PrivateBooks turns your bank and credit-card statements into tax-ready books — automatically, in plain English, and entirely on your own computer. No account. No cloud. Nothing uploaded.
No sign-up — there's no account to make. Open it and you're working in under a minute.
Most bookkeeping apps ask for your bank logins and ship every transaction to a company's servers. PrivateBooks doesn't. It's an ordinary app on your computer that stores everything in one local file and never makes a single network call. Your numbers stay yours — we couldn't see them if we tried.
Built for business owners, not accountants. No jargon, no setup headaches.
No filling out a form for each one. Tick the kinds of accounts your business has — checking, credit card, PayPal/Square/Stripe — and PrivateBooks creates them. Then just give them names you recognize.
You never type a bank login.
Download a CSV or PDF from your bank — the same file you'd download anyway — and open it. PrivateBooks reads the columns automatically and skips anything you've already imported, so re-importing is always safe.
CSV or PDF, any common layout.
PrivateBooks has already sorted everything into tax categories. You just check the few it wasn't sure about. Teach it a merchant once and it remembers forever; transfers between your own accounts are matched and kept out of your totals so nothing's counted twice.
Teach it once, it remembers.
A Profit & Loss and a Schedule C summary where every line maps to a real line on the IRS form — ready for your preparer to copy straight across. Download the whole package as a spreadsheet bundle or a clean PDF.
Schedule C, 1065, 1120-S & 1120.
A plain checklist tells you exactly what's left before your books are ready to hand off — no guessing.
Profit & loss, a cash-flow chart, your top vendors, and recurring subscriptions you forgot you're paying for.
Log business trips and your home-office square footage; PrivateBooks estimates the deduction using IRS rates.
One purchase that was part business, part personal? Split it across categories — the parts always add up exactly.
Close a tax year and PrivateBooks protects it, so a stray edit or re-import can't change a number you already filed on.
Your books are one file you own. Back it up, move it to a new computer, and pick up exactly where you left off.
A clean cash-flow chart shows money in versus money out, month by month, so you can see at a glance whether the business is bringing in more than it spends. Transfers between your own accounts don't muddy the picture.
Bought supplies and something personal on the same receipt? Divide the charge into parts, each with its own category. PrivateBooks keeps the original for your records and makes sure the parts add up to the penny.
PrivateBooks checks your books and tells you what's done and what's left, in plain English: anything uncategorized, a month that looks missing, income that isn't showing up. When the list is clear, you're ready.
A little “?” next to anything unfamiliar opens a plain-English explanation, and a full Help & FAQ is one click away — written for business owners, not accountants. And it works offline, like everything else.
PrivateBooks runs on your computer, so there's nothing for us to host — and nothing to charge you for.
Download PrivateBooks, open it, and you're working in under a minute. No account, no credit card, nothing to upload. Your bookkeeping stays exactly where it belongs: with you.
Free and unsigned — on first launch, right-click the app → Open. A Windows version is in the works.