Start here: your first week with SoloBook

You do not need to know accounting to use SoloBook. You need to do five small things, in this order. Most people finish the first four in one evening.

Open app.solobook.ca and choose Continue with Google. Sign-in with Facebook and Apple is marked “soon” on the sign-in page.

SoloBook never asks you to invent a password, so there is no password to forget or lose.

The first time, you will see a short screen called Before you start. It explains what SoloBook collects and why. Read it, tick the box and continue.

🏢 2. Create your business

SoloBook asks for the name of your business. This is the entity your books belong to. You can also add:

a legal name and a business number, if you have them;
the type: sole proprietorship, corporation or partnership;
your province;
your fiscal year end;
whether you are registered for GST/HST. (This is only a note. SoloBook does not calculate GST/HST for you. See What SoloBook does not do.)

You can change all of this later in Settings → Business. The business switcher at the top of the screen always shows which business you are in, so you never put a transaction in the wrong one.

Planning to send invoices? Add your address, phone and e-mail under Settings → Business → Contact details, and your logo and colour under Settings → Invoices. See Invoices and payments.

🏦 3. Add your accounts

An account is any bank, card or e-wallet account you use for your business: chequing, savings, credit card or e-wallet. Give each one a name and a currency.

You can skip this step and come back to it. Later you can edit an account in place, and delete one that holds no transactions. You can also connect Wise or PrivatBank and let the accounts appear on their own. See Connecting your bank.

📥 4. Import a statement

Open Imports, pick the account, drop in the file from your bank and press Import. SoloBook reads the file and shows you what it did. If you import the same file twice, nothing is duplicated.

Details are on the page Importing statements.

✅ 5. Sort your transactions

Imported rows arrive as Unreviewed. Open Transactions, click a row and answer four short questions: what category is it, is it business or personal, which budget envelope does it belong to, and is there a note worth keeping. Then press Save and confirm.

This is the part of bookkeeping you will do most often, so it has its own page: Reviewing transactions.

👀 Where to look next

Dashboard shows income, expenses and net for the month or the year, a 12-month trend and a Needs attention box that tells you what is waiting for you.
Budget splits your income into envelopes for spending, saving and a tax reserve. See Budget.
Tax year shows an estimate for the year. See Tax year.
Invoices is where you bill your clients and record payments. See Invoices and payments.

🧘 A good rhythm

Do not try to clean up a whole year in one sitting. Import once a week, sort what is new, glance at Needs attention. A few minutes on a regular day is what keeps tax season calm.

💡 Two small helpers

Press Ctrl+K to open the command palette. Type a page name or an action, such as “new invoice”, and jump straight to it.
The language switcher changes the app between English and Russian.

🆘 Stuck?

Use the chat bubble in the corner of the app, or write to support@solobook.ca. Please never paste bank passwords or account numbers into the chat.

SoloBook is currently free for one business, and no card is required.