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(Intel-based Macintosh Required)

Simple Accounting for Home and Small Businesses

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Introduction Tutorial FAQ
Requirements Version History User Comments
Invoices, Estimates, etc. Taxes Upgrade Old TinyBooks

TinyBooks Pro: An Introduction

TinyBooks Pro (currently for Macintosh only) is an ultra-simple accounting and bookkeeping program designed for home and small businesses and perfect for Sole Proprietors.

TinyBooks Pro is a flexible, non-bloated, single-entry bookkeeping program and the perfect companion to help with taxes throughout and especially at the end of the year. Though designed with small businesses in mind, it can also be used in the home to help with the family finances.

Many tax-related programs, such as TurboTax, H & R Block's At Home (formerly known as TaxCut) and others, are tied to a particular tax year and must be re-purchased every single year. TinyBooks Pro is NOT tied to a particular tax year. Tax laws may change, but the need to keep track of expenses, income and profits never seems to change, and that is exactly what TinyBooks Pro is all about! The TinyBooks Pro you purchase today can be used to help you with your taxes in past years, this year, next year, and for years ahead.

TinyBooks Pro actually works on automatic most of the time. All you really have to do is enter each expense or income item, as it happens, or at month end, and the program calculates everything else, automatically and instantly.

The Accounts dialog, the Bottom Line Reports window and the Reports and Transaction Search windows allow you to create Income, Expense, Quarterly, Full-Year and Custom Reports for just about any time period. The Bottom Line reports are exactly the reports that an accountant would want. There are no parameters required for these reports, the program knows exactly how to create them. End-of-year accounting is simply effortless.

The Accounts Dialog not only instantly displays monthly and year-to-date account totals, but also displays monthly trends (instantly, graphically, intuitively and without any user intervention.) Budgets are also optionally and easily integrated into any account.

TinyBooks Pro also includes a Professional Invoice Printer utility and the invoices are printed on plain white paper, so no expensive third-party forms are required. The Professional Invoice Printer has been totally revamped. It's now easy to create a multitude of standard and custom forms, such as Invoices, Estimates, Statements, Proposals, and more.

All transactions and reports can be exported as desired (for instance, to give to an accountant, or for import into a spreadsheet, etc.) All transactions can be easily sorted by Date, Comment, PaymentType, Account#, Amount or Type of Transaction (expense or income.)

TinyBooks Pro also supports all kinds of domestic and international taxes, such as Sales Taxes, GST (Goods and Services Tax), PST (Provincial Sales Tax), VAT (Value-Added Tax) and more. TinyBooks Pro can even handle multiple types of taxes without adding any complexity.


TinyBooks Pro: Is It Right For You?

TinyBooks Pro is, without a doubt, an astoundingly simple-to-use accounting program. That is surely it's main niche! It's written for small business owners who pretty much hate accounting and want to do as little of it as they can get away with, yet still have all the facts and figures that they need to run the business and help at tax time. TinyBooks Pro fills this need for thousands of businesses. But, being such a simple program, it cannot include the vast features of the "big boy" accounting programs...the Quick-this and Quick-that programs, as I like to call them. Those programs are truly superb, but they suffer from being so overly complex that they leave most users who are not trained accountants in a daze of bewilderment.

So, the real question you have to ask yourself, is if the subset of accounting features that TinyBooks Pro does provide is sufficient for your business. I can't be more honest than that. That really is what it's all about. Luckily, unlike most other programs, TinyBooks Pro is distributed as shareware and you are free to try it yourself before purchasing. The program that you download is the real thing, no features are left out. It's a true test of the program. If your business is such that TinyBooks Pro can effectively handle your needs, there's not a simpler program out there. Click here to see what hundreds of others have said about TinyBooks and TinyBooks Pro.

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TinyBooks Pro: Theory of Operation

TinyBooks Pro works by keeping track of multiple accounts which you can customize. There are four basic types of accounts: Deductible Expenses, Non-Deductible Expenses, Taxable Income and Non-Taxable Income. For a typical small business, that's about all that's required. As you might guess, the non-deductible expenses and non-taxable income accounts are included for your bookkeeping convenience, as they are not included in profit computations. But, if you are using this program for home use, rather than as a small business, such account types are very handy indeed. Business Profit is calculated by subtracting the sum of the deductible expenses from the sum of the taxable income. With TinyBooks Pro, you never have to request a calculation, all calculations are performed instantly any time you add, delete or modify any item.

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TinyBooks Pro: How Do You Actually Use It?

(A Step-By-Step Tutorial)

Note: TinyBooks Pro is a Macintosh application. It requires an Intel-based Macintosh computer running OSX. It also requires a monitor with a resolution of, at least, 1024x768. Higher resolutions and wide monitors are also supported.

When you run TinyBooks Pro for the very first time, you will want to create a new set of books (also known as a TinyBooks Pro document) for your company or family for the current year. Each TinyBooks Pro document covers one business (or family) for one year. To create a new TinyBooks Pro document, choose the NEW item from TinyBooks Pro's File Menu.

The NEW item is actually a hierarchical menu with two choices. There's a NEW (for first time users) and a NEW (with import.) The second NEW is what you'll use next year so that you can easily import all of the customizations that you might have added to your this year's accounts. For now, though, and for this tutorial, choose the NEW item that is designated for first-time users. The "Create New Set of Books Dialog" will then appear. It looks like this...

Demo1

To create a new set of books, TinyBooks Pro really only needs the following two bits of information...the Company Name, and the Fiscal Year...

1 - The Company Name - For this demo, you can see I've typed in "The Demo Company" as the name of the company.

2 - The Fiscal Year - Each TinyBooks Pro document handles "the books" for one company (or family), for one year. You must specify the business year that this document covers. Most people accept the default calendar year, running from January to December of the year chosen. In this tutorial, a simple calendar year is assumed. I actually started creating this tutorial in January 2010, and so TinyBooks Pro automatically chose 2010, assuming that would be the year that I want this TinyBooks Pro document to cover. In this case, TinyBooks Pro's guess is exactly right.

Note: TinyBooks Pro also supports non-standard Fiscal Years. To choose a non-calendar Fiscal Year, enter the closing month and closing year of your Fiscal Year. Once entered, the program will calculate and display the range of your fiscal year for your verification. Fiscal Years, by the way, are numbered based on the year in which the ending month resides. So, for instance, if you were creating a TinyBooks Pro document with a Fiscal Year that runs from March 2010 through February 2011, you would choose February from the popup menu, and type 2011 into the year field.

After you enter and double-check the required information, click the SAVE AS button. As with all SAVE AS dialogs, you need to choose a name and a location for this document. TinyBooks Pro will suggest a default name of "ShortCompanyName-Books-2010" but you're free to name it yourself. Hopefully, you will rename the "ShortCompanyName" part to something that makes sense for your company or family. For this tutorial, I've changed the suggested name to be "Demo-Books-2010". Remember, each document covers one company or family for one year, so including the name of the company (or rather a shortened name of the company) and the year in the name of the document itself is a very good idea.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All of the most important information that TinyBooks Pro knows about your company is stored in this one document that you just created and named. In the future, this is the document that you will double-click to start "doing the books." Unlike other accounting programs that use multiple files to store such information, TinyBooks Pro simply stores everything in this one file. It's easy to find, easy to backup, easy to understand, etc.


Once you save your TinyBooks Pro document (also known as your "set of books"), you'll see an empty Expense/Income Window appear. It will look something like this...

Demo2

...and, by the way, if the columns you see look a little different than the above picture, it might be because you are showing or hiding the Tax fields (which we'll talk about later.) For now, try pressing Command-T (for "Tax") or choosing the "Show/Hide Tax Fields" from the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu.

The title of the Expense/Income Window that appears will include the name of your company, the month and year, and the name of the document. The window is empty, because you haven't yet added any expense or income items.

This window, by default, shows the items in the current month according to the date and time set on your computer. To switch to another month, select it in the Month Menu, or use the left/right arrow buttons on the Expense/Income Window, or use the left/right arrow keys on the keyboard.

NOTE: I created this step-by-step tutorial in February of 2010, and chose to create a set of books for 2010, using a standard January to December fiscal year. So in my case, TinyBooks Pro chose to show me February 2010 when the document was first opened. If you are going through this tutorial at a different time (or with a different choice of fiscal year), TinyBooks Pro will show you a different month than you'll see here.

TinyBooks Pro also relies on the concept of accounts. Accounts are used to track various types of expenses and income. In future years, you might have your own customized set of accounts that you use every year. If so, a customized list of accounts can be imported. But, since this tutorial assumes it is the first time TinyBooks Pro is being used, a Default Account List is automatically created for you. (Later in this tutorial, you'll learn how to customize the Account List.)


Before we start to enter any actual transactions, let's give TinyBooks Pro some other information about our company. Later on, as you'll see, you'll be able to use TinyBooks Pro to create some very professional Invoices, Statements, Proposals, Estimates and more. We need to supply TinyBooks Pro with your company information, such as addresses, phone numbers, web site address, email address, and more. This kind of information is customized using the Company and Tax Information dialog. Select the Company and Tax Information Dialog from the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. You should see a dialog that looks something like this...

DemoCompanyInformation

For this demo, please enter the applicable information for your company. The company name should already be filled in and ready to go, but you can add the address, email, phone, web site and more. Please also note that this is also the dialog in which you customize what kinds of taxes your company must be able to handle. For this demo tutorial, it is assumed, there are no taxes to worry about. But, feel free to enter the names and rates of taxes that are applicable to you. If, for instance, you lived in Massachusetts and had to pay a Sales Tax of 6.25%, you could enter "MST" (for Massachusetts Sales Tax) as the abbreviation for Tax#1 and you could enter "0.0625" for a 6.25% Sales Tax as the Tax Rate#1. In later parts of the tutorial when you are actually entering sample transactions, you can just click the Calculate Tax button on the Item Entry Dialog to automatically calculate the tax fields for you. When this info is entered, just click the SAVE button, and you'll be right back at the main monthly window, ready to enter some expenses and more...


OK, let's enter an actual expense you just paid out (or an income item you just received.) First, if you tried moving around month to month as shown above, make sure you're on the correct month for this expense by checking the title of the window. For this demo, let's make sure we're on January. With the correct monthly window frontmost, just click the Enter New Item button (or press its keyboard equivalent.) When you do, the Expense/Income Item Dialog will appear. Most window positions are remembered, so where my windows and dialogs appear might look a little different than where your windows will appear. The Enter Expense/Income dialog will look something like this...

Demo3

When the dialog appears, you'll enter information about the first expense or income item. You'll typically use the tab key to move from field to field (or shift-tab to move backwards from field to field). The first field, called "Day", is looking for the day of the month in which the expense was incurred. TinyBooks Pro can automatically enter Today's Day for you, or leave the field blank waiting for you to type in the Day, or it can automatically use the last day that was entered. See the TinyBooks Pro Preferences for some additional shortcuts.

Then, you would type a short Comment or description about the item in question. All the comments you enter are remembered automatically. In the future, if the comment you are about to enter is similar or identical to one you entered before, you can choose a comment from the Dropdown menu on the right of the Comment field. In fact, as you type, a previously remembered comment that matches what you've typed so far, will automatically appear "ahead of you". You can just type over it, or you can hit the TAB key to accept the suggestion and go on to the next field. The Comment dropdown menu starts out empty, but will grow as you add new entries, as you'll see in the days ahead.

Hitting tab again, you'll end up in the PaymentType field. If a check was involved in this transaction, you can record its number in the PaymentType field. You can also automatically insert one of the many suggested types of payment, such as Cash, VISA, M/C, ATM, PayPal, etc. I often use the word "Cash" or "Visa" depending on how I purchased the item in question. In this case, let's assume I just purchased 100 First Class Stamps using Cash. As you start typing "Cash", you'll see that happens to be one of the suggested entries. So, you can just accept it by tabbing to the next field (or continue typing what you might have wanted instead.)

After filling in the PaymentType field (or selecting one of the built-in standard entries from the PaymentType Dropdown Menu), you would hit the TAB key again to move to the next field. You would then enter the Account# that is associated with the item you are entering.

WAIT! Don't panic! You don't actually have to remember any account numbers. Though you can enter the account number directly, if you happen to remember it, you can also just type the first letter of the account name you want to use ("P" for Postage, for instance.) A popup list will appear with a listing of all the accounts, and the list will automatically jump to the first account that starts with the letter you just typed. If the first account that starts with "P" isn't the one you're looking for, press "P" again (in this case) and you'll automatically jump to each account that starts with that letter. Click the OK button or hit RETURN and the account name and number are entered automatically.

Demo4

Then, enter the amount of the transaction in the Amount field, and you're done. Wait! What about those two additional tax fields? For now, let's just ignore them. I'll talk about how to handle all kinds of taxes later on. But, for now, let's just assume there are no taxes associated with this transaction. (See the section called "TinyBooks Pro and Taxes" below, and built-in Help with TinyBooks Pro itself for more information.)

When you click the SAVE button, note that the main monthly window now shows the item you just entered.

In the picture below, if you're observant, you'll see that I've added a few additional transactions too. As you also can see, income items are handled in the same way as expense items, just using different accounts.

Also, notice that the bottom of the window instantly calculates many important totals "on the fly" as you enter each item. A quick glance shows a few of the most important totals for the currently displayed month (top row), and for the year-to-date (bottom row.) The totals shown include the Non-Deductible Expenses, Non-Taxable Income, Deductible Expenses, Taxable Income and Profit. Again, if the column headings on your window look different than this picture, just press Command-T (or use the Show/Hide Tax Fields menu item) as desired.

Demo5

After you've entered a few items (or a few months worth of items), you will likely want to see where you're spending your money, what's working, what's not working, etc. A good place to start is with the Accounts Dialog. Choose the Accounts item from the Utility Menu. You will see a dialog that looks something like this...

Demo6

This Accounts Dialog shows you all of your accounts, and the totals for each account for the current month and the totals to date (meaning from the beginning of the year through the current month). Also displayed are the percentages that each account represents, compared to the applicable subtotal of that particular type of account. This dialog is also used to add, modify or delete accounts to suit your own business (or family) needs.

Again, if you are very observant, you might notice, that for the purposes of this tutorial, I made a few changes. I made exactly the same entries for February and March that I made for January. I adjusted the Accounts dialog to show March instead of January, and I happened to scroll down to the Online Expenses line. Take a look and you should see that the year-to-date total ("ToDate") for that account (#17, Online Expenses) seems to be three times as much as the total just for March (in the "MonthTotal" column.)

In fact, now is a good time to point out the bar charts on the bottom of the Accounts Dialog. As you move up and down the list of accounts, the bar charts will automatically and graphically show you trends on any account. Note in this case, that we are in the month of March, the 3rd month in our year, and "Online Expenses" happens to be highlighted. It's easy to tell at a glance that our monthly online expenses have held constant...since all three green bars are the same height. But, if you look at the Cumulative chart on the right, you'll note that, cumulatively, the trend is rising, as it should, since your total expenses for the year for that account are rising. Try using the arrow keys on the keyboard to move up and down the list of accounts, and watch the charts adjust themselves instantly. Try to get a feel for the bar charts. After a while, you'll be able to spot trends instantly.

No doubt, by default, TinyBooks Pro includes many accounts that you do not need or want. So, feel free to delete them. To delete an account that you don't think you'll ever need, just click its name in the Account List, and click the Delete button. (Obviously, if there's activity in that account, it can't be deleted. You can only delete unused accounts.)

If you wish to rename or add an account, select its name (or a still unused entry in the Account List) and click the "Configure" button. Then enter the new name as desired, but, be sure the newly named account resides in the correct section of the Account List. The position of an account in the list is very important. As you scroll through the list of accounts, you'll see that there's a section for each type of account...Deductible Expenses, Non-Deductible Expenses, Taxable Income and Non-Taxable Income. Make sure you are adding or renaming an account in the proper section as desired.

You might also note that you can set a monthly budget (or projection, or "best guess") for this account in this same "Configure" dialog. Budgets are optional, but so easy-to-use, it's a shame not to try it. A budget is just a guide, it lets you estimate what you think (or hope?) will be a standard monthly amount for some account. You can enter a budget for expense or income accounts. An expense budget might be your best guess as to how much you'll spend for a certain expense type each month. An income budget might best be thought of as your best guess as to how much income of a certain type you believe you should be making each month. Your budget numbers will ONLY appear in these bar charts, as a blue line. Budgets are not included in any displayed or printed reports, they do not affect any calculations, and only serve as a visual guide or reminder to you as to how an account is progressing through the year compared to your expectations.

Budget1

The little snippet of a picture above shows what the bar charts would look like after you set a budget for a particular account, but haven't yet added any transactions to that account. Imagine that you set up a new Taxable Income account (called Computer Consulting, maybe??), and set a budget (a hopeful best guess) that you would earn, say, $1000.00 each month. Now, imagine that you use the arrow keys on the Accounts Dialog to move to the last month of the fiscal year. We have NOT yet entered any actual income received for this account, so there are no green bars in the bar chart. But, you should be able to see the blue budget lines. The monthly budget (projection) is the same each month, so each month on the left hand bar chart shows a constant blue budgeted value...that's how much income you are expecting each month. But, cumulatively, on the bar chart on the right, you can see that a fixed monthly budget results in a linearly increasing step in the blue budget line. When you enter actual income items for this account, you'll be able to see whether the income is above or below expectations (that is, whether the green bars are above or below the blue line.) See the next picture...

Budget2

In the picture above, imagine that you did have some consulting income in the months of April, May and June in the amounts of $750, $1250, and $1500 but that you didn't have any other consulting income for the rest of the year. Now, again, if we use the right-arrow on the Accounts Dialog to move to the final month of our fiscal year (December, in this case), we would see the picture above. Can you make sense of the charts? On the left, note that the first month that we had income, it was below our best guess (that is, below the blue budget line.) But, the next two months, we were a little above our best guess. On the right bar chart (the one that shows CUMULATIVE totals) it shows the totals levelling off and getting further and further away from our budget (our best guess) because we didn't have any more income of that type since the 6th month of the year. The idea of budgets (estimates, best guesses, projections, etc.) is as valid for income as it is expenses. In this example, we used Consulting Income as an example, but the identical approach is used for expenses too.

Advanced Note: For those curious about some of the technical details, you might note that the minimum and maximum values of the vertical axis of the left and right bar charts might not be the same. The charts should be viewed in relative not absolute terms. The bar charts accurately show trends in relative terms. For absolute numbers, you must view the list of accounts in the Accounts dialog.


Another powerful feature of TinyBooks Pro is its ability to generate both standard and custom reports. Usually, the Bottom Line Reports and listings available from the Accounts dialog are sufficient for all needs, but when a custom report is needed, TinyBooks Pro is ready. Select the Reports and Transacation Search item from the Utility Menu. A window will appear that looks something like this...

Demo7

As you see, this feature gives you the flexibility to generate just about any kind of report you can think of. And, by the way, please note that I'm using the word Report loosely now. The real accounting reports are available in the Bottom Line Reports and the Account dialogs. But, the Reports and Transaction Search window is still a very powerful search facility. You can request reports that only include certain accounts, or only if transactions include a particular keyword, etc. In the example just above, I searched for any expense, occurring at any time during the year, that had the word "envelopes" in the item's description.

Note that in addition to an Expense or Income Report, TinyBooks Pro also includes a type of report that includes ALL types of entries (that is, both expense and income.) This makes it extremely easy to view, print or export all the transactions you've made all year (or any portion of a year) without having to re-visit each monthly window.

This dialog is an extremely flexible way to do some very particular kinds of reporting on a chosen subset of your transactions. For instance, if you have carefully included the name (or initials, or ID#, etc.) of a particular client in the Comment/Description field of every entry, it's a piece of cake to get a per-client profitability report. If you generate a report including both income and expenses, the resulting total represents the total of all income items matching the given criteria minus the total of all expense items matching the same criteria...effectively, the profit generated from a particular client!

Though not shown in this tutorial, please try the "Bottom Line Report" option also. You can find this in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. This is a very simple report that includes just about everything an accountant might request. At the end of the year, this is the report that I would print to help me figure out my taxes. Notice that there aren't any parameters that need to be set. Nice and simple!


Professional Invoice Printing

(Invoices, Estimates, Proposals, Statements, etc.)

TinyBooks Pro also includes a very handy, professional Invoice Printer. You can find "Invoice/Estimate Printer..." in the Utility Menu. It really is quite simple. Many programs that include the ability to print invoices get very complicated very quickly because you often have to deal with paid and unpaid invoices, and sent and un-sent invoices, listing some invoice amounts as part of an Accounts Receivables module and not listing others, etc. With TinyBooks Pro, all the Invoice Printer really does is print professional-looking invoices (and other forms). That's all. Nice and Simple!

Choose "Invoice/Estimate Printer..." from the Utility menu of TinyBooks Pro, and the Invoice Printer dialog will appear. Here, you can fill in all the various invoice fields (Date, Customer Number, Invoice Number, Bill To, Ship To, etc.) and then TinyBooks Pro will print a professional-looking Invoice, and on plain paper too, so there's no expensive custom or 3rd-party forms that need to be purchased.

I'm using the word Invoice a lot, but make no mistake, this dialog is VERY flexible. In addition to Invoices, you can also print Estimates, Proposals, Statements or virtually any other form you might require.

Here's a rather shrunken picture of the Invoice Printer window (on the left) and a sample of what a printed invoice might look like (on the right.) In this picture, I didn't yet fill in all the Company Information fields, so the Invoice just shows the name of the company (The Demo Company), not the address, email, website, phone, etc. This is just the default way that an invoice might look, you have additional customization opportunities as mentioned below.

DemoInvoice

Note that not only can you customize the information in the standard fields, but you can customize the field names themselves! For instance, if you do not want to use the field called "Salesman", you can easily change the name of that field to Saleswoman, Salesperson, Technician, Broker, Officer, Therapist, etc. If you don't want a "Shipping" field, you can leave it blank, or change it to Postage, UPS, FedEx, or whatever else you might want.

TinyBooks Pro actually automatically stores a number of the invoices (or other forms) that you've printed. So if you need to print an invoice (or other form) that you know is very similar to one you've printed before, you can just click the arrow buttons on the Invoice Printer window until you find a similar looking invoice (or other form) to the one you know you want to print. Modify a field or two as desired, and click the Print button. Voila! You get a professional-looking invoice (or other form) with hardly any work. The Invoice Printer window also includes a few buttons to speed up some standard chores...one button will automatically insert today's date, another button will automatically copy the "Bill To" name and address fields to the "Ship To" name and address fields just to save you typing. Other buttons automatically change the field names to those suitable for Invoices, Estimates, Proposals or Statements.

Advanced Note: You might also like to know that you can customize the look of the invoice (or other form) so that it matches the "style" of your company. TinyBooks Pro uses the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog (in the Utility Menu) to print the "Company Area" of an Invoice (or other form.) It will use the company name, address, phone, website (and more) that you have entered into that dialog. But, if you have a standard company font, or wish to include a custom company logo on the invoice (or other form), you can do that too. TinyBooks Pro has a facility where if you include a picture (CompanyLogo.jpg) that includes this information, TinyBooks Pro will print that picture in the Company Area of the invoice (or other form) instead of printing the information on its own. Please see the Invoices section of the Help Window in TinyBooks Pro itself for more detailed information.

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TinyBooks Pro and Taxes

TinyBooks Pro supports taxes of all kinds, for virtually all countries. It supports Sales Tax, GST (Goods and Services Tax), VAT (Value Added Tax), PST (Provincial Sales Tax) and more.

TinyBooks Pro allows you to enter, if needed, two different types of taxes on every single transaction...known, for now, as Tax#1 and Tax#2. When you enter a new income or expense item, you will note that the dialog includes two tax fields. It's up to you how you want to define these two fields. If taxes are not a concern for you, you can, of course, completely ignore these fields. But, if you are faced with Sales Taxes, or GST, PST (or whatever), you can use these two tax fields to account for taxes taken in and taxes paid out.

The names of the taxes and actual tax rates applicable to your company can be customized using the Company and Tax Information Dialog, described above, and available in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu.

If the transaction you are entering is an Expense, any tax information you enter is considered as a tax that is paid out. If the transaction you are entering is an Income item, any tax information you enter is considered as a tax that you have received.

At the end of the list of the Accounts in the Accounts dialog, TinyBooks Pro will automatically tally for you on a monthly and year-to-date basis the total taxes taken in and total taxes paid out, for both types of taxes.

Depending on your circumstances and the country, state and/or province in which you live, you might want to use the Tax#1 field for Sales Tax, and ignore the Tax#2 field. Or, you might want to record GST for Tax#1 and PST for Tax#2. Whatever your needs, TinyBooks Pro is flexible enough to handle it.

TinyBooks Pro also includes a handy Calculate Tax button in the Enter Transaction dialog. This Calculate Tax button can be configured to calculate the tax as appropriate for your situation. In some cases (such as with USA State Sales Tax), taxes will be added to the item Amount that you specify. In other cases, such as is usual in countries that have a GST, TinyBooks Pro can "extract" the applicable taxes from the Amount entered (and then reduce the amount as appropriate.)

Note: In the Utility Menu of TinyBooks Pro, there is a menu item called "Show/Hide Tax Fields". If the Main Monthly window or the Reports window is frontmost, you can use this menu item to show or hide the two tax fields associated with every expense or income item. In fact, when you choose to show the tax fields, TinyBooks Pro temporarily makes room for the tax fields by truncating the Comment/Description field. This is for display purposes only. The Comment is not actually truncated. If the monthly items or reported items are saved, printed or exported, all fields are included in their entirety. (This option is for those with smaller monitor display resolutions. All fields are easily displayable on monitors with high resolutions.)

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TinyBooks Pro FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I move from month to month?
A: If you open or double-click a TinyBooks Pro document, TinyBooks Pro will display the expense and income entries corresponding to the current month according to your computer's date and time. To switch to a different month, you can select a month from the TinyBooks Pro Month Menu (or use the easy keyboard equivalents), or you can click one of the left or right arrow buttons on the main window, or you can type one of the left or right arrow keys on the keyboard. When you switch to a new month, the Income/Expense Window will immediately reflect the entries for the new month selected.

Q: How do I change the name of the company?
A: The name of the company that you entered when you first created a TinyBooks Pro document is displayed and/or printed as a header in various reports and on the main window. If you need to rename the company (or fix a spelling error), choose the Company and Tax Information item from the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. Other company information such as mailing address, web site address, email address, phone, tax rates, and more can also be customized here in the Company and Tax Information dialog.

Q: How do I modify an account name?
A: All account name changes are handled using the Accounts item in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. When you select this item, the Accounts Dialog will appear. This dialog will show a list of all the accounts. To modify an existing account (for instance, to change the name "Postage Expenses" to "Mailing Costs"), just click the account name in question, and then click the "Configure..." button. Make the desired change, and click OK.

Q: How do I delete an account name?
A: All account name changes are handled using the Accounts item in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. When you select this item, the Accounts Dialog will appear. This dialog will show a list of all the accounts. To delete an existing account, click the account name in question, and then click the "Delete..." button. Note, that you cannot delete an account that is in use.

Q: How do I add an account name?
A: All account name changes are handled using the Accounts item in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. When you select this item, the Accounts Dialog will appear. This dialog will show a list of all the accounts. To add an account, simply locate an available position in the account list where you'd like to add the account (in the Deductible Expense section, the Non-Deductible Expense section, the Taxable Income section or the Non-Taxable Income section), and click the "Configure..." button. Type the name of the account, and click OK.

Q: Why does TinyBooks Pro use Account Numbers all the time?
A: Account Numbers makes things easier in lots of ways (for the programmer and for the user), but don't worry...anytime there's a field that requires an Account Number, just type the first letter of the Account Name that you are looking for ("P" for Postage, for example.) A pop-up menu, or an Account Name Dialog, will immediately appear and you can easily choose the Account you are looking for by name without having to remember any numbers. Continue to type the same letter again and again, and you'll automatically be taken to each entry that starts with that letter. When the correct account appears, press RETURN or click OK, and both the name and number of the account should be inserted automatically.

Q: Do I really have to run TinyBooks Pro everytime I have an expense or income item to enter during the month?
A: Many people, myself included, find it more convenient to enter expenses, as they occur, on paper first, and then use TinyBooks Pro at the end of the month to enter all the info at one time. TinyBooks Pro includes an option to print out a paper form to enter any expenses incurred during the month. This option is called Print Interim Expense Entry Form and is available in the Utility Menu of TinyBooks Pro. A similar item is also available for income entries.

Q: Does TinyBooks Pro support Fiscal Years other than January to December?
A: YES! When creating a NEW TinyBooks Pro document (a new "set of books"), you will have the option of customizing the Fiscal Year. TinyBooks Pro does support non-calendar fiscal years.

Q: Does TinyBooks Pro handle business mileage?
A: TinyBooks Pro includes a number of features that make it easy to handle business mileage, but it's still admittedly a work-in-progress, pending feedback from users. In a sense, business mileage is just another expense, and can already be handled by merely including a Business Mileage expense account. To make this easier, TinyBooks Pro includes an item in the Utility Menu called Print Interim Mileage Form. This form makes it easy to list business mileage (date, location and distance), as it occurs.

Q: Can TinyBooks Pro be used for my family books?
A: Yes. TinyBooks Pro is basically a program that makes it easy to enter, and report on, expenses and income, in various categories. This is something of value whether you are doing a company's books, or the books of your own family. You can create different accounts to keep track of different kinds of expenses and income. At the end of each month, or each year, you can easily view or print reports on where the money is going and where it's coming from. It can be as detailed or as general as you like. It's up to you. You're in charge of what accounts you want to create. If you choose very detailed accounts, for instance, you'll be able to see quickly that you spent too much on chocolate and not enough on vegetables (assuming you created separate accounts for these two vital food groups.) If you just create one account called Food, such realizations may be lost to you.

Q: Explain Deductible and Non-Deductible Expenses?
A: See your accountant or lawyer for the real explanation, but what follows, I think, will give you the gist of it. Let's say you're the owner of a small business, and you ship one of your products to a customer. You go to the Post Office and they charge you $10. THAT is a deductible expense. That means you can DEDUCT the cost of that shipping expense from any income you might earn in your business. And, until your business earns more than that $10, you don't even have any profits to declare! But, now let's say your daughter comes down to your business and says "I need a new dress?" You open up the business cash register and give your daughter a twenty dollar bill (OK, obviously, I don't have a daughter or buy dresses!) Well, that twenty is NOT deductible. It's got nothing to do with running your business. You still want to make note of the fact that the business paid out twenty dollars, but the government doesn't allow you to deduct that amount. It's considered a non-deductible expense. TinyBooks Pro can easily be used to account for both kinds of expenses. (Note: In a similar manner, TinyBooks Pro includes both Taxable and Non-Taxable Income accounts.)

Q: How do I backup my TinyBooks Pro data?
A: GOOD question! TinyBooks Pro is one of the most simple applications you can imagine in terms of where everything is stored. When you first create a new set of books, you are asked to name the company, give it a year, and SAVE IT. You choose any name you want. (I might name my document "Winograd-2010-Books", for instance.) Anyway, that ONE file has everything in it...all your expenses and income entries, totals, account names, etc. That is the ONE file that you would want to back up. Always assume that lightning will strike when you least expect it. Back up often. TinyBooks Pro includes an item in the File Menu called "Backup TinyBooks Pro data..." that makes it trivially easy to backup your data. See the TinyBooks Pro Help Window for more complete information. To be frank, YOU are the best form of backup protection. No matter what facility is built-in to TinyBooks Pro, it won't help if your data is lost, or stolen, or fried by a lightning strike, or a hard-drive crash. It really is up to you to ensure a proper backup strategy.

Q: How do you spell Bookkeeping?
A: The correct spelling of the word Bookkeeping is as one word, not two separate words Book Keeping. Bookkeeping is an interesting word because it has 3 pairs of doubled characters in a row. (Try to think of another!) Of course, you do tend to see Book Keeping listed as two words quite often, so I've listed it in this part of the FAQ just in case someone searches for it. Actually, TinyBooks Pro is properly spelled as one word also. But, if you happen to search for Tiny Books, I hope you'll make it here as well.

Q: Does TinyBooks Pro handle recurring expenses?
A: Yes! TinyBooks Pro can easily handle recurring expenses. One of the buttons on the main monthly window is called RECUR ITEM. Just click on any expense or income item in the monthly list and click the RECUR ITEM button to designate that expense (or income) as a recurring expense (or income) item. When you choose to recur an item, you will be asked exactly how you would like TinyBooks Pro to recur this item (for instance, whether it should copy the actual amount, or just put a "0.00" in the Amount as a placeholder, etc.) On your approval, the chosen item will then be duplicated (recurred) in the following months of the business year.

Q: Can I use my existing TinyBooks (non-Pro) documents with the latest release of TinyBooks Pro?
A: ABSOLUTELY! TinyBooks Pro version 7 is a brand new, completely-rewritten version of TinyBooks. A lot of effort was expended to ensure that no existing user of previous versions of TinyBooks would be left behind. The new version of TinyBooks Pro can import a special "TB6-TB7-ConversionFile" which only the latest version 6 of TinyBooks can create. And, since v6 of TinyBooks can convert ANY older TinyBooks document (even going back as far as version 1) to version 6 format...ALL users of TinyBooks can effectively move to TinyBooks Pro version 7 and use all their old information without having to re-type even a single transaction. Complete information can be found on the UPGRADING TINYBOOKS section of this web page, and in the Help Window of both TinyBooks v6 and TinyBooks Pro v7.

Q: I've got more clients than TinyBooks Pro has income accounts! What do I do?
A: Imagine you are running a lawn-mowing business and you have 100 different clients. You obviously have more clients than TinyBooks Pro has individual income accounts. But, this is not a problem. Create a single new taxable income account and call it "Lawn-Mowing Income". In TinyBooks Pro, everytime you add a new item to any account, that item always includes room for a Comment or Description about the particular item. In the Comment field, you should put the client's ID#, or the client's name, or the client's initials, or whatever is appropriate in your case. Later, when you are creating reports, TinyBooks Pro offers great flexibility in deciding which items to include in any report. You can, for instance, choose to report on all items in the "Lawn-Mowing Income" account, in which case you'll get a report of the total income generated by all your lawn-mowing clients. But, if you'd prefer to get a report on just the income generated from a single client, you could just instruct TinyBooks Pro to include only those items in the "Lawn-Mowing Income" account that have your particular client's ID, name or initials as part of the Comment Text. You are thus able to support an almost infinite number of clients, even though TinyBooks Pro has only a finite number of accounts. (And, note that this same technique can be used to expand the effective number of expense accounts too, if needed.)

Q: My TinyBooks Pro windows don't look right! The columns don't line up!
A: TinyBooks Pro uses a font called Courier. (Older versions of TinyBooks also used Courier New.) These fonts are known as fixed-width or mono-spaced fonts, where each character in the font is the same width. If this font is not available on your Mac, you may well see columns that don't line up properly. Courier, by default, is always installed on your Mac. But, if you are running an Apple or a 3rd-Party font utility that can turn on and off different fonts, make sure that you do NOT accidentally turn off Courier, as TinyBooks Pro requires that font. If you have any font-related concerns, please contact the author directly.

Q: Can I EXPORT my TinyBooks Pro data into Excel or other spreadsheets?
A: Absolutely. In TinyBooks Pro's Accounts, Bottom Line Reports, and Reports and Transaction Search windows, there is a button called EXPORT that will allow you to save (i.e. Export) the contents of the window as tab-delimited text. Tab-delimited text is a standard output format that is easily imported by Excel (as well as virtually all other spreadsheet programs.)

Q: When I print an invoice (or other form), all I see is my company name. Where's the address?
A: By default, TinyBooks Pro will use the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog (which can be found in the TinyBooks Pro Utility menu) when it prints an invoice or other form. If your invoice or other form is missing the address or phone (etc.) of your company, you just need to fill in the missing information in the Company and Tax Information dialog. Once entered, new printed invoices (or other forms) will include all the appropriate information.

Q: Can I add my own company logo to an invoice/estimate? And, can I print my company name in my own choice of fonts?
A: Yes. By default, TinyBooks Pro will print an invoice (or other form) using the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog (available in the Utility Menu.) This information is attractively printed in the upper-left portion of an invoice (or other form.) If you'd prefer, you can create a picture (called "CompanyLogo.jpg") that includes this information (name, address, phone, URL and logo) and TinyBooks Pro will print your picture instead of the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog. The look of the company-area of an invoice/estimate is thus totally customizable. See the Invoices section of the TinyBooks Pro Help window for step-by-step instructions on how to do this.


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TinyBooks Pro: Requirements

Requirements: The new TinyBooks Pro version 7 requires an Intel-based Macintosh running OSX. It also requires a screen resolution of, at least, 1024x768. (For those who are still running PowerPC Macs and/or Mac OS9, TinyBooks v6 can be used, though it is no longer officially supported.)

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TinyBooks and TinyBooks Pro: Version History

Version 1.0 - January 17, 2003

Version 1.01 - January 18, 2003 - Changed a very geeky printer error message into English, and added a pointer to the TinyBooks web page to the program itself.

Version 1.02 - January 28, 2003 - Corrected a bug that resulted in account lists being shown in mixed fonts and sizes. Also added a little online help, and some cosmetic improvements.

Version 1.03 - February 3, 2003 - Added in-dialog help, cosmetic improvements, and fixed a bug that resulted in saved files (in OSX only) to be saved in the parent of the directory chosen, instead of the actual chosen directory.

Version 1.04 - April 17, 2003 - Added some cosmetic improvements to Income, Expense and Account lists, and fixed a bug that prevented Copy and Paste keyboard equivalents from being used within TinyBooks.

Version 1.05 - April 19, 2003 - Changed mono-spaced font from Monaco to Courier New (the automatic handling of ligatures in OSX was causing a problem.)

Version 1.06 - May 5, 2003 - Added the ability to handle non-calendar fiscal years, interface enhancements, and a preferences dialog.

Version 1.07 - May 19, 2003 - Added a non-modal help dialog, updated contact and web site info, eased online registration, etc.

Version 1.08 - June 13, 2003 - Printed, custom reports now include the criteria used to generate the reports.

Version 1.09 - October 23, 2003 - Monthly lists of income and expense items can now be re-sorted to display by date (formerly, they remained in the order of data entry.)

Version 1.1.0 - December 10, 2003 - Improved handling of international currencies.

Version 1.1.1 - December 16, 2003 - Added instantaneous tally of monthly expenses, income and profit

Version 1.1.2 - January 22, 2004 - Added a few cosmetic touches, improved new set of books document creation, etc.

Version 1.1.3 - January 28, 2004 - Fixed column heading alignment on Interim Expense and Income printouts.

Version 1.1.4 - February 10, 2004 - TinyBooks was a bit of a "processor hog"...that is now fixed.

Version 1.1.5 - March 23, 2004 - Enhanced keyboard equivalents...now arrow keys work as one might hope (up/down arrows move up and down the current monthly list, left/right arrows move month-to-month.) Fixed a "roaming icon" problem where a saved TinyBooks document might change its position in the Finder.

Version 2.0.0 - April 5, 2004 - A MAJOR UPDATE - Improved and enlarged the Accounts Dialog; added new icons for all file types; enlarged and added to the Help window; the main monthly window is now resizeable and shows "on-the-fly" calculations of both monthly and year-to-date totals; improved the Utility Menu so applicable items can be used even when a TinyBooks document is not open; added a Print Interim Mileage Form to the Utility Menu; improved default day determination on expense/income entry; the Create Custom Reports dialog is now modeless allowing easy switching from window to window; added a new type of report which can be used to view, print or export all transactions (expense or income) for any time period; improved handling of non-standard fiscal years; improved the default document naming convention; added the ability to handle recurring expense and/or recurring income items; added ability to create a TinyBooks v2 document from a TinyBooks v1 document (leaving original untouched); various other internal, cosmetic and interface improvements.

Version 2.0.1 - April 27, 2004 - Added a "Safety-Backup" protection preference, improved the help, fixed a bug whereby a new document window might appear behind the help window instead of in front of it.

Version 2.0.2 - June 11, 2004 - Improved window handling (TinyBooks now remembers all main window/dialog positions and sizes.) This version also adds a new preference allowing the user to personalize the name of the Safety-Backup file.

Version 2.0.3 - June 29, 2004 - Added Save As Text (TAB-delimited) to Accounts Dialog. Added new preference for default day determination when entering new items.

Version 2.0.4 - July 18, 2004 - Enhanced date-sorted and account-sorted custom report capability

Version 2.0.5 - August 31, 2004 - Improved file error handling and added display of current month in fiscal year to the Accounts dialog.

Version 2.0.6 - December 3, 2004 - Added a "Print Full Year Expense/Income Entry Forms" item to the Utility Menu, improved help text, etc.

Version 2.0.7 - January 3, 2005 - Improved the ease of data entry in the Amount Field of the "Enter New Expense Dialog", other minor changes, etc.

Version 2.0.8 - February 6, 2005 - Improved the ability to EXPORT information from the Accounts and Reports windows to tab-delimited text files (for import to spreadsheets, etc.)

Version 2.0.9 - March 8, 2005 - Improved the Accounts Dialog: added the easy ability to move forward and backward one month at time, and added columns to show the monthly and year-to-date percentage each account represents compared to the applicable totals, etc. (Simply put, it's now easier to see where the money's going, and where it's coming from!)

Version 2.1.0 - March 13, 2005 - Fixed a bug where it was possible that the first title line of a printed or exported Account listing could show the month of the underlying Expense/Income window, rather than the month chosen on the Account dialog. (The data itself was correct, but the title could have been wrong.)

Version 3.0.0 - July 4, 2005 - A MAJOR UPDATE - Added a new Professional Invoice Printer, added fully-automatic Account Charting with built-in support for budgets, increased the width of Comment/Description and Check Number fields, increased the maximum number of transactions per month, etc.

Version 3.0.1 - August 12, 2005 - Added the ability to duplicate an existing item in the Monthly Expense/Income windows, and improved the ability to personalize printed invoices.

Version 3.0.2 - December 7, 2005 - Added a new Help Topic called "Moving to a New Year", and a new Preference item related to saving keystrokes in data entry.

Version 3.0.3 - January 8, 2006 - The Professional Invoice Printer was made just a little smarter. Now, if there is no "Ship To:" information provided by the user, the "Ship To:" section of the invoice will not be printed. This change was frequently requested by those businesses that more frequently wish to produce invoices for services performed, as opposed to products shipped.

Version 3.0.4 - January 15, 2006 - Improved the "New..." dialog; updated help text; added easy import of previous year's information (name, address, email, phone, web, accounts, budgets, invoices, etc.); added Import Invoices to Utility Menu, etc.

Version 3.0.5 - February 22, 2006 - Improved Copy/Paste capability from, to and within TinyBooks.

Version 3.0.6 - March 17, 2006 - Improved Professional Invoice Printer, improved Enter Expense/Income item dialog, improved ease of entry of recurring expense and income items, updated help text, etc.

Version 3.0.7 - April 25, 2006 - Improved the export of reports as tab-delimited text, etc.

Version 4.0.0 - September 15, 2006 - A MAJOR UPDATE - Added intuitive support for handling virtually any kind of taxes from any country, including State Sales Taxes, GST (Goods and Service Taxes), PST (Provincial Sales Taxes), VAT (Value Added Taxes) and more. Added support for international dates as MM/DD or DD/MM. Added ability to export and import transactions. Added ability to move a transaction from one month to another. Added cosmetic and functional improvements to the Professional Invoice Printer. Increased maximum number of monthly transactions. Improved Help Text and added the ability to copy the complete text (for viewing elsewhere, printing, etc.) Improved the creation of safety backups. Improved the ability of TinyBooks to import settings from previous years (so setting up the books for a new year is quick and easy.) And more...

Version 4.0.1 - October 15, 2006 - Revised help text, simplified various dialogs, improved Reports window, etc.

Version 4.0.2 - November 15, 2006 - Vastly simplified and enhanced the creation of a set of books (for both first-time and long-time users.)

Version 4.0.3 - March 15, 2007 - Improved window handling, copy and paste, keyboard equivalents, etc.

Version 4.0.4 - April 7, 2007 - Added the ability to sort reported items by check number to the Reports window.

Version 5.0.0 - July 2, 2007 - A MAJOR UPDATE - Added the ability to print Estimates as well as Invoices; Invoices now include 10 description lines and 1 total line with auto-calculated and auto-formatted amount fields on each line; Transactions in all Monthly Windows are now easily sorted by Date, Comment, Check#, Account#, Amount or Type (expense or income); a new Bottom Line Report has been added ("exactly the report that your accountant would want"); the allowable Comment width for each transaction has been increased by approximately 50%, an Auto-Comment popup menu has been added to the Enter Expense/Income Dialog to allow easy entry of Comments that are identical to comments previously entered; etc.

Version 5.0.1 - July 13, 2007 - A Minor Update with MAJOR Importance - TinyBooks can now easily convert all TinyBooks documents created with previous versions of TinyBooks to the latest format. This allows anyone who is running any older version of TinyBooks from version 1 through version 4 to immediately enjoy all the advanced features of this latest version of TinyBooks.

Version 5.0.2 - July 22, 2007 - Added keyboard equivalents to all items in the new Sort Menu, and improved the Auto-Comment Popup Menu.

Version 5.0.3 - April 20, 2008 - Added an indication of the Fiscal Year to the top line of generated reports, added a new preference allowing auto sort of transactions immediately upon entry, added a monthly budgets column to the Accounts Dialog and associated reports, etc.

Version 5.0.4 - May 20, 2008 - A quick BUG FIX release. With the right, but luckily rarely used sequence of steps, it was possible to put TinyBooks into a mode where mouse clicks would be ignored in the main window. That is now fixed. (This is a bug that has haunted the author for a very long time, and it is a pleasure to squash the bug once and for all!)

Version 6.0.0 - August 28, 2008 - A MAJOR UPDATE - Added Auto-Comment and Auto-Check# features, Revamped the Reports and Transaction Search Window (allowing easy per-client reporting), Added Find and Find Again to monthly windows, Added Invoice/Estimate/Statement/Proposal Customization, Improved Multi-Country Tax support (with automatic tax calculations), and much more.

Version 6.0.1 - September 3, 2008 - A quick BUG FIX release - Fixed a bug in the Check# Popup Menu, and fixed a spelling error in the How To Update help text.

Version 6.0.2 - April 17, 2009 - A relatively minor update - Added 'PayPal' to the Automatic Check Popup Menu, fixed a bug where an exported Bottom Line Report would mistakenly duplicate the Total column, and added a 'Freeze AutoComments' menu item to the Utility Menu (allowing a user who is satisfied with the existing set of remembered comments to freeze the list just as it is.)

Version 6.0.3 - February 17, 2010 - This update to v6 of TinyBooks (v6.0.3) adds only one new feature, and that is the ability to create a "TinyBooks-Pro-Conversion" file. With this file, existing TinyBooks users can upgrade to the new v7 of TinyBooks Pro without having to re-enter even a single transaction. See the built-in Help Window of TinyBooks v6 or TinyBooks Pro v7 for more complete info. The simple goal of this release was to ensure that no existing TinyBooks user will be left behind. TinyBooks v6 can actually convert ANY earlier TinyBooks document to v6 status, and thus TinyBooks v6.0.3 is the bridge or gateway that will allow users of any previous TinyBooks version to upgrade to the new TinyBooks Pro v7.

Version 7.0.0 - February 17, 2010 - TinyBooks Pro - With this release, TinyBooks version 7 has become TinyBooks Pro. TinyBooks Pro is a completely re-written version of the old TinyBooks from the ground up. The new TinyBooks Pro runs natively on any Intel-based Macintosh running Mac OSX (TinyBooks Pro does NOT require Rosetta Emulation as the old TinyBooks did). TinyBooks Pro v7 includes many new features (such as automatic Bottom Line Quarterly Reports, TypeAhead Comments, Enhanced Backup, and more) but the real news about TinyBooks Pro v7 is that it still retains the same ease-of-use as TinyBooks was always known for. TinyBooks Pro is still TinyBooks, but now it natively includes support for all those little human interface niceties (sadly missing from previous versions) such as easy keyboard navigation, mouse scroll wheel support and more. TinyBooks is much less modal, with easily resizeable windows, and lists that are much more easily navigable.

Version 7.0.1 - February 23, 2010 - TinyBooks Pro - Improved the import of old TinyBooks documents, fixed a typo in the Enter dialog help text, added an 'ADD' button to TinyBooks Pro's Professional Invoice Printer utility, etc.

Version 7.0.2 - March 1, 2010 - TinyBooks Pro - Fixed a bug in the New With Import dialog, and improved the tab-ordering in the Professional Invoice Printer window.

Version 7.0.3 - March 16, 2010 - TinyBooks Pro - Improved the importing of old TinyBooks documents, improved the built-in help text and error messages, improved the Recur Dialog, added the ability to delete all items in the current month, and added three new Preferences (to Auto-Sort New/Modified transactions on entry, to enable/disable the Total Transaction Amount field, and to show Monthly and Reported Amounts as inclusive or exclusive of taxes.)

Version 7.0.4 - March 30, 2010 - TinyBooks Pro - Fixed a bug that prevented the On-The-Fly-Totals from updating as they should, reduced the height of the Invoice Printer dialog to better fit monitors with limited resolutions, added a new Preference to allow the default background color of the Company Area on printed invoices to match the color used in older versions of the non-Pro TinyBooks, updated the text in the Help Window, etc.

Version 7.0.5 - June 14, 2010 - TinyBooks Pro - The Main Monthly Window, the Reports Window and the Invoice Printer Window can now all be minimized as desired. I've also added a Quote button on the Invoice Printer dialog (in addition to the existing Invoice, Proposal, Estimate and Statement buttons.) I've also fixed an oversight where the header line in saved, exported and printed Account listings did NOT include the name of the month being reported...now it does.

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Download TinyBooksPro.app.zip (v7.0.5) Buy Now (Individuals - US$ 69.) Buy Now (Site Lic. - US$ 295.)
Introduction Tutorial FAQ
Requirements Version History User Comments
Invoices, Estimates, etc. Taxes Upgrade Old TinyBooks

How to Upgrade Old TinyBooks Documents

TinyBooks Pro version 7 is a completely rewritten version of TinyBooks from the ground up. TinyBooks Pro version 7 is the future of TinyBooks and is available now. Great effort has been expended to ensure that ALL existing owners have the ability to convert their old TinyBooks documents to the latest TinyBooks Pro v7 format.

The old (v6 and earlier) versions of TinyBooks could run on older PowerPC-based Macs and could even run on Mac OS's going back to Mac OS 8.6. Those days are gone for TinyBooks. The new "modern" TinyBooks Pro v7 requires an Intel-based Macintosh running OSX. It also requires a monitor with resolution of at least 1024x768. If you can handle these new requirements, you can convert your old TinyBooks documents and almost instantly start using the very latest TinyBooks Pro version 7 without having to re-type even a single transaction.

In order to convert your old TinyBooks documents to the latest TinyBooks Pro (v7) format, you will need a copy of the latest "old" version of TinyBooks v6. The latest "old" version of TinyBooks is known as version 6.0.3. It is only available here: TinyBooks.zip

When you have a copy of TinyBooks v6.0.3, double-click it to run it. What you do then, will depend on just how old your TinyBooks documents are. Any very old documents must first be converted to version 6 format, before using a special procedure to convert TinyBooks v6 documents to TinyBooks Pro v7 format.

For old (PRIOR TO VERSION 6) documents, you can use one of the "Convert" items in the Utility Menu to convert any v1, v2, v3, v4 or v5 format documents into a v6 format document. When you choose the applicable CONVERT item, TinyBooks will prompt you for your existing (old) TinyBooks document, and create a new v6 type document for you.

In order to convert TinyBooks version 6 documents to TinyBooks Pro version 7 format, you will need to create a special "TinyBooks-Pro-Conversion" file. While you are still running TinyBooks v6.0.3, open up any of your existing or newly converted v6 TinyBooks documents just as you always have. Then just choose the "Create TinyBooks-Pro-Conversion file..." item from the File Menu. You can choose to save this file anywhere you want, maybe just on the desktop.

Once you have the "TinyBooks-Pro-Conversion" file, you're all set. All you have to do is IMPORT that file into the new TinyBooks Pro version 7. So, now you can quit TinyBooks v6, run TinyBooks Pro v7, choose "Import TinyBooks-Pro-Conversion file..." from the Utility Menu, and TinyBooks Pro will import your file and prompt you to save the newly created file. And, you're done! Double-click the new file that you just helped TinyBooks Pro to create, and you'll see all your old transactions, account settings, names, addresses, invoices, and everything all set up for you ready to use with the newest TinyBooks Pro. Trust me! Once you see the new TinyBooks Pro, you will never want to go back. It's worth the effort.

Download the old TinyBooks.zip (v6.0.3) Buy Now (Individuals - US$ 49.) Buy Now (Site Lic. - US$ 295.)

With all the talk of the new TinyBooks Pro and its obvious improvements, there is still a place for the old TinyBooks itself. If you are still using a PowerPC-based Macintosh or are running old Macintosh Operating Systems, such as Mac OS8.6 or Mac OS9, the old TinyBooks is still quite usable. You can use the links just above this paragraph to download or purchase the latest 'old' TinyBooks.


TinyBooks and TinyBooks Pro: User Comments...

Note from the Author: The following comments are all absolutely real and the best advertising I could ever have. You might ask how it's possible that so many comments are so positive, and it's simply because TinyBooks and TinyBooks Pro are both offered as shareware. You get to try the program for yourself BEFORE you purchase it. That's why I rarely ever get an unhappy customer, because if someone didn't like the program, they simply don't buy it. TinyBooks and TinyBooks Pro are free to download and free to try. I hope to add your comments here too one day.

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Download TinyBooksPro.app.zip (v7.0.5) Buy Now (Individuals - US$ 69.) Buy Now (Site Lic. - US$ 295.)
Introduction Tutorial FAQ
Requirements Version History User Comments
Invoices, Estimates, etc. Taxes Upgrade Old TinyBooks

Space-Time PICT
Copyright ©2010 by Ken Winograd
Space-Time Associates
Updated: August 5, 2010
Ken911 @ Winograd.com
http://www.winograd.com