Books for One
Books for One support
Last updated 18 September 2026.
Books for One is one self-employed person's books and nothing else: what came in, what was spent and which Schedule C line it sits on, the four federal estimated payment dates and what you have paid against them, and your 1099s checked against your own ledger.
Why it will not work out my quarterly payment
You enter the annual total you intend to pay, and the app divides it by four. That is the whole computation. The figure comes from your preparer, last year's return, or your tax software.
Working it out means applying tax rules to a return this app has never seen, and a rule applied without knowing your filing status can be confidently and expensively wrong. Withholding is not subtracted either, because whether your target already allows for a job or a spouse is a fact about how you reached it. Nothing here is tax advice.
Why January still shows last year
Because the fourth quarter payment is not due in the fourth quarter. It is due on 15 January of the following year, and it is the date people miss.
So through January the schedule stays on the closing tax year, with that deadline and the payments against it still on screen, and moves on at the end of the month. Nothing is hidden by waiting: the incoming year has nothing due until April. Dates shown are nominal, and when one falls on a weekend or a federal holiday the real deadline is the next business day, which the screen says rather than asserting a date it cannot verify.
Why my payment went to a different quarter
A payment you log is applied to the earliest quarter you still owe, because that is how estimated payments are applied. Tracking each quarter independently would show you two green ticks and a penalty notice. Anything left over spills forward.
The gap between a 1099 and my ledger
A 1099 is recorded as a form, never as income. Recording it as a transaction would make the form agree with your books by construction and leave nothing to check.
It shows the difference against the income matched to that source, ranked by how material it is, and does not resolve it, because every difference has an innocent explanation and an expensive one. It names the likely causes instead: fees withheld before payout so the form reports gross, a December payment landing in January, a payer error, or a 1099-K double-reporting work already on a 1099-NEC from the client.
Income with no form against it is shown too, and is usually fine: a payer under the reporting threshold need not issue one, and it is reportable either way.
The two questions it asks instead of deciding
- How much of this was work? A laptop, a car or a meal is deductible only to the extent it was used for the work, and no receipt shows how your week went.
- Deduct, or depreciate? Items useful beyond this year are generally capitalised, and the elections that change that are a preparer's call.
Both are flagged eagerly, because asking costs one tap and not asking costs a return. Until you answer, the amount stays out of your totals and is named separately on the export.
What it does not do
A cost is proposed onto the Schedule C line such a cost usually sits on, and you can change it. Depreciation is not calculated, and meals are recorded in full with the line marked rather than having a percentage applied.
- It files nothing and sends nothing to any tax authority. It produces working papers for whoever does file.
- Federal estimated payments only. No state schedules.
- No bank connection and no statement import.
Reminders go out ahead of each deadline, on the device and by email unless you turn it off, with the amount in the reminder itself. If you have entered no target you get no email rather than a guess.
Subscriptions
Books for One is sold as a subscription through your Apple ID. The current price and billing period are shown on the purchase screen inside the app, which reads them from the App Store for your country rather than repeating a figure here.
Manage it at Settings › your name › Subscriptions. Cancelling stops the renewal and leaves the current period running to its end; we cannot cancel it for you. After a reinstall or a new device use Restore Purchases, and if it finds nothing, check you are signed in with the Apple ID that bought it. Apple is the merchant of record, so refunds are requested at reportaproblem.apple.com.
Your records
There is no password; you sign in with a code sent to your email address, and every table checks your account against the owner of the row. Your own Social Security number is never asked for. A 1099 carries the payer's identification number, which belongs to your client, and is treated as sensitive.
Deleting your account removes your profile and every source, transaction, payment, form and document, immediately and unrecoverably. Export the year first: you may be required to keep these records for years. Full policy at carrierpress.com/soleledger/privacy.
Contact
One person reads that, so a reply may take a few days.
Books for One is published by Jeffrey L Carrier.