SBB Light
SBB Light is the everyday face of Smart Business Book. It keeps everything you rely on — selling, invoices, money in and out, stock, customers, reports — and puts it on calm, fast screens built for someone running a business, not someone studying one.
Everyone now starts in Light. When you sign in, you land on the Light home. Nothing has been removed: the full dashboard, with its charts, forecasts and AI brief, is always one click away under Full dashboard at the bottom of the sidebar. Your data is the same in both — they are two views of one set of books.
Getting around
The sidebar
The sidebar is grouped the way a day runs:
| Group | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Every day | Home, Sell (the till), Invoices, Transactions, Bills, Purchases, Team |
| What you have | Products, Customers, Suppliers, Assets, Locations, Documents |
| The books | Ledger, Balances, Reconcile, Credit book, Installments |
| How it is going | Reports, Classes, Tax, Export, Recycle bin |
| Set up once | Move from QuickBooks, EFRIS (Uganda only), Settings |
On a phone or tablet the sidebar is hidden behind the menu button at the top left, and a bar along the bottom of the screen takes its place — see SBB on your phone.
The top bar
On a computer, from left to right:
- Your business name — tap it to switch to another business you run.
- Page actions — each page adds its own buttons here, such as New product or Transfer.
- Kiongozi — opens your assistant. See Kiongozi in Light.
- New — start something from anywhere: a sale, an invoice, a payment in or out, a product, a customer.
- Search — find anything. See below.
- The bell — what happened recently.
- Your initial — Refer & earn, Settings, the full dashboard, and sign out.
On a phone the top bar keeps only your business name, Search, ⋯ (the page's own buttons, with their names) and your initial. Kiongozi and New move to the bar at the bottom, and the bell becomes Notifications under your initial.
Search finds everything
Press Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac), or tap the magnifying glass. Start typing and search looks across:
- Pages — every Light page, including ones that are not in the sidebar, such as Branches, Stock transfers and Refer & earn.
- Records — customers, products, invoices and transactions by name, number or amount.
- Actions — "new invoice", "record expense", and New invoice for … a customer you type.
- Your other businesses — switch without leaving the page.
- Kiongozi — anything you type can be asked. If it reads like a question or something that happened ("who owes me money?", "I paid 40k for transport"), asking Kiongozi is the first result, so Enter sends it.
Use the arrow keys to move and Enter to open.
When the connection is not there
Light keeps working on a weak connection, and says what it is doing:
- A page that cannot refresh keeps what it last showed you. You see a line saying what failed and a Try again button, with the figures from before still on the page. It never empties itself.
- Offline shows a strip across the top: "You are offline — showing what was saved on this device." You can keep reading what was already loaded.
- Anything you record while offline waits and is sent when you are back. The same strip counts what is waiting, and tells you when anything failed to send.
- If your session has ended, the page says so and offers Sign in, instead of reading like a broken page.
Figures you can trust
A figure shown while offline is the one from the last time that page loaded, not a guess. When you are back online it refreshes on its own.
What is in this guide
- Your Light home — today's numbers, shortcuts, what needs you, your streak
- Working in the sheets — type, paste from Excel, fill down, undo, import
- Selling at the till — ringing up sales, change, split payments, receipts
- Invoices and getting paid — create, send on WhatsApp, record payments
- Transactions and balances — money in and out, filters, printing
- Bills and paying suppliers — what you owe, paying in full or part, scheduling
- Products, stock and branches — the catalogue, stock by branch, receiving
- Purchases and purchase orders — ordering, receiving, linking the bill
- Customers and suppliers
- Reports, printing and documents
- Reconcile and tax — does the bank agree, and what you owe
- People — everybody who works here, in a sheet you can paste into
- Staff and payroll — paying wages, and your people's records
- Kiongozi in Light — your assistant
- Refer & earn — earn commission for businesses you introduce
- Settings — you, the business, your sidebar, categories, notifications, paying, controls, plan
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Light FAQ