This page covers the very first time you open SolaBooks for an organization: how you got here, how to find your way around, why you might be sent to a "setup" screen first, and where to look for help.
How you arrive in SolaBooks
There is no separate SolaBooks login. You sign in once to your Solavel workspace, then click the SolaBooks app tile. Solavel signs you into SolaBooks automatically and opens your active organization's books.
You always work inside one organization
Every SolaBooks page works on one "active organization" at a time. When you open SolaBooks, it picks the organization you were last using (or the one selected in your Solavel workspace) and loads that organization's books.
If SolaBooks cannot tell which organization you want, it sends you back to the organization picker in your Solavel workspace. Choose the organization, and you will be sent back into SolaBooks.
The rest of the documentation assumes you have an active organization. If something says "no organization selected", come back to this page.
Finding your way around
The SolaBooks sidebar has two parts:
- The icon rail on the far left — one icon per area: Dashboard, Accounts, Items, AR (Sales), AP (Purchases), Payments, Journal Entries, Projects, Reports, Documents, and Settings. Click an icon to switch areas.
- The panel next to it — the links inside the area you picked. For example, clicking AR (Sales) opens a panel with Customers, Quotes, Invoices, payments and credits, and more.
Use Collapse Menu at the bottom of the panel to fold the sidebar away and give the page more room; click again to bring it back.
At the bottom of the icon rail sits SolaAI. It answers from the public Solavel documentation, including SolaBooks and the other Solavel applications. For application-specific questions, it names the application and tells you where to open it. (Answers may be imperfect — treat them as a pointer, not a ruling.)
What you see in the menus depends on two things:
- Your role — pages and buttons you're not allowed to use are hidden. If something you expect is missing, ask your workspace administrator.
- Your subscription plan — some areas (for example Fixed Assets, Rentals, Recurring, Sales Orders, Multi-currency) only appear on plans that include them. See Subscriptions & billing in your Solavel workspace, or ask your workspace owner.
If your paid plan has expired
If your organization's paid subscription lapses, SolaBooks keeps working on the free tier. You'll see a banner — "SolaBooks is running on the free tier — paid features are locked" — with a Renew plan link that takes you to your Solavel billing pages. Your data is untouched; the plan-dependent features simply stay locked until the plan is renewed.
Why "setup" must run first
The very first time anyone opens SolaBooks for a new organization, SolaBooks does not yet know:
- which country you operate in,
- what your fiscal year is,
- what taxes apply, or
- what your chart of accounts looks like.
Until those four things exist, almost every other SolaBooks page redirects you to the setup wizard. You will see this even on the Dashboard. The wizard has four steps and takes a few minutes; you must finish all four before anything else (invoices, bills, banking, reports) becomes available.
Only an Owner (or another user your organization has allowed) can complete the wizard. If your role doesn't allow it, ask your organization Owner to finish setup, then come back.
What the four roles can do
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything, including setup, period locks, deletion, and settings. |
| Manager | Day-to-day operations; cannot edit tax rates, change account types, lock/unlock periods, or delete records permanently. |
| Accountant | Sales, purchases, payments, journals, banking, VAT returns, reports. Cannot manage organization settings. |
| Approver | Review and approve items routed to them — nothing else. |
Where to find help
- Settings → Plan & Features: see which features your plan includes and which limits apply.
- SolaAI: the assistant at the bottom of the sidebar rail — ask it about any documented Solavel application or portal workflow.
- In-page comments: most documents (invoices, bills, journals, expenses) have a comments panel where your team can discuss the document.
Next steps
- Make sure you are inside the right organization. Check the organization name in the top header.
- Open the Setup wizard if you have not yet completed it.
- Once setup is done, visit the Dashboard for an overview.
- Add your first Customers and Suppliers.
- Decide whether you need Inventory turned on, and whether you want VAT active.