LocalBooks v0.12.0

LocalBooks v0.12.0: local-first, double-entry accounting.

What's new

• Bill To and Ship To on sales forms. Invoices, sales receipts (Sold To), estimates and credit
  memos now have Bill To and Ship To boxes, filled from the customer and editable on each form, plus
  P.O. No. and FOB. Each document keeps its own copy of the addresses, so changing a
  customer's address later leaves saved documents as they were. They print and email with the
  form; the form designer can turn Ship To and P.O. No. off.

• A fuller customer record. Customers now have a shipping address next to the billing
  address, a contact and an alternate contact, alternate phone, fax, website, account number,
  credit limit and resale number. A job without its own addresses uses its customer's.

• Credit limit warning. When an invoice would take a customer over their credit limit,
  LocalBooks shows what they owe now and would owe, and asks before saving. It never blocks the
  sale.

• Row menus stay on screen. A row's ▾ actions menu near the bottom of the window now opens
  upward instead of running off the edge.

• Subtotals, discounts, other charges and groups on sales forms. On invoices, sales receipts
  and estimates, choose Subtotal in the Product/Service list to add up the lines above it. A
  new item type, Discount, takes an amount or a percentage off the line above (an item, a group
  or a subtotal) and can lower the taxable amount. Other charge items add shipping, handling or
  a percentage fee. Groups (Products & Services › Groups…) fill in several items at once and can
  print as a single line. They print in place, come back when you edit, and carry from an estimate
  to its invoice; discount items show in Sales by Product/Service.

• Edit an invoice or bill that's already part paid. An invoice with payments or credit memos
  applied, or a bill with payments or vendor credits applied, now opens for editing instead of
  asking you to void the payments first. The form tells you how much is applied, and saving keeps
  it all applied to the corrected version, so the open balance is the new total less what was
  paid. Deposits and reconciliations aren't affected. The edit is refused, with a message saying
  why, if the new total would be less than what's applied or the customer or vendor changes.

• Defaults for selling, getting paid and paying bills. New Company Preferences in Sales &
  Customers, Jobs & Estimates, Payments, Bills and Send Forms:

  • Receive Payments applies an amount to the invoice with exactly that balance, or else the
    oldest invoices first. You can choose oldest first only, or tick invoices yourself, and ticking
    invoices now works out the amount received. A tick column is new on the form.
  • Payments and sales receipts go to Undeposited Funds unless you turn that off. Sales receipts
    used to start on your first bank account; they now start on Undeposited Funds.
  • A new bill is due after the vendor's terms. For a vendor without terms, it is due 10 days after
    the bill date, or the days you set. Bills used to be due in 30 days whatever the vendor's
    terms.
  • Pay Bills can use each vendor's open credits on the bills you tick, oldest credit first, and
    take the early-payment discount a bill's terms offer when paid in time, then pay only the rest.
  • Your usual Ship Via fills in on new invoices, sales receipts and estimates.
  • A warning before selling to a customer with overdue invoices (off until you turn it on).
  • Turn off estimates or price levels if you don't use them, rename the five job statuses, and
    give jobs a status on the customer's Edit….
  • Each customer has a Preferred delivery (Email, Print or None) that ticks Email later or
    Print later on their new forms; new customers take the Send Forms default.
  • Change Item Prices starts from the default markup when you price from cost.

• No more "database is locked" when several things save at once. On a slow disk, a save
  that had to wait for another one could give up after five seconds; it now waits its turn.

• Report preferences. Preferences › Reports & Graphs now sets whether Profit and Loss opens on
  the accrual or cash basis, whether A/R and A/P Aging count from the due date or the transaction
  date, and whether items show by name, description or both. Accounting › Company Preferences can
  hide account numbers in reports or show only a subaccount's own name.

• Choose where accounts go on the Statement of Cash Flows. Preferences › Reports & Graphs lists
  each balance sheet account with its section (operating, investing or financing); move one and the
  statement follows.

• See a report's options first. Turn on Show the report's options before running it
  (Reports & Graphs › My Preferences) and a report asks for its dates before it runs.

• Preferences look the way you expect. Settings › Preferences (Edit › Preferences) now lists
  the familiar categories on the left: Accounting, Bills, Checking, Desktop View, General, Sales &
  Customers and the rest, each with My Preferences and Company Preferences tabs. Settings
  that live on their own screen, like sales tax rates or email, are linked from their category.

• Warnings before saving, with Save anyway. LocalBooks now asks before saving a check whose
  number was already used on that bank account, a bill whose number was already used for that
  vendor, a transaction dated more than 90 days ago or 30 days ahead, or a posting to Retained
  Earnings. Click Save anyway to record it as entered. Admins change the days, or turn each
  warning off, in the Checking, Bills and Accounting company preferences.

• Type amounts without a decimal point. Turn on Automatically place a decimal point
  (Preferences › General › My Preferences) and 1234 becomes 12.34; the box shows 12.34 as soon
  as you leave it.

• More General preferences. Beep when a transaction is recorded; warn before editing a posted
  transaction or voiding one (both on, and now each can be turned off); bring back messages you
  turned off with Don't show this message again; and choose whether a description or price you
  typed stays when you change the item on a sales line (ask, always or never).

• Journal entry memos fill in. A new journal entry line takes the first line's memo
  (Preferences › Accounting › My Preferences).

• Two-digit years and decimal hours. Company Preferences › General can show dates as 10/13/26
  and hours as 1.50 instead of 1:30.

• Sales tax on the cash basis, and your filing period. In Preferences › Sales Tax, choose
  whether you owe sales tax when you invoice or when you are paid, and whether you file monthly,
  quarterly or yearly. The Sales Tax report and Pay sales tax follow the basis (on cash, an invoice
  counts as it is paid), open on your filing period, and Reminders shows the next return. Printed
  invoices, sales receipts and estimates can mark taxable lines with a T.

• Bill expenses to customers. Tick Bill? on a check, expense or bill line for a customer,
  then invoice those costs from Sales › Bill Costs, with a markup. Preferences › Time &
  Expenses can tick Bill? for you, count reimbursements as income and set the default markup.

• 1099 boxes. Map expense accounts to 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC boxes in Preferences › Tax: 1099;
  the 1099 Summary and Detail now show each box. Payments made from 2026 use the new $2,000
  threshold ($600 before). Don't file 1099s? Turn them off and the 1099 fields and reports go away.

• Work week, billable time and finance charges. Weekly timesheets can start on any day, new
  time can start billable, and finance charges can run from the invoice date instead of the due
  date.

• Inventory switches. Warn, stop or say nothing when a sale would take stock below zero, and
  turn inventory and purchase orders off if you don't use them (Preferences › Items & Inventory).

• Checking preferences. Put the vendor's account number (a new Account no. on the vendor)
  in check memos, re-date checks to the day they print, and choose the account Write Checks, Pay
  Bills and Make Deposits open with.

• Recall a vendor's last bill or check. Turn on Automatically recall information
  (Preferences › General › My Preferences) and a new bill or check for a vendor you have paid before
  starts with the same accounts, and amounts if you like.

• Terms, Payment Method, types and customer messages lists. Lists › Customer & Vendor Profile
  Lists now has a Terms list (with early-payment discounts such as 2% 10 Net 30), a Payment
  Method list (Visa, Check…), Customer, Vendor and Job Types, and Customer Messages. Customers
  and vendors get a default term and a type. On invoices and bills the Terms box fills in from the
  customer or vendor and sets the due date; Receive Payments and Pay Bills show the discount
  offered and its last day. A customer message picked on an invoice, sales receipt or estimate
  prints on it. The Terms and Payment method boxes end in ＋ Add new….

• Safer Excel imports. A damaged or deliberately malformed .xls report file can no longer
  crash LocalBooks or make it run out of memory while importing (the Excel reader is updated).

• Type checks and deposits straight into a register. Bank and credit card registers end in a
  blank row: enter the date, number, payee, account, memo and an amount, then click Record (or
  press Enter). A bank payment becomes a check, a deposit a deposit, a card charge an expense and a
  card payment a card credit, just as their forms would make them. Restore clears the row and
  Splits… spreads it over several accounts.

• Find and filter in a register. Go To… finds a transaction by number, payee, memo or
  amount; Dates shows all, this month, this year or your own range; 2-line puts the account
  and memo on a second line. The No. column now shows each check's, invoice's or bill's own
  number.

• QuickReport, Transaction History and Transaction Journal. Press Ctrl+Q in a register, or
  on an account, customer, vendor or item in its list, for a report of its transactions. Click a
  transaction and press Ctrl+H to see what is linked to it (an invoice's payments, a payment's
  deposit, a bill's payments) or Ctrl+Y for the debits and credits it posted.

• Filter a customer's or vendor's transactions. The transactions panel under the Customers and
  Vendors lists can show one transaction type and a date range.

• Print checks and invoices later, in a batch. Tick Print later on Write Checks or on an
  invoice and it waits in File › Print Forms › Checks… or Invoices…, marked To print in
  the list. Print the batch from there: checks take numbers in order from the first number on your
  check stock, and LocalBooks asks Did they all print? so only the ones that came out right
  keep their numbers. The forms remember whether you last left Print later on.

• Record a bounced check. Banking › Record Bounced Check… takes a deposited customer check
  the bank returned: the invoice it paid opens again, the bank goes down by the check and the
  bank's fee (posted to the expense account you choose), and a returned-check fee you charge the
  customer goes on a new invoice. Voiding the bounced check puts it all back.

• Pay down a credit card. Banking › Pay Down Credit Card… pays a card from a bank account,
  starting at what the card owes. It posts as a transfer.

• Phone lists, contact lists and more reports. A new Lists group in the report list has the
  Customer and Vendor Phone Lists and Contact Lists, the Item Listing and the
  Account Listing. Also new: Balance Sheet Summary, Profit & Loss YTD Comparison, Net
  Income Detail, Sales by Rep Detail, Average Days to Pay Summary, Unpaid Bills by Job,
  Open Purchase Orders Detail, Time by Job Summary and Detail, Time by Name, Time by
  Item, the Physical Inventory Worksheet (print it and write in the counts) and the Audit
  Trail, showing who posted, voided or changed what and when.

• Collapse and expand report headings. Click ▾ beside a heading to show only its total, or
  Collapse all to see just the totals. Reports print the way they're shown.

• Process Multiple Reports. Under Memorized reports, tick several reports and display them
  together, print them in one go (each on a new page), or save them as one Excel workbook with a
  worksheet per report.

• Imports keep your classes. Books moved from QuickBooks now arrive with their class list,
  subclasses included, and every transaction line keeps its class, so Profit & Loss by Class
  matches the original. This works for QuickBooks Desktop company files and backups (.qbw,
  .qbb), IIF files (the class list and the CLASS column), report exports with a Class column,
  and exporting from QuickBooks still installed on Windows. Classes that were hidden come in
  inactive. When an import brings classes, Track classes on transactions turns on, and the
  message after posting says so.

• Save & Close, Save & New and Clear on every form. Invoices, sales receipts, estimates, credit
  memos, bills, checks, expenses, card credits, vendor credits, purchase orders, deposits, transfers
  and journal entries now end in these three buttons. Alt+S saves and closes the form's window;
  Alt+N saves and leaves a blank form for the next one.

• Date keys in every date box. Press t for today, + or - to move a day, w / k
  for the first or last day of the week, m / h for the month and y / r for the year.
  Typing a date still works. In a check number box, + and - step the number.

• Form shortcuts. On an open form, Ctrl+D voids it (after you confirm), Ctrl+M memorizes
  it, and Ctrl+Insert / Ctrl+Delete insert or delete a line. They're also in the Edit
  menu, and the toolbar buttons show their keys when you hover over them.

Downloads

• macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel): .dmg
• Windows: .msi or -setup.exe
• Linux: .deb, .rpm or .AppImage

Installation guide: https://turbogizzmo.github.io/LocalBooks/

Already installed? LocalBooks offers this update on its own (or Settings › Updates ›
Check for updates), and saves a copy of your company file before upgrading it.

These builds are not code-signed yet: macOS may require right-click → Open the first
time, and Windows SmartScreen may ask you to confirm (More info → Run anyway).