Frequently asked questions

No. PrivateBooks is written for owners rather than accountants. Built-in rules suggest categories, uncertain rows stay in Review, and a year-specific checklist explains what is left. Its output is an organized bookkeeping calculation for you and your tax preparer to review - not a filed return or professional approval.

Choose the business's existing tax treatment. An LLC may have elected corporate treatment, so its legal name or number of owners is not enough. PrivateBooks calculates its supported Schedule C workflow for the matching sole-proprietor setup. Other modes provide bookkeeping summaries for a preparer; they do not calculate Forms 1065, 1120-S or 1120. Use your last return or ask your preparer if unsure.

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 example accounts and statement data into the local app. Loading it again reopens the same demo instead of duplicating it. This describes current development behavior; no verified public v4 installer is available yet.

No, and there's nowhere to type them. PrivateBooks does not connect to your bank or ask for a login. You add an account name and type, then choose statement files (CSV or PDF) that you downloaded yourself. The app reads those files locally and does not automatically upload them to PrivateBooks.

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 choose it on the Add activity 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 statement form on Add activity, tick (or untick) Flip signs, and preview again until the directions look right.

PrivateBooks fingerprints transactions by date, amount, and description and shows previously imported matches in the preview before saving. This helps prevent repeat imports while keeping genuinely identical rows from the same file. Inspect the preview and statement coverage yourself: duplicate detection cannot prove that every statement or row is present.

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, use Add one transaction on the Add activity screen.

The SHA-256 source hash identifies the exact bytes in the local file you selected. If you enter the opening and closing balances printed on that statement, the balance check compares them with the arithmetic for readable, eligible rows. A matching result still does not prove that the file covers the whole statement period, that every row was readable, or that the account was independently reconciled to your bank. Keep the original statement and review coverage with your preparer.

Choose a category for transactions that need one. In Owner workspace, use Save category or Save & next. In Accountant workspace, changing a category in the Review table saves immediately. Check Suggested categories against your records, change mistakes and confirm the rest. Reports use the saved category before confirmation. Use Help me decide for an uncertain purchase, or save a question and leave its category unchanged.

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.

Open Review matches beside your category choice. See the matching phrase and the exact transactions, business, accounts and year. The current transaction's year is selected first. To include other years, explicitly choose All open years. No other rows are selected for you. Select only the transactions you want to change, then save. Matching words do not prove the same business purpose.

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.

Correct one transaction in Owner workspace with Save category or Save & next. Accountant workspace saves a category change immediately. To change other transactions, open Review matches and select the exact rows. They become saved suggestions and still need confirmation. Reports use their saved categories before confirmation. Remember this description match for future imports is separate and optional; leaving it off keeps existing saved rules. Categories chosen by hand, closed years, transfers and rows marked non-business are protected from copying. A broader matching save does not offer the short single-row Undo.

Yes. After an ordinary category save, Undo appears on that same Review row for a short window. Transactions entered by hand can be opened to edit their source details or removed; PrivateBooks keeps a local before/after history and shows a Restore action for a removed manual row. Imported bank rows stay locked as source evidence, so correct their category, split, note, or receipt instead of rewriting the statement facts.

Schedule C reports profit or loss from a sole-proprietor business on an individual return. Some single-member LLCs use it; an LLC's tax treatment and activity determine the form. PrivateBooks calculates Schedule C only for explicitly supported years. Partnership, S corporation and C corporation modes provide bookkeeping summaries for a preparer, not calculated Forms 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. The P&L counts only categorized, business, non-transfer transactions, so anything still uncategorized is left out until you review it. For a supported Schedule C year, Reports also shows Schedule C Line 31 (Net profit or (loss)) under Preparer detail. The two can differ: the P&L keeps the full cost of meals, while Line 31 counts 50% of business meals, uses your vehicle method and business-use share, and subtracts a confirmed home office.

When a supported sole-proprietor business shows a profit, PrivateBooks can illustrate an optional annual 25–30% cash-reserve band using simple arithmetic. The band does not use recorded payments or tell you what or when to pay, and it may be too high or too low. For a planning estimate, a Schedule C business can open the Tax planner: it follows the IRS Form 1040-ES worksheet with your business profit and the household facts you enter, shows that year's quarterly due dates, and counts the estimated payments recorded in your books. It does not include state tax and is not a filed return; confirm amounts with your preparer.

On the Mileage page you choose one method for one vehicle. With standard mileage, PrivateBooks multiplies each logged business trip by the IRS cents-per-mile rate for the trip's date, and the package stays a draft until you confirm the vehicle qualifies. That vehicle's Car & Truck costs and Vehicle Lease payments are then left off and flagged for you to fix. With actual costs, only the business share (business miles ÷ total miles) of your Car & Truck and Vehicle Lease costs counts. The business share of Car Loan Interest counts under either method, and business parking and tolls are added to Line 9 either way. If you used more than one vehicle, the package stays a draft and your preparer works out the vehicle lines. The home-office tool uses the IRS simplified method - $5 per square foot, capped at 300 sq ft (so $1,500 maximum). If the space was used for only part of the year, changed size, or you moved, enter it month by month and PrivateBooks uses the IRS average monthly allowable square footage. Line 30 counts only after you confirm the space qualifies, and it can't be more than your business profit before the home-office deduction. 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. The bookkeeping workflow has no PrivateBooks cloud service, telemetry, or automatic financial-data upload.

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. For a Schedule C business, the main button reads Download tax package for preparer review once nothing is left to review. Until then it takes you to what is left (for example Check suggested categories), and a package you download from Download, print, or export files is marked draft. 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. For a partnership or corporation, download the bookkeeping package from Download, print, or export files. It is always marked draft: it holds neutral bookkeeping totals for the preparer, not calculated Form 1065/1120-S/1120 returns. Prefer paper? Print / Save PDF in the same section (Print / Save draft PDF while it is a draft) opens a clean printable version. Review final figures with your preparer.

Use Tax readiness to see what PrivateBooks can prove from the records currently in the app. A passed built-in checklist means those imported transactions are categorized and the supported calculation has no known blocking issue; it does not prove that every bank statement was imported, that balances reconcile, or that a professional independently reviewed the books. Confirm statement coverage and final figures with your preparer before filing.

Your local app data folder contains a SQLite database, receipt attachments, settings, and recovery data. PrivateBooks has no cloud bookkeeping service, telemetry, or automatic financial-data upload, and the makers cannot inspect your books. Official help/IRS or release-status links connect only when you open them; an app store handles its own purchase, install, and update traffic.

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.

No store version has been released, and no verified public v4 installer is available yet. In current development builds, a store build uses its own local data folder and does 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.

PrivateBooks keeps books in its local data folder and has no cloud bookkeeping service, telemetry, or automatic financial-data upload. Protect the computer with its normal login and disk encryption, and keep backups in storage you control. Before restore, PrivateBooks checks archive paths, sizes, SHA-256 hashes, receipt references, and SQLite integrity, then creates a pre-restore recovery archive. Those controls reduce risk; they do not make the computer, backup location, or anything you choose to export or share automatically safe.