Books
A book is an isolated bookkeeping space with its own set of accounts, categories and transactions. Most of the time a single personal book is enough, but sometimes it's handy to add a second one — for example, a separate business book for your sole proprietorship. Any book can be shared with family or colleagues.
Types of books
Personal
Created on first launch. Suited for everyday bookkeeping: budgeting, savings, trips.
Business
Separate bookkeeping for a sole proprietor, a self-employed person or a small project. The same features + counterparties as a first-class concept, a business profile, taxes and reports.
Internally both types work the same way — accounts, categories, transactions. The differences are in the business fields (profile, taxes, reports) of a business book. Sharing access with other people — inviting members and assigning roles — works in any book: it's a property of the book, not a separate type.
Create a new book
- Open Books in the sidebar (on mobile — via the ··· menu).
- Tap + New book.
- Choose the type (personal or business), enter a name and a default currency.
- Confirm — the app switches to the new book right away.
The default currency sets the currency of the first account and the format for displaying amounts. Each book can have accounts in different currencies — that's not a limitation.
Switch between books
All your books are in the list on the Books tab. The active one is marked with a dot. Click any other — instant switch: the contents of all tabs change, but the data doesn't mix.
On mobile, switching books is on the top bar next to the book name. One tap expands the list.
Transfer between books
Sometimes you need to move money between books — for example, a personal contribution to your sole proprietorship or paying yourself back from the business. This is a cross-book transfer: a single transaction creates two halves — an expense in one book and an income in the other.
- Create a transaction (+ Transaction) and go to the Transfer tab.
- Turn on the “Transfer between books” toggle.
- In the “To” block, choose the destination book and the receiving account (in “From”, the current book and the source account are already filled in).
- Enter the amount — below it, the app labels which side is the expense and which is the income on its own.
The halves are linked: editing one automatically updates the other, deleting removes both. In analytics such transfers are excluded from income and expense by default (you don't get richer or poorer by moving money between books).
Archive and deletion
A book can be archived — it disappears from the switching list, but the data is kept and becomes available again when you unarchive it. This is safer than deleting.
Deletion is irreversible: transactions, accounts, categories and history — all of it will be gone. If the book is in the cloud, the deletion syncs to all devices. Confirmation is required twice.
Deleting a personal book you've kept for a year is a very rare action. Before such a step, export to JSON: Import → Export. The file stays with you locally and needs no cloud at all to restore from.
Shared access
Any book — personal or business — can be used together with several people: invitations, roles, shared history. It's a property of the book; you don't need to create a separate one. Details are on the “Shared access” page.
In short: shared access works only with Svodly Cloud connected (member permissions live on the server). Without the cloud, the access section shows an offer to connect. Bookkeeping in the book itself doesn't depend on the cloud and works offline.
Where to go next
- Accounts — what to add to a new book after creating it.
- Categories & counterparties — tuning for your scenario.
- Sync — how to see one book on several devices.