FAQ

AloxBook turns everyday money movement into a clear ledger: every transaction says where money came from and where it went. Over time this gives you more than a list of payments - you can see which accounts changed, which expense areas grew, and whether income, savings, and regular costs still fit together.

No. In AloxBook, double-entry mostly means choosing a source and a destination. Salary might move from Income: Salary to Assets: Bank Account; groceries might move from Assets: Bank Account to Expenses: Groceries. That simple rule keeps balances, categories, and transfers consistent without requiring accounting training.

AloxBook sits between these categories. It works like a private household ledger, uses accounting-style accounts for reliable balances, and includes an Assets Overview for bank accounts, savings, loans as negative assets, and optional tangible assets. It is more than a pure budget planner, but not a full business accounting suite for payroll, tax, or audit workflows.

AloxBook is free to use. Downloads are available for Windows and Linux, including AppImage and Flatpak options on Linux. You do not need to create an online account; install the app, create or open a .aloxbook file, and start there.

Yes. AloxBook can import CSV files from your bank, show a preview before anything is saved, remember import profiles, apply matching rules, and detect duplicates. You stay in control: imported rows can be reviewed and adjusted before they become part of your book.

Start smaller than you think. A good first structure is bank accounts, cash, savings, income, and a handful of expense groups such as housing, groceries, transport, insurance, and leisure. Split a category only when the extra detail will help you make a decision; too much detail can make personal bookkeeping harder to maintain. You can always reorganize accounts later or add subaccounts when you need more detail.

Yes. Close & Carry Forward creates a fresh file for a new year or period, carries asset balances into it, starts income and expense accounts clean, and leaves the old file archived and write-protected. That keeps the account tree tidy over time. It can also suit clubs, groups, or organizations with simple internal financial tracking needs and no complex legal reporting requirements.

AloxBook does not currently connect directly to banks. Instead, you can import CSV statements with preview, saved import profiles, matching rules, and duplicate detection. Your book is a file you control: keep it on your computer, in your normal backup folder, or in a cloud-synced folder such as Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive if that fits your workflow.

Each book is a .aloxbook file in the location you choose. The file is a SQLite database, so your data is in a well-known format that can be inspected or exported with SQLite and SQLCipher-compatible tools when you choose to do so. You can copy the file to another computer and open it with AloxBook there.

Yes. AloxBook encrypts the database with SQLCipher when you set a password, protecting the file at rest while keeping it under your control on your own device.

There is no recovery back door. AloxBook does not store your password, so an encrypted book cannot be recovered without it. Keep the password somewhere safe.

Back up your .aloxbook files and keep the corresponding passwords safe. Because your financial records are regular files, a normal file backup is enough: copy them to your usual backup location, especially before moving to a new computer or after closing and carrying balances forward into a new period.