3 min read

Getting started with EngLedger

Create your organisation, connect your first integration, map identities to your people and open your first report, about 15 minutes of active setup.

Updated 12 July 2026

Before you begin

Setup takes around 15 minutes of active work, plus sync time. All three pillars — AI Spend, AI Governance and the engineering ledger — stand on the same foundation this guide builds: connected integrations, your people, and the identity mapping that attributes work to them. The dashboard shows a setup checklist that tracks each step below and recommends what to do next, so you can leave and pick up where you stopped.

  1. Create your organisation. Sign up with your work email and organisation name. You'll receive a verification email: confirm it to activate the account. The first account created becomes the organisation's admin.

  2. Connect an integration. Go to the Integrations page and connect Jira, GitHub or Bitbucket. Each provider has its own guide: GitHub, Bitbucket, Jira. You can connect more than one: most teams connect an issue tracker and a code host together.

  3. Select projects or repositories. After connecting, EngLedger selects everything it can see by default: remove anything you don't want synced. The first sync starts as soon as selections are saved, and data appears within a few minutes.

  4. Add people and map identities. People are who you report on. Add them under People, then link the accounts discovered during sync (Jira users, Git commit authors) to each person on the Identities page. Identities with a matching email are linked automatically. See People and identities for why this matters.

  5. Set hourly rates. Cost reporting multiplies effort hours by each person's hourly rate. Rates are dated, so a rate change applies from its effective date without rewriting history. Effort recorded for a person without a rate carries hours but no cost.

  6. Review organisation settings. Check your currency, timezone, date format, fiscal year start and effort method under Settings. The effort method decides whether reports are built from logged time (worklogs) or from commit activity (see the effort model).

  7. Set classification rules (ledger pillar). If you use the ledger for R&D capitalisation, define rules that classify tickets and commits into capitalisable and non-capitalisable work. Sensible defaults based on ticket type apply until you customise them (see classification rules).

  8. Open your first report. Once the first sync completes and effort has been derived, the Reports page lights up with cost, capitalisation and work-type summaries. Until then it shows exactly what it's waiting for.

What to expect from the first sync

The first sync backfills history, so it takes longer than the routine incremental syncs that follow (every 30 minutes by default). The dashboard tells you when a sync is running and updates automatically when the first one completes. If a report looks empty, check the Integrations page first: it shows each connection's status and when it last synced.

Where to go next