Categories
A category is a label on a transaction: Software, Office, Travel, whatever your business needs. SoloBook gives you a tree of categories that you manage yourself.
✏️ Managing categories
Open Categories.
- Add category: type a name. Pick a colour so it is easy to spot in lists and charts.
- Edit: rename or recolour a category.
- Delete: the transactions stay, they just lose the label. SoloBook asks you to confirm.
You can also create a category without leaving the review screen, with + New category.
🧠 Saved rules
The Categories screen also lists your Saved rules: payments that SoloBook classifies for you on import. You make a rule from a transaction’s review panel. See Reviewing transactions.
🧾 Linking a category to a tax line
When you file, your expenses go onto lines of a CRA form. In SoloBook, you link a category to one of those lines with Map to a T2125 line. T2125 is the CRA form where self-employed people report business income and expenses. After that, every confirmed transaction in the category counts toward the right line.
Some categories also ask for a business-use percent: the part of the spending that is for business. A phone you use for work and for family is the classic case.
If a transaction has no category, or its category has no tax line, SoloBook does not hide it. The Dashboard shows it as Unallocated, and the Budget and Tax year screens warn you that the deduction may be understated. That warning is on purpose: money that is not on any line is the easiest thing to miss.
💻 Capital lines
A few tax lines are capital, not expenses. SoloBook says so right in the category: spending mapped to a capital line is not deducted whole this year. When you record a purchase in such a category, the transaction screen offers to record it as an asset. See Reviewing transactions.
Which line a category belongs to is a tax question. If you are unsure, ask your accountant, or read what CRA says on the CRA website . SoloBook only keeps the link you chose.