TinyBooks Pro Tutorial

(Step-by-Step with Screenshots)

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...

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...

...and, by the way, if the columns you see look a little different than the 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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

This little snippet of a picture 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...

In this picture, 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 shown here. 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...

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 shown here, 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.

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.

TinyBooks Pro Info

Download TinyBooksPro.zip

Buy Now (Individuals - US$ 69.)

Last Modified: January 1, 2012