Briefcase Ledger vs IQ Books: Which AI Ledger Fits Your Business?

Why this comparison, and why today

On 5 October 2026 Briefcase opened Briefcase Ledger to limited companies. Until this morning it served sole traders and landlords, the people Making Tax Digital for Income Tax pulled in from April. Now it is a full double-entry ledger for any UK small business, launched alongside open banking payments and a connector for Claude and ChatGPT (Briefcase changelog, 5 October 2026).

That puts it in the same category as IQ Books: a complete UK ledger with AI doing the bookkeeping inside it, rather than an app bolted on to Xero or QuickBooks. Both are young, both ship quickly and both are serious. They are not the same product, though, and once you know what your business actually does, the differences matter more than the overlap.

I'm the bookkeeper behind IQ Books, so read this with that in mind. I have tried to be fair: every Briefcase fact below comes from Briefcase's own pages as they stood on launch day, linked so you can check them, and where Briefcase is ahead I say so.

Two companies, two starting points

Briefcase was founded in London in 2024 by Reuben Steenkamp, formerly of the CFO office at Starling Bank, and Ján Stehlík. Its first product, Briefcase Connect, sits on top of Xero and QuickBooks and does the capture, coding and month-end work there. Briefcase says it now works with 200 accounting firms and 6,000 UK businesses (Introducing Briefcase Ledger, 5 October 2026).

The ledger came next. It launched in March 2026 as Briefcase One, a standalone platform for sole traders and landlords facing quarterly MTD updates (Briefcase, 30 March 2026). Through the summer it gained bank feeds, VAT filing, working papers, prepayment and accrual schedules, sales invoices and expense claims, roughly one release a week (Briefcase changelog). Today's release takes it to limited companies.

IQ Books came from the other direction: a full ledger first, built by a bookkeeper who wanted ReconcileIQ's reconciliation, coding, analysis and year-end tools inside the books rather than beside them. So its depth is on the company side, with stock, projects, multi-currency, CIS and statutory accounts, and the automation built in around them.

That history explains most of what follows. Briefcase is strongest where its document automation and its firm customers have pushed it. IQ Books is strongest where a company's books get complicated.

What they have in common

More than you might expect, which is good news whichever you pick:

• A real double-entry ledger, not a coding layer exporting to someone else's.
• Open banking feeds, with lines coded by AI as they arrive.
• MTD for VAT and Income Tax filed to HMRC from the ledger.
• Month-end schedules for prepayments, deferred income and accruals, and a fixed asset register that depreciates itself.
• Expense and mileage claims with approval.
• A connector for Claude and ChatGPT, so you can ask your books a question or make a change from a chat, with a preview before anything is written.

If all you need is a modern ledger that codes the bank and files your VAT, either will do it. The choice comes down to the edges.

Where Briefcase Ledger leads

Landlords. Briefcase models property properly: ownership percentages per landlord with per-property reporting and HMRC splits, letting agent statements processed with sales and costs separated, and MTD updates for UK and foreign property (changelog, 26 May 2026). Landlord filing in IQ Books is not live yet. If rental income is a big part of your return, Briefcase is the better fit today.

Getting paperwork in. Bills and receipts reach Briefcase by email forwarding, upload or WhatsApp, and it reads every line, picks the category and VAT rate, and checks the supplier's VAT number with HMRC. It can also chase missing paperwork for you: pick the bank lines without an invoice, and Briefcase emails the request, reads the reply and ticks each item off. IQ Books reads receipts well, with a confidence mark on every field, but they arrive by upload or the phone camera. There is no WhatsApp or email-in route.

Paying suppliers from the app. From today Briefcase builds a Faster Payment from a published bill and you authorise it with your bank by open banking, with approval rules by amount and approver. It also holds a payment if a supplier's bank details change, until someone confirms them. Three payments a quarter are free, then 50p each (changelog, 5 October 2026). IQ Books has payment runs with approvals, but it produces an ISO 20022 file for you to upload to your bank rather than sending the money itself.

Working papers alongside the ledger. Briefcase spots adjustments as documents land: an annual insurance bill becomes a prepayment with its schedule drafted, a laptop becomes a fixed asset. Its working papers then open with those balances already reconciled to their schedules. For a firm closing many clients a month, that is a well-made workflow.

Proof points. Briefcase publishes its automation figures (it says 64% of published transactions need no edits across its customers), names firms in its case studies and holds ISO 27001. Those are things a firm's risk partner asks for, and Briefcase can show them today.

Where IQ Books leads

A limited company's whole year, in one ledger. IQ Books prepares FRS 105 micro-entity and FRS 102 Section 1A accounts from the same books, and generates iXBRL that validates cleanly against the FRC 2025 taxonomy. Direct submission to Companies House is built and waiting on presenter credentials, so for now you download the file and file it. Briefcase's launch materials don't mention statutory accounts or corporation tax, so if you run a company, check how its year-end accounts would be produced before you commit.

Operating depth. Stock with moving-average costing that ties to the ledger by construction, purchase orders, projects with their own P&L, budgets with variance, time and billing, and CIS for contractors and subcontractors. Sales has quotes, credit notes, recurring invoices, customer subscriptions, deposits and a hosted pay page with Stripe. For a trading company, a builder or an agency, these are the parts that otherwise need extra apps.

More ways for money to arrive. Alongside open banking feeds, IQ Books takes Stripe, PayPal and eBay as channel feeds, so marketplace payouts post as settlement journals with the fees and VAT split out, rather than as one lump to unpick.

Analysis and year-end work built in. LedgerIQ runs 44 analysis modules straight off the live ledger, from ratios and cash flow to anomaly detection. On ReconcileIQ's practice plans, PrepIQ prepares year-end working papers from the same books and posts its adjusting journals back into the ledger for review. Briefcase has AI commentary on the P&L and its own working papers; LedgerIQ goes further into analysis.

Starting free. One organisation with the whole ledger is free, and so is filing VAT returns and Income Tax quarterly updates: IQ Books is HMRC production approved for MTD VAT and Income Tax quarterly updates (September 2026), free on every tier. You pay only for automation and a few extras. Briefcase starts at £19 a month after a 14-day trial.

Your phone. IQ Books Mobile is a native companion app for capture, invoicing, bank review, approvals and GPS mileage. It is coming soon to the App Store and Google Play, and the web app already works on a phone.

Side by side

As each product stood on 5 October 2026. Briefcase details are from its own pricing page, changelog and launch post.

Price: the meters are different

Briefcase prices each business by volume. Low is £19 a month plus VAT for 75 invoices and receipts and 300 bank transactions a quarter, then £39, £79 and £119 for larger allowances, each with unlimited users and every feature (Briefcase pricing). Practices get 10% off from 10 clients, rising to 50% off from 1,000, which takes a Low client to £9 a month (Briefcase partner pricing).

IQ Books starts free: one organisation with the whole ledger, and VAT returns and Income Tax quarterly updates filed to HMRC at no cost. The automation runs on credits. Coding a bank line costs 4 credits and reading a receipt 10, and a new account's 1,000 free credits are a one-time allowance. Paid plans start at £5 a month for 5,000 credits, and emailing invoices from the app needs a paid plan. For practices, Practice Essential is £78 a month for up to 50 connected clients sharing 50,000 credits, and every client gets their own IQ Books organisation (ReconcileIQ pricing).

The meters differ, so headline numbers mislead. Briefcase charges by documents and bank lines, so a business pays for its volume whatever the software does with it. IQ Books charges for automation, so a business that codes its own lines pays nothing, and a busy client draws more from a shared practice pool. Run one of your own months through both before you decide.

Who each one suits

Choose Briefcase Ledger if

• You are a landlord, or a sole trader with property income, especially with joint ownership or letting agents.
• Your paperwork arrives on WhatsApp and email, and you want it chased for you.
• You want to pay suppliers from inside the ledger by open banking.
• You are a firm that values ISO 27001, published automation figures and working papers in the same tool, and many of your clients are on Xero or QuickBooks today.

Choose IQ Books if

• You run a limited company and want the statutory accounts and iXBRL to come from the same books.
• You carry stock, run projects, work in construction under CIS, invoice in other currencies or sell on eBay and Stripe.
• You want to start free, with MTD filing included, and pay only for the automation you use.
• You are a practice that wants LedgerIQ analysis and PrepIQ year-end work on every client's live books.

Both offer a free trial or a free tier, so the best test is practical. Take one month of a real bank statement, put it through each, and count what you had to correct. If you are coming from Xero, our Xero vs QuickBooks vs IQ Books comparison covers that move, and switching takes one click.