kBooks is built around companies. Everything you see belongs to the company you are in, and switching companies switches everything at once.
The dashboard
Signing in lands you on your dashboard: one card per company with the numbers that matter at a glance. Click a card to open that company's books. The cards remember the order you arrange them in, on every computer you use.
The company switcher
Inside a company, its name sits at the top with an arrow beside it. Click it to jump between companies, or back to All companies.
The list shows the companies in the same dashboard group as the one you are in, in the order you arranged them - a chip at the top names the group. To reach a company in another group, use Switch group at the bottom of the list, or go back to the dashboard and click its card. If you have not made groups, everything is simply in one list.
The switcher is also where a company can be hidden (it disappears from every list but keeps all its data, and you can bring it back any time from the bottom of the All companies page) or deleted (only while it is truly empty; a company with any bookkeeping in it refuses and tells you what it holds).
Where the menu sits
Inside a company, the menu - Overview, Banking, Reports and the rest - sits down the left side as a menu you can fold to icons (the way kBooks opens unless you choose otherwise), or across the top as a row of buttons. Pick in your profile menu under General settings, Menu placement. The change is yours alone and follows you to every computer you sign in on.
The side menu frees the top of the screen for your data and puts the company switcher in its top corner; fold it with the small arrow on its edge when you want the width back for a wide register, and open it again the same way. Everything the top row offered is in the menu, including Books Settings at the bottom.
A new version is ready
When kBooks is updated while you have a tab open, the tab keeps running the version it was opened with. The next time you come back to it, a small notice at the bottom says A new version is ready: press Reload to switch. Nothing you saved is affected; only the screen is refreshed. The X puts it away until the next time you come back.
What changed lately
What's new, in your profile menu under Support and at the bottom of the help center, lists every change that reached kBooks, newest first. A dot on your name at the top means something shipped since you last looked.
Store companies open here too
If your sign-in also has store companies, their cards appear on the dashboard in their own group, and opening one opens its books right here - the same Banking, Reports and documents as any other company. The store's day-to-day operations still run in its own back office; only the books live on this side. Hiding or deleting a store company is done from its own back office, not from here.
Inside the books
The books open on Overview, and the sections along the top group the work the way you think about it:
- Banking, Transactions, Journal are the money itself.
- Invoices, Bills, Purchase Orders, Payments are your documents.
- Chart of Accounts, Classes, Contacts, Documents are your lists. On Contacts, the transaction count next to a name opens everything that contact is on; a date range there narrows the list, and the count and total follow the range.
- Reports, Budgets, Tax are how you read it all.
- Settings holds the company profile, connections, navigation and access.
If your company tracks properties, a Properties area appears alongside the books with its own tabs: the Registry, Rent, Coming up, Statements and Manager changes.
The search box on Transactions reads more than the memo. It looks through the memo, the reference or check number, the payee, each line's own note, the amount, and the class on the lines. So typing a property name shows only the entries that touch that property, and typing the name of a group ("Houses 4 Series") shows every property underneath it, because a class is matched by its full path.
Little things that add up
- Every table can be searched, sorted by clicking a column, resized by dragging a column edge, and paged. Your page size and sort order are remembered per screen, and they follow your account to any computer.
- Every report and table has a Print button and a Download menu (PDF, Excel, CSV).
- A question mark beside a field means a hover explanation is there when you want it. The question mark in the top bar opens this help center from any screen.
- Double clicking a row opens its editor almost everywhere.
On your phone
On your phone, sign in to kBooks, open the menu under your name and choose kBooks on your phone, then add the page to your home screen (Share, then Add to Home Screen on an iPhone; the menu, then Install app on Android). It opens as kBooks, with five tabs:
- Trips: log a drive into a company's mileage log, valued at the IRS rate on the trip's date.
- Cash: what is in every bank account and owed on every card, across all your companies, with the bank lines still waiting for review.
- Snap: photograph a receipt and file it straight into a company's documents. With no signal it waits on the phone and is sent by itself when the signal is back; you can also send or throw away what is waiting.
- Approve: correcting entries your accountant suggested. Approve posts the entry; Decline asks for a reason the accountant reads. Only the companies whose books you may change are listed.
- Look up: what a customer owes, what you owe a vendor, an invoice or bill by its number, or an account's balance, across all your books.
With no signal the app still opens and shows the numbers from the last time it was open, and says so. Approving and looking up wait for a signal.
Notifications
Tap the bell at the top of the app and choose Turn on to have this phone tell you when:
- your accountant suggests an entry for you to approve (if you may change those books, and not when you made the suggestion yourself),
- a client request comes in, is answered, or gets a reminder,
- a vendor signs the W-9 you asked them for.
Tapping a notification opens the right place. Send a test checks it works; Turn off stops it for this phone only. Each phone is turned on separately, and it is your phones, whichever of your logins you use.
On an iPhone, notifications only work once kBooks is on your home screen and opened from there. If the bell says notifications are blocked, allow them for kBooks in the phone's settings and come back. Notifications come even when the matching email is switched off.
A line can be $0
Every entry form takes a line of $0: checks, bank payments, card charges, deposits, transfers, bills, invoices, estimates and purchase orders. Keep a template that lists every line you ever use (every payroll tax, every property) and copy it each month; the lines with nothing this month stay at $0 and are kept for next time. A line still needs its category. A whole bill or invoice can come to $0 too (a free sample, a no-charge visit): it saves as Paid, since nothing is owed, and never shows as open. Below $0 it is a credit memo or a vendor credit instead.
Keyboard shortcuts
The books come with a set of keys that work from any tab: keys that jump to a tab (Banking, Reports, Transactions and the rest), a key that opens the memorized transactions library (a memorized entry keeps each line's item and quantity, so replaying a purchase moves the stock too), one that opens the bank rules on the Banking tab, and one that starts a new entry.
Click the small keyboard button at the right end of the tab strip to see every key. Each one can be changed: press Change on a row, then press Alt plus a letter or digit. Your keys are saved to your user, so they follow you to any computer you sign in from. Restore defaults puts everything back.