For freelancers, developers, consultants and service businesses
Tax season is only painful because your books are a mess.
SlimBooks cleans them up in an afternoon. Bring in your transactions, swipe each one business or personal, and walk out with accountant-ready books — income and expenses totalled by category, including the deductions you’d have scrolled straight past.
Free to start · No credit card · Automatic bank sync $12/mo on the web, $12.99/mo in-app
Built for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs. On iPhone and Android.
What you walk out with
Hand your accountant clean, tax-ready books.
Your year's income and expenses, categorized and totalled by IRS line number, with a count for every category you used. Email it to your accountant, or type the figures straight into whatever filing software you already use.
How it works
Three moves. That's the entire app.
There is no chart of accounts, no double-entry ledger, and nothing to set up.
Import
Connect a bank and transactions arrive on their own, or upload a CSV from any bank. Typing one in by hand works too.
Sort
Transactions come up one at a time — swipe right for business, left for personal. That's the only question at this stage. No categories to choose, no spreadsheets to fill in. A wrong swipe undoes in a tap.
Categorize
Business transactions get a suggested income or expense category already filled in — a head start, not a decision. Confirm or select a different category.
And it gets faster.
Every time you categorize a transaction, SlimBooks files that away for next time. When the same merchant comes up again, the category is already filled in and you confirm it instead of manually choosing it. The more you sort, the less time each month takes.
Your correction wins. Categorize a software subscription as Office Expenses once, and that merchant comes back as Office Expenses from then on.
You are in control of every category. A suggestion is only filled in, never applied. You confirm every transaction before it reaches a report.
Suggestions come with connected accounts. They rely on the merchant detail a bank connection carries, so they only apply to transactions that sync in on their own. That is the paid plan, $12/mo on the web or $12.99/mo in-app.
Is it for you?
SlimBooks does one kind of business, properly.
Two questions decide it: how you file, and whether you carry inventory. SlimBooks is bookkeeping for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs that don't hold inventory — freelancers, developers, consultants and service businesses. Signing up asks both, and tells you right there if it's the right fit.
Built for you if…
- You sell your time and skillSoftware developers, designers, consultants, writers, photographers, coaches, contractors — you bill for your work, not for goods.
- Your business doesn't hold inventoryYour costs are your own expenses — software, mileage, equipment, a home office — not goods you buy to resell.
- You're a sole proprietor or a single-member LLCYou file a Schedule C with your personal return. Staff are fine — wages and benefits are expenses to categorize like any other, though SlimBooks doesn't run the payroll itself.
Not the right tool if…
- You carry or sell inventoryCost of goods sold means Form 1125-A and inventory tracking SlimBooks doesn't do.
- You've elected S-Corp treatmentPlenty of S-Corps are LLCs — it's the election that matters, not the entity. That's an 1120-S, a different return entirely.
- You file as a partnership or C-CorpForm 1065 and Form 1120 need books SlimBooks isn't built to keep.
Don't leave money on the table
The deduction you miss isn't the one you got wrong. It's the one you never looked at.
The home office, the mileage, the software subscriptions — they are already in your transactions. A transaction you never categorized never reaches your return, so it never lowers what you owe. Going through the year once, transaction by transaction, is what turns your spending into deductions.
Every Schedule C line, on the table
Every expense line on Schedule C, mapped for you. These are the ones a service business spends the most on. Your report comes out with a count and a total for every category you used, so “did I get everything?” becomes a question you can answer.
- Home Office
- Car & Truck
- Office Expenses
- Contract Labor
- Depreciation
- Travel
- Meals
- Legal & Professional
- and the rest of the list, from Advertising to Wages
And the ones that vanish in a spreadsheet
These come out of the business account but get claimed elsewhere on your return — which is exactly why they get lost. SlimBooks keeps them in their own bucket instead of burying them in expenses.
- Owner health insurance
- Owner retirement plans
- HSA contributions
- Federal estimated taxes
- State estimated taxes
- Charitable donations
SlimBooks organizes what you spent so nothing goes unexamined. What you can deduct is between you and your accountant — we’re not a tax preparer and we don’t give tax advice.
Security & privacy
It's your bank account. We treat it that way.
Bank connections run on Plaid, the service thousands of finance apps use to link accounts. Your credentials go to your bank, never to us. Here is exactly what happens.
Read-only bank access
Access is read-only. SlimBooks sees your transactions and balances, and nothing else — nothing can move money, because there is no such feature to abuse.
Your transactions aren't the product
We don't sell your data and we don't advertise against it. Your transactions are used to run SlimBooks and to improve how it categorizes spending — nothing else. Our privacy policy sets out what that covers, from the narrow product analytics we collect to what we can see when we look into a problem.
Encrypted, and deletable
Bank access tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Delete your account — from the app or from this site — and your transactions, bank connections and login go with it, on the schedule and with the narrow exceptions our privacy policy spells out.
The full detail is in our privacy policy.
Pricing
Free until doing it by hand annoys you.
The whole app — sorting, categorizing, the Schedule C report — is free with CSV and manual imports. Paying automates the import, so you are not exporting anything by hand.
Manual
Free
No credit card, no trial countdown.
- Unlimited CSV imports from any bank
- Add transactions by hand
- Swipe to sort business or personal
- Every Schedule C category
- Accountant-ready PDF reports
Autopilot
$12/month
$12.99/month if you subscribe inside the app.
First 14 days free
Everything in Manual, plus:
- Automatic bank sync — no more exports
- Connect up to 2 bank accounts
- Suggested categories on everything that syncs
- Learns your merchants as you categorize
The 14-day trial is for new subscribers. After it ends Autopilot renews every month until you cancel, and you can cancel any time — cancel before the trial is up and you are not charged at all. The in-app price is higher because the App Store and Google Play take a cut of it.
Questions people actually ask.
Do I have to connect my bank account?
No. Uploading a CSV export from your bank, or entering transactions by hand, is the free plan — no card, no time limit. Connecting a bank is what Autopilot adds — transactions show up on their own instead of you fetching them.
What does it cost?
Importing by CSV or by hand is free, with no credit card and no trial clock. Autopilot — automatic bank sync, up to two connected accounts, and category suggestions on everything that syncs — is $12 a month on the web, or $12.99 a month if you subscribe inside the app through the App Store or Google Play. New subscribers start with 14 days free; after that it renews each month until you cancel, and you can cancel any time.
Will it find deductions I'm missing?
Not by inventing them — it makes sure you look at everything. A transaction you never categorized cannot reach your return, so the fix is getting through all of them with every Schedule C category in front of you — a few minutes a month, or one sitting before you file. It also keeps a separate bucket for the things that come out of the business account but get claimed elsewhere on your return, like owner health insurance, retirement contributions and estimated tax payments — the ones that usually disappear in a spreadsheet.
Does SlimBooks file my taxes?
No, and it isn't a tax preparer or a substitute for advice from one. It produces a Schedule C summary: your year's income and expenses, categorized and totalled by IRS line number. You hand that to your accountant, or use the figures in whatever filing software you already use.
What if I put something in the wrong place?
Undo is on the swipe screens, and any transaction can be re-categorized later from the transaction list. Corrections are also how the app gets sharper — it remembers what you decided for that merchant.
Why won't it work for inventory or an S-Corp?
Both need forms SlimBooks doesn't generate — Form 1125-A for cost of goods sold, Form 1120-S for an S-Corp election. The app asks two questions when you sign up and tells you upfront if it isn't a fit, rather than letting you find out in April.
Your books are one afternoon away from done.
Import what you’ve got, swipe through it, and have your Schedule C summary ready before your accountant asks for it.
Free to start · On iPhone and Android