name.

Step 3: In the Edit account window, update the Account name, Description, Account type, and Account number. Note that the Account name and Account type are required information.

Step 4: Click the green Save account button.

How to view and edit your Advertising and Marketing account

Create a New Account

Step 1: From the Chart of Accounts screen, click the green Create account button in the upper right corner.

Step 2: Fill out the fields in the Basic information window. This includes the Account name, Description, Account type, and Account number. Note that the Account name and Account type are required information.

Step 3: Click the green Save account button.

Creating a new account in Sunrise

Delete an Account

Step 1: In the Chart of Accounts list, find the account that you want to delete and click on the Delete icon (trash can) to the right of the account name.

Step 2: In the Confirm window, click Yes, delete. If you change your mind, you can select No.

Deleting an account in Sunrise

Step 5: Connect Your Bank & Credit Card Accounts

When you connect your bank and credit card accounts in Sunrise, you’ll enable an automated bookkeeping ledger that stays in sync with your bank account, allowing you to automate many tasks and create more accurate reports. This allows you to reconcile your Sunrise feed to your bank feed, automatically match issued and paid invoices, and create cash flow projections.

Sunrise integrates with Finicity, through which you can connect with multiple financial institutions and pull bank data directly into your account. To set up your bank or credit card connection, you’ll want to navigate to the Account Overview page. Here’s how:

Step 1: In the left menu bar, click Banking.

Step 2: Click the Add New Account button in the upper right corner.

Step 3: In the Add New Account window that appears, click on Connect a new bank account or credit card.

Navigating to Account Overview page

Link Bank Account

While each bank or credit card company differs in how they ask for confirmation, they are all essentially similar. In the example below, we show the steps for setting up a Wells Fargo bank account:

Step 1: Select from the list of banks that have available bank connections. You can use the field at the top to search for your bank.

Step 2: Click Next to authorize sharing with Finicity.

Step 3: Enter your account credentials. You may need to answer some security questions or input a code provided by your bank for authentication.

Step 4: Click Sign In.

Setting up a bank connection in Sunrise

Activate Link

Once you have successfully linked an account, you’ll need to activate it.

Step 1: Click on the account that you want to activate.

Step 2: Click Continue.

Step 3: In the Activate Bank Connection window, enter the Bank name and Start date.

Step 4: Click Activate now.

Once your account has been successfully activated, you can view it as a linked account in the Account Overview section.

Linked account in Sunrise

Do you want to explore other solutions? Check out our guide to the best small business accounting software.

Bottom Line

You have now set up your company in Sunrise. Be sure to check out our other four free Sunrise tutorials where we’ll illustrate how to classify expenses flowing through from your bank account and how to reconcile your bank account. Our next guide is How to Create Invoices in Sunrise, which will cover how to adjust settings for your customers and preferences for sending invoices.

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