Frequently asked questions

No. PrivateBooks is built for small-business owners, not accountants, so there's no jargon to learn. You import your bank and credit-card statements, it sorts transactions automatically, and a plain checklist shows what's left. The figures it produces are an organized estimate meant to hand off to your tax preparer to confirm and file.

Entity type is just how your business is set up for taxes, and it decides which tax form your numbers are organized around. Sole Proprietorship and Single-Member LLC both map to Schedule C (Form 1040); Partnership/Multi-Member LLC uses Form 1065, S Corporation uses Form 1120-S, and C Corporation uses Form 1120. Pick the one that matches how you registered your business; if you're unsure, a short note under the dropdown explains each, and your preparer can confirm.

An EIN is the IRS Employer Identification Number — a federal tax ID for a business, written like 12-3456789. In PrivateBooks it's completely optional: the EIN field is just there to label this business, and you can create and use everything without one. If you have it handy you can type it in, otherwise leave it blank.

No problem — the tax year field is optional, so you can leave it empty and add it later by editing the business. For most small businesses it's simply the calendar year (for example, 2025). If you do enter one, type it as a four-digit year; only a whole number is kept.

Yes. On the welcome screen, click "Or try a demo" and PrivateBooks loads a sample business with a checking and credit-card account and example statements already imported. It's a safe way to look around, and like everything else it stays only on this computer. Loading it again just reopens the same demo rather than duplicating it.

No, and there's nowhere to even type them. PrivateBooks never connects to your bank or asks for a login. You add an account here by giving it a name and type, then you upload statement files (CSV or PDF) that you download from your bank yourself. Everything stays on this computer.

Add every account the business actually spends or receives money through, so all the activity gets captured. That usually means your business checking, any business savings, and each business credit card, plus a payment processor like PayPal or Square and a loan or line of credit if you have one. If you sometimes pay business costs in cash, add a Cash account too.

Checking is a regular bank account money flows straight in and out of. A credit card is borrowed money you pay back later, so paying the card isn't itself an expense. A payment processor (PayPal, Square, Stripe, Venmo for business) holds your money like a mini bank account between sales and payouts. PrivateBooks has a built-in PayPal / Square / Stripe account type — just pick it when you add one, and import its statement like any other account.

Because a payment to your credit card just moves money from checking to the card; it isn't a new business cost. When PrivateBooks sees a card payment leave checking and an equal amount land on the card, it links the two as a transfer so the same dollar isn't counted twice. Your real deductible expenses are the individual purchases you made on the card, not the monthly payment.

Yes, anytime. On the business overview you can add a new account, click Edit to rename one or fix its type, institution, or last 4 digits, and use the ✕ to remove one. Removing an account also deletes its imported transactions (you'll get a confirm prompt first), and if any of those fall in a tax year you've already closed, PrivateBooks will ask you to reopen that year first.

Log into your bank or credit-card website and look for Download, Export, or Activity, then choose CSV (sometimes called "Comma delimited" or "Spreadsheet"). A PDF statement works too. Save the file somewhere easy to find, then pick the matching account and upload it on the Import screen.

CSV is more reliable and is the recommended choice. PrivateBooks reads the common CSV layouts for you, whether your bank uses a single Amount column or separate Debit/Credit columns, and handles dollar signs, commas, and dates automatically. PDF import works with the statement PDFs you download from your bank's website — not scans or photos of paper statements — and is best-effort because bank layouts vary. When a PDF can't be read safely, the preview says exactly why (password-protected, scanned, or no transaction rows) and what to do instead. Either way, you review everything in the preview before anything is saved.

"Flip signs" reverses every amount in the file, swapping money-in and money-out. It's mainly for credit-card exports that list charges as positive numbers, when PrivateBooks treats money-out (spending, charges) as negative. If the preview shows your spending as "money in," go back to the Import screen, tick (or untick) Flip signs, and preview again until the directions look right.

PrivateBooks fingerprints each transaction by its date, amount, and description, so it can recognize ones you've already imported and skip them instead of adding them twice. That's why re-importing the same statement, or an overlapping date range, is safe. It's smart enough to keep two genuinely identical transactions in the same file, while skipping ones that are truly repeats from a prior import.

The preview explains why a PDF couldn't be read. A scanned or photographed statement has no real text to extract; a password-protected PDF can't be opened at all (open it with the password in your PDF viewer and save an unlocked copy first); and a summary or notice page simply has no transaction rows on it. The fix is usually to export a CSV from your bank instead — it's more reliable anyway. If you only have a paper statement, add those transactions by hand with the "Add a cash, check, or missing transaction" form on the Import screen.

PrivateBooks has already sorted your imported transactions, so your job is mostly to confirm the ones it wasn't sure about — those are marked with a review pill. Pick a category from the dropdown on any row and it saves the moment you choose it. You can also tick several rows and set them all at once, or hit "Re-run auto-classification" after teaching it a new merchant.

A transfer is money moving between two of your own accounts — like paying your credit card from checking, or shifting cash to savings. PrivateBooks matches an equal-and-opposite pair across your accounts and marks both sides as a transfer, so the same dollar isn't double-counted. Transfers aren't income or a deduction, so they're deliberately kept out of your income, expense, and net-profit totals.

When you tick learn before choosing a category, PrivateBooks remembers that merchant and creates a rule so future imports get categorized the same way automatically. It also immediately applies your choice to other still-uncategorized rows from the same merchant — you'll see a note like "applied to 3 similar." Transfers, owner draws, and other excluded categories are never learned this way, since those depend on matching, not just the merchant name.

Yes — open a transaction and use split to divide one charge into two or more parts, each with its own category (for example, a $200 store run that's $150 supplies and $50 personal). The parts must add up to exactly the original amount. The original is kept for your records but excluded from totals, and each part counts on its own. Transfers and credit-card payments can't be split.

Just pick the right category from the dropdown on that row; it saves instantly and is marked manual, which the app never overwrites when it re-runs its automatic sorting. To fix similar transactions too, tick learn before you change it — that teaches the merchant and applies your choice to other uncategorized rows from the same place. Already-categorized rows aren't changed automatically, so review those yourself.

Schedule C is the IRS form sole proprietors and single-member LLCs use to report business profit on their personal 1040. PrivateBooks calculates it only for explicitly supported tax years and shows anything that still needs review. If you're a partnership, S corp, or C corp, PrivateBooks provides neutral bookkeeping totals for your preparer; it does not calculate or certify Form 1065, 1120-S, or 1120.

Net profit is your income minus your cost of goods sold minus your business expenses — roughly the number your business income tax is based on. For Schedule C filers it's labeled "Net profit — Schedule C, Line 31." Only categorized, business, non-transfer transactions count, so anything still uncategorized is left out of the total until you review it.

When your business shows a profit, PrivateBooks suggests setting aside roughly 25–30% of net profit for federal income and self-employment tax, and shows the dollar range plus how much you've already recorded. This estimate only appears for sole props, single-member LLCs, and partnerships (where the owner pays the tax personally) — not S or C corps. It's a common rule of thumb, not tax advice; your real number depends on your full situation, so confirm it with your preparer.

Mileage uses the IRS standard mileage method: you log your business trips and PrivateBooks multiplies each trip by that year's official cents-per-mile rate to estimate a deduction. The home-office tool uses the IRS simplified method — $5 per square foot, capped at 300 sq ft (so $1,500 maximum). Both are estimates to help you and your preparer; if we don't have an official rate on file for a given year, the app tells you rather than guessing.

No. PrivateBooks organizes your books, performs a versioned Schedule C calculation for supported years, and flags unresolved choices, but it does not file anything. The P&L keeps the full cost of business meals while the 2025 Schedule C calculation applies the standard 50% limit; review exceptions and final figures with your preparer. Everything runs locally on your computer; none of your financial data is uploaded anywhere.

Closing locks a specific year so its transactions and deduction-helper choices can't change until you reopen it. It stores the bookkeeping totals, exact tax lines, tax rule-set version, and a SHA-256 digest of the supporting inputs. A supported Schedule C year cannot close while a calculation issue remains. This protects the numbers you handed to a preparer from a quiet edit or duplicate import.

Yes. Reopening lifts the lock but keeps the prior snapshot in append-only close history. When you close again, PrivateBooks records a new snapshot and shows exactly which bookkeeping totals and tax lines changed; it never rewrites the earlier event.

On the Reports page, pick one year and click Download tax package for a Schedule C business, or Download bookkeeping package for a partnership or corporation. Schedule C packages include the transaction ledger, P&L, versioned tax calculation, support-scope notes, vehicle Part IV support, mileage support, home-office inputs, and a README. Partnership/corporation packages include neutral bookkeeping totals for the preparer, not calculated Form 1065/1120-S/1120 returns. Prefer paper? Print / PDF opens a clean printable version. Review final figures with your preparer.

The clearest signal is that you can close the year at all: PrivateBooks won't let you close a year that still has uncategorized transactions, and the Reports page shows a banner counting anything left to review. So once the Close the year button is available with no "uncategorized" warnings, every transaction has been sorted and your totals are complete. Treat the resulting tax numbers as a solid estimate to confirm with your preparer, not a filed return.

Everything stays on this computer. Your books live in one local file (a SQLite database called privatebooks.db) — in the app's data folder when run from source, or in your user Application Support / AppData folder for the installed app. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, there's no cloud sync, and the makers never see your numbers.

No. There's no account, no password, and no sign-in screen. You just open PrivateBooks and start working — because everything is local, there's nothing to log into.

Go to the About page and click "Back up my data." That downloads one dated .privatebooks-backup archive containing a consistent database snapshot, every attached receipt, a versioned manifest, and SHA-256 integrity hashes. Save it somewhere safe; a good habit is to back up before tax time and after a big import.

On the old computer, click "Back up my data" and copy the resulting .privatebooks-backup archive to the new machine using storage you control. On the new computer, install PrivateBooks, open About, expand "Restore from a backup," choose that archive, and confirm. Your books and attached receipts move together. Older database-only .db backups remain readable, but they cannot contain receipt images.

Store builds use their own local data folder and do not silently scan or move the direct-download edition's files. In the direct-download app, open About and choose "Back up my data." Then open the store build, go to About, choose Import existing PrivateBooks data, and select that .privatebooks-backup archive. Database-only .db files are not accepted for this store migration path because they cannot carry receipt files.

Your data never leaves your computer, so it's only as exposed as the machine it sits on — keep that protected with your normal login, disk encryption, and backups. Before restore, PrivateBooks verifies the archive paths, sizes, SHA-256 hashes, receipt references, and SQLite integrity, then saves a complete pre-restore recovery archive. It keeps the newest three recovery copies and rolls back automatically if the swap or migration fails.