Getting started
Smart Business Book runs your whole business from one account: sales, expenses, inventory, invoices, payroll and reports, in any currency.
This page is about the order to set it up in, and why that order matters. A few decisions are awkward to undo once you have been trading for a month; most are not. Getting the awkward ones right first is the whole trick, and it takes about twenty minutes.
If you want the day-by-day version instead, go to Your first week.
You start in SBB Light
When you sign in you land on SBB Light, the simple everyday view of your books. Everything on this page applies to it. See the SBB Light guide for how to get around.
The one idea
SBB is a single book, not a folder of separate tools. A sale at the till, an invoice, a payroll run and a bank payment all land in the same ledger, which is why the reports agree with each other without you reconciling anything by hand.
Almost everything follows from that: set up the things the ledger hangs off before you start filling it.
Decide these first
Four decisions are much easier to make now than to change later. None of them takes long — they just need to be right.
| Decision | Why it comes first |
|---|---|
| Base currency | Every report totals in it, and historical amounts are frozen at the rate on the day. Changing it later relabels your accounts without converting them |
| Country | Sets tax behaviour, date and number formats, and which mobile money rails you can switch on |
| Branches | Every sale, shift and invoice is stamped with the branch it happened at, at the moment you record it |
| Business type | Decides which modules and starting categories you get |
Get the base currency right before you record anything
Changing it later sets every money location to the new currency without converting the numbers. A balance of 1,000,000 UGX becomes 1,000,000 of the new currency. If you trade in several currencies, that is normal and fine — see Multi-currency — but the base currency is the one your reports total in, and it should be the currency you think in.
If you have more than one place, open your branches now
This is the one people most often do too late.
Every transaction, POS shift and invoice records which branch it belongs to at the moment it is created, and there is no bulk re-assignment afterwards. So if you trade for a month and then open your second branch, that month is already attached to your main branch — permanently. Your per-branch profit & loss starts from the day the branches existed, not from the day you started trading.
Set them up first and the split is right from your first sale.
- Open Branches and rename your main branch to something real — Kabalagala rather than your company name.
- Open a branch for each other place you trade from.
- Attach each till, drawer and wallet to the branch it physically sits in.
- Leave the company bank account attached to no branch — it belongs to the business, not to one shop.
Full detail in Branches.
One place? Skip this entirely
Branches stay invisible until you open a second one. Nothing to configure, no extra columns, no picker.
Then set up, in this order
Each step makes the next one correct. Doing them out of order is not fatal, but it usually means redoing something.
| # | Step | Why here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Money locations with true opening balances | Every transaction points at one. Wrong here means wrong everywhere |
| 2 | Modules you will use this month | Decides what the rest of the app even shows you |
| 3 | Categories and, if useful, classes | Recategorising a thousand old transactions is nobody's afternoon |
| 4 | Products and opening stock counts | Only if you hold stock. Needed before the till is worth using |
| 5 | Customers who owe you, and open invoices | So "who owes me?" is answerable on day one |
| 6 | Import your history | After the structure exists, so imported rows land in the right categories |
| 7 | Your team and their roles | Once there is something to give them access to |
| 8 | Alerts and recurring entries | The things that keep it correct without you |
Steps 1 to 3 are the ones worth slowing down for. The rest can be done gradually, and the app is useful before you finish them.
Why customise at all
The honest answer: because the default is a reasonable guess about a business like yours, and you are not a business like yours — you are yours.
Customisation is not decoration. Each piece changes a question you can answer:
| Customise | The question it lets you answer |
|---|---|
| Categories | Where is the money actually going? — instead of a large "Other" |
| Classes | Which part of my business is carrying the rest? — per line, site or project |
| Branches | Which shop is actually profitable? |
| Chart of accounts | Will my accountant accept these books without rework? |
| Modules | Can my staff find things quickly? — fewer screens, less scrolling |
| Alerts | What needs me today? — instead of finding out next month |
A business that customises none of this still gets correct books. It just gets books that answer general questions, when the useful questions are specific.
But do not over-customise on day one
The most common mistake is building an elaborate structure before you have recorded anything, then discovering it does not match how the business actually runs.
Add a category the second time you need it, not the first time you imagine it. Structure that comes out of real transactions fits; structure invented in advance usually has to be undone.
What to customise first
If you only do three things, do these. They pay back within a week.
1. Your categories. Trim the defaults to what you actually spend on, and add the two or three that are specific to your trade. A shop with a real Boda & delivery category learns something every month; one filing it under Other never does.
2. Your money locations, named the way your staff speak. Front Till, Sarah's MoMo, Stanbic Current. A person should never have to guess which account a name refers to.
3. Your alerts. Pick the three that would genuinely change your day — low stock on your fastest sellers, an invoice going overdue, an unusual expense. See Alerts.
Everything else — the sidebar order, quick actions, invoice branding, AI settings — is worth doing once the daily habit is in place. It is genuinely useful, and it is not urgent.
Set up your account
- Sign up at smartbusinessbook.io/register with your email. No card needed to start.
- Verify your email and sign in.
- The onboarding wizard asks for your business name and type, country and currency, and your first money locations. Those are the decisions above — you already know your answers.
Record your first transaction
Select + Record, or open Transactions → Add Income / Add Expense. Choose the amount, the category, and which money location it touched. SBB posts the double-entry bookkeeping behind it.
Bring your history with you
Coming from Excel, QuickBooks or another system? Data import migrates transactions, products and customers, with templates provided. Do it after your categories exist, so rows land where they belong.
Common wrong turns
| What happens | What to do instead |
|---|---|
| Opening balances rounded to look tidy | Enter what is genuinely there, counted. Tidy numbers make every later reconciliation impossible |
| Importing history before setting up categories | Import afterwards, so rows land where they belong |
| Turning on every module "to explore" | Switch on what you will use this month. You can add any of them later, and your existing data flows in |
| Opening branches after a month of trading | That month stays on the main branch. Open them before you record |
| Two categories that mean the same thing | Pick one. Duplicates split your reports quietly and you will not notice until they matter |
Where to go next
- Your first week — the day-by-day plan, in order
- What is SBB? — the model in one page
- Choosing your modules · Branches · Money locations & balances
- Importing your data — coming from another system