Release history

What shipped historically, what is frozen, and what remains pre-release work. The version in a running app is shown in its footer.

Version 4 - pre-release development

The planned paid Windows/macOS edition is $49.99 once in the US. It remains in pre-release testing, with certification and public-release checks still open. The list below describes current source behavior under testing, not a product available to install.

  • Guided setup. Pick your profession and answer three plain questions; your books start with common bookkeeping categories and merchant suggestions mapped to Schedule C lines for review.
  • 24 profession packs - driver, delivery, moving & hauling, mobile mechanic / detailer, cleaner, handyman, skilled trades, lawn & landscaping, pet sitter, tutor / coach, home child care, hair & beauty pro, fitness instructor, massage & wellness, creator / photographer, maker / crafter, online reseller, food business, freelancer / consultant, real estate agent, notary / signing agent, event planner, independent sales agent, other small business - with their own merchant rules and plain-English primers.
  • Platform payouts. Record the gross and the platform's cut separately, so fees that never touch your bank statement still reach your books.
  • Optional cash-reserve illustrations on Reports and Tax readiness, clearly separated from recorded payments and the official Form 1040-ES calculation.
  • Versioned 2025 Schedule C calculation with internal hand-calculated oracle coverage, visible support limits for inventory, vehicle details, and depreciation, and preparer-review labels. Independent qualified review remains a release gate.
  • Suggested categories wait for you. A category filled in by a built-in rule, a business-type rule or an “Apply to similar” rule is a suggestion. The Schedule C package stays a draft until you confirm or change each one in Review → Suggested categories.
  • Fewer guesses. Generic deposits, Zelle, Venmo, PayPal and Cash App money in, wires, loan payments, state and local tax payments, government fines, big-box stores, consumer phone bills and medical payees now wait in Review with no category. Many show a short note saying why and what to choose.
  • Coffee shops wait in Review. Starbucks, Dunkin', Peet's, cafes and other coffee shops are no longer suggested as Business Meals. Coffee and food are meals: choose Business Meals only if you or your employee were there with a client, customer or other business contact, or you were traveling away from home on business overnight or long enough to need sleep or rest. Otherwise choose Personal, unless it was supplies or stock for the business. Restaurant and food-delivery charges are still suggested as Business Meals; confirm only the ones that qualify.
  • Books imported earlier. The first time the app opens books from an earlier build, rows in open years that a withdrawn built-in guess had categorized are checked again; most go back to Review, with a notice. Other rows that an older built-in rule categorized in a way today's rules would not keep the Schedule C package a draft until you confirm or change them, or send them back to Review. Your own choices and closed years are not changed.
  • One work vehicle, one method. The Mileage page now asks how many vehicles you used. Car insurance now goes in Car & Truck, and there are new Vehicle Lease (Line 20a) and Car Loan Interest (Line 16b) categories. With actual costs, Car & Truck and Vehicle Lease take the Part IV business-use share; Car Loan Interest takes it under either method. A vehicle lease with the standard mileage rate, or more than one vehicle, keeps the package a draft.
  • Line 19 is for employees' plans only. Your own SEP, SIMPLE or solo 401(k) contribution belongs on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), not Schedule C. Line 19 waits until you confirm the amount is for employees. Each Line 4, Line 13 and Line 19 confirmation covers the amount and transactions you saw; if they change, you confirm again.
  • Home office by month. If you started, stopped, moved or changed the space during the year, enter the business square feet for each month. The simplified method counts at most 300 sq ft a month, 0 for a month used fewer than 15 days, and divides by 12. If the business also used another home, Line 30 waits until you enter the income earned while you used this one, minus the expenses for that income.
  • PayPal and Stripe exports. A Gross/Fee/Net (PayPal) or Amount/Fee/Net (Stripe) file imports the gross sale plus a separate processing-fee row, suggested as Bank & Merchant Fees (Line 27b).
  • Sale of Business Property (Form 4797). A new category keeps money from selling a business vehicle or equipment, or an insurance payout for such property that was damaged, destroyed or stolen, off Schedule C. PrivateBooks does not calculate the gain or loss (Form 4797 or Form 4684).
  • Tax planner. For sole proprietors and single-member LLCs, a planner follows the IRS Form 1040-ES worksheet for 2025 or 2026 with your profit from the books and the household facts you enter. It compares the quarterly amounts with the estimated-tax payments recorded in your books. It is a planning estimate, not a filed return, and leaves out state tax.
  • Append-only period close. Closing a year snapshots its totals, tax lines, rule-set version and an input digest; reopening preserves the original rather than overwriting it.
  • Full-data backup v1 - database plus every receipt, with integrity hashes and an interruption-safe restore.
  • Accessibility work throughout: keyboard-only operation, forced-colors support, and layouts that hold up at 400% zoom and 320px wide.

v3.4.2 - free legacy edition (macOS)

The last free release, and now frozen: it receives no further updates. It covers the core loop - import statements, review and categorize, mileage and home-office helpers, reports, period close, backup and restore. Its exact historical public binary remains available from the original release, with its recorded SHA-256 on the download page.

v3.0.0 - the first complete release

Closed the original twenty-sprint plan: column-aware PDF parsing, receipt attachments, deduction helpers, learned merchant rules, recurring-charge detection, transaction splitting, cash-flow and top-vendor reporting, period close, restore-from-backup, and an accessibility and responsive pass.

The release-status page records current availability and the frozen legacy checksum.