Your books deserve better than a spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are free until tax season, then they cost a weekend. SmallBooks pulls transactions from your bank, categorizes them by your rules, and keeps the reports ready, for the price of a lunch.
Free during early access · No card required · Import your existing spreadsheet
| SmallBooks | Spreadsheets | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (Personal) · $19/mo (Business) | Free |
| Getting transactions in | Bank feeds arrive automatically (Plaid) | Copy-paste or manual entry, every week |
| Categorization | Rules: decide once, applies forever | By hand, every row |
| Receipts | Snap a photo; AI reads and attaches it | A shoebox, and a folder of photos nowhere near the numbers |
| Duplicate protection | Automatic (imports are fingerprinted) | Whatever your eyes catch |
| Error risk | Amounts come from the bank | One broken formula or fat-fingered digit away |
| Reports | P&L, cash flow, balance sheet, tax export, one click | Build pivot tables yourself |
| Invoices | Create, email, share by link, track payment | A separate template, tracked by memory |
| Tax season | Year export your accountant loads directly | A cleanup weekend (or an accountant's cleanup bill) |
| Sharing with your accountant | Reports-only login, free | Emailing files back and forth |
An honest take: when the spreadsheet is the right choice
A dozen transactions a month, one account, no invoices, and a habit of updating it weekly: keep the spreadsheet, honestly. The switch pays for itself when volume grows, when receipts start piling up, when a customer asks for an invoice, or the first time an accountant quotes you a cleanup fee. That's usually the moment people arrive here.
Common questions
When is a spreadsheet genuinely enough?
If you have a handful of transactions a month, one account, no invoices, and you enjoy full manual control, a well-kept spreadsheet works, and it costs nothing. The honest threshold: once you cross roughly 30 to 50 transactions a month or start invoicing, the hours and the error risk outgrow the savings.
What does switching from a spreadsheet look like?
Connect your bank and the history pulls in automatically (up to 24 months), or import the CSV you already have, duplicates are caught. Set a few rules for your regular payees and the ongoing work mostly disappears. Most spreadsheet keepers are fully moved in under an hour.
Is my data safer in a spreadsheet or in SmallBooks?
Spreadsheets get emailed, copied, and left in download folders unencrypted. SmallBooks encrypts data in transit and at rest, never sells it, uses read-only bank connections through Plaid, and supports two-factor authentication. The security page has the full picture.
Comparing software instead? vs QuickBooks · vs Wave · vs Xero