Start here
Set up a training business
Install ByteBook, answer four questions, and give yourself a role you can hand over.
Install it
On a Mac, open the ByteBook disk image and drag ByteBook into Applications. That is the whole install. The program carries everything it needs, so it works on a computer with nothing else on it and with the internet switched off.
The first time you open it on a Mac that has not seen it before, macOS may say the developer cannot be verified. Right-click the application, choose Open, and confirm once. It will start normally from then on.
If you would rather run ByteBook from its source, the project's own readme explains that route. Everything in this handbook works the same way in either.
Answer four questions
ByteBook asks for four things the first time it opens, and then leaves you alone:
- What is the business called? Use the simulated name. Keeping the pretend business separate from the real one matters more than it sounds.
- Are you registered for GST? This decides whether GST appears on invoices and whether a GST return is expected. The simulation gives you both kinds of business, so you will meet both.
- How do you file? Monthly, two-monthly or six-monthly, on the invoice basis or the payments basis. This is the setting that later decides which transactions fall inside a return period.
- How do you invoice? Your business details, which print on every document.
Nothing here is permanent. Every answer can be changed later under Settings. Learning to find and correct a setting is part of the exercise.
Give yourself a role
By default ByteBook opens without a password, which is right for a computer only one person uses. For training it is better to switch security on, because the roles are part of what you are here to learn:
| Role | May do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything, including settings, backups and who can sign in |
| General manager | Run the books: invoices, bills, bank, GST, reports |
| Accountant | Read everything and prepare the tax numbers, change nothing |
| Auditor | Read the books and the assurance work, change nothing |
Turn on Settings → Security, set your own password first, then add the other roles. ByteBook requires your password before anyone else's access can be switched on, so a login cannot be handed out that locks the owner out.
The distinction between reading and changing is the point. An auditor who cannot change the books is not a technical detail; it is the arrangement that makes the audit worth anything.
Know where the books are
The whole bookkeeping record is one file. On the desktop application it lives in ~/Library/Application Support/ByteBook/, next to a backups folder that keeps the last thirty copies. On a source checkout it is data/bytebook.db.
That single file is worth understanding before you start. Backing up a set of books is copying one file. Moving them to another computer is copying one file. Reading them without ByteBook is opening one file. It also means the fingerprint chain described in chapter 12 has something to protect: the record is a file on a disk, and the chain is what tells you whether anyone has edited it.
Your first walk-through
Before you change anything, look at the six screens you will work in. In ByteBook's sidebar they are grouped by what they are for:
Everyday — Overview, Invoices, Bills to pay, Bank & coding, Transactions, Timesheets. This is where the business happens.
Understand — Reports, GST, Assistant, Audit trail, Assurance, The chain. This is where you read what the business did.
Set up — Customers & suppliers, Chart of accounts, Recurring, Settings, Help. This is where you configure it.