Stop opening six apps to answer “how are we doing?”
Payroll in one tab, invoices in another, bank in your phone — and still no single answer when a supplier calls. One workspace can show what needs you today.
- One business record — payroll, money, and trade feed the same picture.
- Your home dashboard is your weekly to-do list, not a decorative chart.
- Turn modules on when the pain shows up; you do not need everything day one.
Bola runs a catering company from a kitchen in Yaba and an office she barely visits. Monday morning someone asks: can we pay staff Friday, is the Ikoyi client paid, and did we remit pension last month? She opens the bank app, scrolls WhatsApp for an invoice PDF, and asks her cousin to check a spreadsheet. Forty minutes later she has three partial answers and a headache. That is not a discipline problem. It is a scattered-data problem.
Founders do not need more charts. They need to know the next three things that will hurt if ignored.
Needs attention up top — not buried under menus.
What “one workspace” actually means
Business Buddy is built around a single business record: your company name, your people, your bank accounts, your customers and vendors. When you log an expense, send an invoice, or approve a pay run, those events land in the same transaction stream. Payroll is not on an island. Trade is not a separate product you bolt on later. They are views on the same money story.
That matters because the dangerous gaps live *between* systems. Payroll went out but cash was short because three invoices are still unpaid. VAT is due but nobody connected bank inflows to issued invoices. You only notice when diesel or rent forces the question.
Your home dashboard: inbox, not wallpaper
The home screen is deliberately boring in a useful way. It pulls together what already exists in your data: pay runs waiting for approval, expenses staff submitted, invoices overdue, bank lines still unmatched, tax deadlines creeping up, leave someone needs to sign off. Each row links somewhere you can fix it.
- Pay run approved but not exported — nudge to bank file or payslips
- Staff expenses sitting in queue — amounts add up quietly
- Receivables past due — total outstanding, not one PDF at a time
- Cash pulse and weeks left — rough runway at current burn
- Payroll vs cash — can you afford this run before you click approve
Modules you turn on when the pain appears
New signups get payroll, money, and trade — enough to pay people, log spend, and invoice clients without reading a manual. Banking, tax, books, projects, and inventory stay optional until the business outgrows “spreadsheet plus bank app.”
The product also watches your behaviour. Log payments to many vendors in Money and it may suggest Trade for proper bills. Import bank CSV and leave lines unmatched — it nudges Banking to match bank lines. That is not upsell for its own sake; it is matching software to how you already work.
Money Pulse when you only need visibility — not full accounting yet.
Actions, not archives
Data you never act on is just storage. The point of holding payroll, transactions, invoices, and statutory payment marks in one place is to *do* something: approve, send, match, export, mark as paid, invite an employee to the portal. Your home dashboard is the routing layer — it tells the owner which of those verbs matters this week.
- Log in Monday — scan Needs attention
- Clear approvals before money moves
- Chase or record payments on overdue AR
- Match bank lines before Friday cash review
- Run payroll on schedule with affordability check visible
What we are still building
Honest limit: not every action is one click yet. Direct filing to FIRS, live bank feeds for every provider, and automatic fraud detection are on the roadmap. Today the win is *visibility plus workflow* — fewer surprises, fewer tabs, a trail when someone asks “who approved this?”
Open your home dashboard — Demo workspace · payroll + money + trade from day one