Every business runs on paper it must not lose: bills, receipts, bank statements, leases, tax returns. The Documents vault keeps them inside the books, next to the transactions they explain.
Getting documents in
Drag files in, or upload from any screen that accepts an attachment. A document can be filed under a category (statements, bills, taxes, legal and so on), given a date and a note, and found again by any of it. The search reads names, categories and notes together, so "water march" finds the March water bill.
What is new comes first. A company's Documents list puts everything added since you last opened it at the top, marked New - whether you uploaded it there, took it with the phone Scanner, filed it from your Inbox, emailed it in, or somebody else added it. It stays on top until you sort, turn the page or upload again; the next time you open the list it takes its usual place.
A receipt or bill reads its own date off the paper, however it is written there: 09/14/2026, 2026/09/14, 14.09.2026, Sep 14 2026, 14-Sep-2026. When the paper carries no date at all (an order page that says "arriving tomorrow", a screenshot), the day the file was made is filled in, so a document never files without one; change it if it is wrong. Any date box also takes a pasted date in any of those forms.
The scanner (the /scan page, made for a phone - put it on your home screen as TaDa Books Scanner, see Getting around) asks two things - which company, and what kind of paper - then takes the picture. Tap the blue button to take it, line up the corners, then Save receipt; more than one page files as one document. Photos or files takes a picture you already have, or a PDF, instead. With no signal the receipt waits on the phone and is sent by itself when the signal is back. It remembers the company and the kind of paper, and lists your own recent uploads underneath. Somebody given Adds documents only uses the same page and sees nothing else; what they file waits in Needs review (see People and access).
Share to the Scanner (Android). Once TaDa Books Scanner is on an Android phone's home screen, it appears in the phone's Share menu: share a photo, a screenshot or a PDF from your gallery, email or files, pick TaDa Books Scanner, and it opens with the file waiting. Check the company and the kind of paper, then tap File to the company (or Discard). Several files shared at once each file as their own document. A phone may take a day to show the Scanner in its Share menu after an update; reinstalling it shows it at once. iPhone does not let web apps into its Share menu, so there use Photos or files instead.
Who sees a company's documents
A company's documents open for the people who can open its books: the account owner, the company's owners and admins, and anyone given books access of Read or higher. Store roles such as manager, payroll and schedule do not see them. Documents on the account-wide shelf are for everyone in the account.
Your Inbox: documents waiting to be sorted
Read and unread, like email. A paper you have not opened yet is bold with a violet dot, and the Inbox's number counts those. Opening it marks it read; Mark as unread in the open paper (or the envelope on its row, or Mark unread for several picked) puts it back. Papers already in the Inbox when this arrived started as read.
Open it from Inbox under Documents in any company's menu (hover the Documents row; the count shows how many papers wait), or from the Inbox button on All companies. It is the same Inbox wherever you open it.
Your Inbox holds any paper that does not belong to a company yet: mail, receipts, statements, letters. Only you see it.
- Add documents with Upload in the Inbox (or drop files on its list), or scan them with the Scanner and pick Your inbox.
- See one, and fix what was read. Press a paper's name (or double-click its row): it opens in a window with the paper on the left and its details on the right. Change its name, who it is from, the amount or the date on the paper there and press Save. The reader names a paper from its first lines, which can be long or garbled, and can take a "care of" line for the sender.
- Download it. Every window that shows a paper has Download, and each row in a company's Documents has a View button (the paper in a window) and a Download button (the original file, under its own name).
- Find one. Sort by any column, and narrow the list with Added by (who put it in) and Added (today, the last 7, 30 or 90 days).
- A helper can add them too. Invite an assistant, or the store that holds your mailbox, from the Inbox: their name, their email (it is how they sign in; nothing is emailed) and, if you like, the day their access ends. You get a temporary password and a link to send them by text. They sign in to the Scanner, where your Inbox is the only place they can add to, and they never see any of your companies. They see only the titles and dates of their own recent drops, and can Take back one until you deal with it. You get a phone notice when a batch arrives.
- Email papers in. In the Inbox, Turn on email-in gives you a private address only you know. Forward a bill, a notice or a receipt to it from your phone: each PDF or picture attached arrives as a document, and an email with none arrives as a PDF of its own text. At first only your own email addresses can send, and only when the mail service confirms it really came from you; switch Who may send to Anyone to let a store or a client send papers too (anyone who learns the address can, so use New address if it spreads - the old one stops working at once). Mail marked as spam is never taken, nothing is ever sent back to the sender, and Last emails shows what each one brought or why it was not kept. An Inbox takes up to 20 papers a day by email (fewer on a plan with a small daily upload allowance), and email stops for the day once the account has used half of its daily uploads, so it never spends yours.
- You sort it. Each document shows the paper, the sender, the amount and the date, with a suggested company (where that sender's papers went before). File it to the company it belongs to (it joins that company's documents, ready to attach), Keep as personal (the violet shelf symbol), or Delete it (the red bin); the envelope marks the picked pieces read or unread, and each symbol names itself on hover. Select several to do one thing to all of them. The refresh button beside Upload shows anything added since the window opened (a helper's scan, an emailed paper); coming back to the browser tab refreshes it by itself.
- Private to you. Nobody else in your account sees your Inbox or your Personal shelf - not other users, not your accountant. End access for a helper any day; what they already added stays.
- Star, pin and date - three separate things. Each row has three small buttons beside its checkbox, and the paper's own window has the same three under Keep track of it: - The star marks a paper so you can find it again. It moves nothing, and the dashboard's Inbox button counts your starred papers. Pick several and use the star beside the select-all box to star them all. A helper can star their own scan on the Scanner ("this one looks important") until you have dealt with it. - The pin keeps a paper at the top of the list whatever you sort by; pinned papers carry a violet edge. - The calendar button gives any paper a Handle by date, starred or not - a notice to answer, a renewal, anything with a deadline. The paper goes on your Calendar, the chip under its title turns amber in the last week and red when the day comes, and the dashboard's Inbox button counts what is due within the week.
- Tax notices mark themselves. When a paper is recognised as a tax agency's notice (an IRS CP2000 or Notice of Intent to Levy, for example), it arrives already starred, wears "IRS notice", is filed as Tax Notices, and gets the date to answer by that it prints - or, when it prints none, the window the agency publishes. Take the star off and it stays off, even if you read the paper again.
- Send it to your accountant. The folder icon on an Inbox row puts the paper in a company's tax folder for a year, under From you, where your accountant sees it (and is told). It leaves your Inbox - unless it is starred or has a date, so those keep working. From a company's own paper, Send to accountant in its window puts a copy in that company's folder and the paper stays in Documents.
- The marks travel. Filed to a company, a paper keeps its star and its date: the company's Documents tab has a Starred filter, and the date shows on that company's Calendar. Change either in the paper's window.
Who has an Inbox. The account owner, and every admin who can open the books of a company in the account - an office manager, an accountant you invited. Each Inbox is private to the person who holds it: not even the account owner sees anyone else's. A person who signs in only to the Scanner (a helper) adds to an Inbox but has none. Adding a helper adds a person to the account, so it takes the account owner or someone with the right to give access. A file you keep privately never blocks anyone else from filing the same file, and nobody else can tell it is there. When the account owner switches someone off, their private papers stay private; thirty days later the owner can delete them without opening them (Users & Access, that person's Actions), seeing only how many there are and how big.
Which documents need a look
Every receipt or bill that is read gets a confidence for each of four things: the amount (sure when it sat on a line labeled as the amount owed), the date (sure when it was labeled, as "Invoice date", "Order placed" or "Date of purchase" are; unsure when the paper printed no year, or had several dates and none labeled). A date written as numbers follows the paper's own order: if any date on it has a first number over 12 (31/08/2026), every date on that paper is read day first, so 06/08/2026 is August 6. A paper in another language or currency whose dates could read either way, with nothing on it to decide, is marked to check, the vendor (sure when you have filed papers from them before) and the category (sure when it is where that vendor's papers usually go). The date and time a web browser prints at the top of a page you printed is not taken as the document's date. Anything you save yourself counts as sure, even when it is the same value the reader found. When a document's values are right as they are, open it and click Looks right in the amber band that names what the reader was unsure of - nothing has to be changed. A vendor that is one of the company's contacts counts as sure, including on papers filed before the contact was added.
Each document also has Notes, for anything worth keeping with the paper - for example the amount in the currency it was printed in, when you record it in dollars.
Papers in other languages and currencies
Under Languages on your papers (in Documents settings, or behind the reading button on the Documents tab of your books) you pick the languages your receipts and invoices are printed in. English is always read. Photos and scanned pages are then also read in the languages you add, so a label or a currency the paper prints in its own language is seen. Each language added makes reading a photo a little slower. It applies to every company in the account. A paper clearly printed in another script the reader knows (Hebrew today) is noticed even when you have not turned that language on.
A document's currency is decided only from what the paper prints: a currency symbol (such as € or ₪), the currency's code beside an amount ("1,770.00 ILS"), or how the currency is written in the paper's language. Where the vendor is or what it billed before never decides it. A paper in another currency shows its amount in that currency in the lists (₪1,770.00), and its window shows a currency box beside Amount. The box appears only when it can matter: the paper is in another currency, or your papers are read in another language. Books with English papers in dollars never see it.
A document with any unsure field is counted under Need a look (the button at the top of Documents, and the filter on the Documents tab of your books), and wears a chip naming what to check ("check date, vendor"). This includes receipts uploaded from the books, which file themselves. Correcting a field, or filing the document yourself, tells the reader it is right, and the document leaves the list.
You can also choose File them for me: a document the reader is sure of on every field is then filed straight away instead of waiting for review. The switch is under Documents settings, or behind the reading button (the scanner icon) on the Documents tab of your books. It applies to every company in the account, so in the books only an owner can change it.
A document's In the books links show only the entries in companies you can open. Someone with access to some of your companies does not see which entries a document is attached to in the others, and does not see documents filed to those companies at all. Documents not filed to any company stay visible to everyone in the account.
If you chose the AI service as the reading engine, a document the device reader was unsure of is read again by the AI. It only fills a field that was unsure, only when it is itself sure, and never changes anything you typed. Each read is on the AI activity list on the Plan page.
Read it again
A document whose details came out empty, or whose preview is blank, can be read again: open it and click Read it again beside Details (in Documents) or at the top of the fields (on the Documents tab of your books). It reads the stored file on your device, the same way an upload does, and makes its preview again. It only fills details that are still empty - the vendor, total, tax, date, reference number and due date - and never changes a saved date on its own; if the paper shows a different date, it offers Use that date beside Keep the saved one. If you have typed changes (a note, say), the button reads Save and read again: your changes are saved first, so nothing you typed is lost. PDFs whose pages are pictures (from a copier, a scanner or an e-fax service) are read like any other.
Reading again also settles a check that no longer applies: a document that still says "check vendor" although the vendor has since become a contact loses the check, and the message says so. It never adds a check. When the paper is in another currency and the saved amount is the paper's own figure, the document takes that currency; an amount you already converted to dollars by hand is left in dollars. To set the currency yourself, use the box beside the amount (or Other currency? when it is hidden).
Papers that are not searchable yet. Papers filed before the reader could see scanned pages were stored without their words. You can still open them, and their date, amount and vendor are there because they were typed, but a search cannot find them by what the paper says. The Documents tab shows Read again: N not searchable, which reads them all on this computer and stores their words without changing anything typed, and a Not searchable filter beside Need a look that lists exactly which ones (each wears a "not searchable" tag).
Documents that attach themselves to the work
The vault is not a shoebox; it participates:
- A bill's PDF lives on the bill. Open the bill years later and the original is right there.
- A bank statement you upload is read by the statement reader and feeds Banking, and the file stays kept.
- A utility bill that covers several properties can be read into its exact per-property split in Property Books, so one payment lands on the right buildings without arithmetic.
Tax returns
Upload your filed returns and TaDa Books reads them into a year-over-year picture: income, the schedules behind it, and how the businesses connect. It is the fastest way to hand a new accountant the whole story, and a useful check that the books and the filings tell the same one.
Deleting, and the trash
Deleting a document moves it to the trash, where it can be restored with its attachments. The trash window says whether it empties on its own. When it does, it says how long a document waits there before it is deleted for good and prints the date beside each row, so nothing disappears without a date you were shown; when it does not, a document stays until you remove it. Delete forever and Empty trash remove it at once. Documents in the trash still count against your storage until they are gone.
Room, and what happens past it
Every plan includes a room for documents, pooled across all the companies in your account and counted on live files plus the trash. Plan and standing shows the number, per company, with the bar turning amber when you are near the line. Past the room, your plan decides: on plans that bill for extra space, uploads keep going in and the extra is charged by the block, at the price the card names, for the most you held during the month, so freeing space brings next month's line down. On plans that do not, new uploads are refused until space is freed; nothing already filed is ever affected. Owners get one email when the account nears its room.
Limits
Your plan sets the largest single file, the total space, and how many documents can be filed in a day. The upload picker tells you before a file is sent when one of them is in the way, and what to do about it.
Safe by default
Documents live in your account's private storage, served only to people with access to that company. Downloads are always available, one by one or as part of your full backup.
Archiving old documents to your own computer
When years of receipts are weighing on your storage, move the old ones out. On the Documents tab press the archive button (beside the trash). Pick a cutoff date: every document of this company dated before it is counted, with its total size. Documents with no printed date are never included; the window tells you how many there are so you can date them first if you want them in.
Press Download the archive (zip). The zip holds every file, a documents.csv listing each one with the folder it sits in, and a README. Nothing has been removed at this point.
Open the zip and check it. Only then tick I have opened the zip and press Remove the files from TaDa Books. The files leave TaDa Books for good and stop counting against your storage. Each document keeps its details here (title, date, amount, which entry it was attached to) with an "archived to your copy" chip carrying the date, so the books never lose the trail. Keep the zip somewhere safe: from that moment it is the only copy of those files.
Account-wide documents (a lease shared by several companies) are never archived from inside one company.