This guide walks through every screen and feature. Two words appear throughout the app:

Lena — you'll receive money a customer owes you (their udhaar).   Dena — you'll pay money you owe a supplier.

1Getting started

The first time you open Businessly, it asks one simple thing: how do you want to start?

1. Tap Sign in with Google (recommended) for a free cloud backup that's ready on all your devices — or tap Use offline on this phone to start straight away with no account.
2. If you choose offline, you're then asked for your shop name and type (kirana, medical, electronics, …) — the type pre-loads a starter product list and labels suited to that kind of shop. You can change these later in Settings.
3. Either way you're in seconds later. You can always sign in for backup afterwards.

Local-first: Businessly works fully offline — you never have to sign in. Signing in only adds cloud backup and lets you use the app on more than one device (phones and Windows PC).

A new install starts with a little sample data (a few customers, sales and products) so you can explore. You can clear it any time from Settings → Delete all data.

Signing in later? If you've been using Businessly offline and then sign in, it asks whether to keep the book that's already on this phone or switch to the one in your Google account — so your existing entries are never overwritten by accident.

2The Home screen

Home is your daily dashboard. From top to bottom:

Card	What it shows
You'll receive	Total udhaar all customers owe you right now.
You'll pay	Total you owe your suppliers.
Customers	How many customers and suppliers you track.
Today's cash	Cash that came in and went out today.
Cash in hand	Money in your till right now.
Expenses (month)	This month's total business expenses.
Cash flow	A 7-day bar chart of money in (green) vs out (red).
Recent activity	Your latest entries, newest first.

The five tabs along the bottom are: Customers · Cash · Home · Bills · More. The big green + New entry button is your fastest way to record anything.

3Record a sale or payment

Tap + New entry on Home to open the quick-actions menu. It has six clear choices:

4Customers & suppliers

The Customers tab lists everyone you trade with. Use the toggle at the top to switch between Customers and Suppliers, and the search box to find a name or phone number.

Each row shows the person's name and their current balance — green if they owe you, red if you owe them.

Adding someone

• Tap the + Customer / + Supplier button.
• Or tap From contacts to pull someone straight from your phone. If that contact has more than one number, Businessly lets you pick which (with its Home / Work / Mobile label), and brings their email along too.

Duplicate names: if you add a name that already exists, Businessly warns you first so you don't accidentally create two ledgers for the same person.

5Statement & reminders

Tap any customer to open their statement — a running history of everything between you, with the balance after each entry.

What you can do here

• Record a new sale, payment or cash entry for this customer.
• Fix a mistake — tap an entry to undo (reverse) it. Reversed entries stay visible (struck through) for honesty, but no longer affect the balance.
• Set a due date for when the udhaar should be cleared — overdue balances are flagged.
• Send a reminder over WhatsApp in one tap — the amount and a polite message are filled in for you. (Prefer SMS? The message is selectable, so you can copy it into your texting app.)
• Export this customer's statement for a date range as a PDF.

Editing an entry

Typed the wrong amount or note? Tap a sale, purchase, payment, cash or expense entry and choose Edit. Businessly corrects it in an honest way: the entry shows a small "(edited)" tag, and you can tap it to peek at the original values. Nothing is silently rewritten — the trail always explains itself. (Bill and installment payments are managed from their own screens with Record / Undo, so they don't offer a free edit.)

6Cash book

The Cash tab is your till. It lists every cash movement — in and out — and shows your cash in hand at the top.

• Money in appears in green, money out in red.
• Use the date filter at the top to focus on a day, week, month, or a custom range.
• Tap Share to export the filtered cash book as a PDF or Excel file.

Cash entries that are linked to a customer or supplier (like a payment received) also show up in that party's statement automatically — your cash and your ledgers always agree.

7Expenses

Track what your shop spends — rent, electricity, transport, wages and more. Each expense has a category and an amount, and an optional date so you can record a cost for an earlier day.

Your monthly expense total appears on the Home dashboard, so you always know your running costs at a glance.

Recording an expense as paid in cash also reduces your cash in hand — with a toggle for "paid later" when you haven't paid yet.

8Collect udhaar

The Collect view gathers every customer who owes you money, sorted so the biggest balances are easy to find.

• See at a glance who owes you and how much.
• Tap the reminder bell next to a customer to send them a friendly WhatsApp message with the outstanding amount — no typing needed.

It's the quickest way to do your daily udhaar follow-ups.

9Products & stock

If you run a kirana / general store, keep a catalogue of what you sell. For each product you can record:

Stock updates automatically as you sell or buy items, and the Products tab shows your total inventory value and any low-stock alerts.

10Bills & rent (recurring)

The Bills tab holds things you pay (or receive) every month — shop rent, electricity, salaries, a tenant's rent. Each is a template: set the name, amount and the day of the month it's due.

Businessly never charges you automatically. Each period it shows the bill as Due or Overdue; you tap Record when you actually pay, and the real cash/expense entry is created then.

This keeps your books honest — a bill only affects your cash once you've genuinely paid it.

Bills ⇄ Expenses switch: the Bills tab is shared with your Expenses list. Tap the tab again (look for the little ▾ arrow on its icon) to switch between Bills and Expenses — it remembers whichever you used last.

11Properties & rent

If you rent out a shop or flat — or pay rent on one yourself — the Properties screen (the 4th option on the Bills tab) tracks each one. A property is either rent in (a tenant pays you) or rent out (you pay a landlord).

1. Add a property with just a name (e.g. "Shop #2, Saddar").
2. When it's let, tap Start rental — pick the tenant, the monthly rent, the start month, and an optional deposit.
3. Each month shows as paid or due; tap Mark paid when rent comes in (or Undo a mistake). Send a tenant a WhatsApp reminder in one tap.
4. When the tenant leaves, tap End rental — the property goes back to vacant, ready to let again.

Rent flows through the same cash book and statements as everything else, so your totals always stay correct — properties are just a friendlier view onto your recurring rent.

12Selling on installments (قسطیں)

Sold something expensive that a customer will pay off over several months — a bicycle, a fan, a phone? Create an installment plan from the Bills tab (tap + Add → installment).

• Pick the customer, type what they bought, the total price, an optional down payment, how many monthly installments, and the day of the month each is due.
• The full price goes onto the customer's khata straight away, so their balance is always correct.
• Each month the plan shows how many installments are paid, the amount still left, and the next due date. When the customer pays, tap Record (or Mark paid on the plan's schedule) — it records that installment and lowers their balance.

No interest, no surprises — the installments always add up to exactly the price you set. The last installment quietly absorbs any rounding so the total is never off by a paisa.

Guarantor: you can record a guarantor (zamin) for a plan — their name and number. If payments fall behind, one tap sends the guarantor a polite WhatsApp follow-up.

13Reminders & notifications

Businessly can quietly remind you on your phone about money that's due, and help you remind customers over WhatsApp. Find both under More.

Phone notifications (More → Reminders)

• Turn reminders on, pick a daily time, and choose which kinds you want: installments due, guarantor follow-ups, bills & rent, and a monthly udhaar digest.
• Each kind has an editable message with {tokens} like {name} and {amount} that the app fills in. Tap a token to insert it, preview with Show example, or Reset to default.
• Tap Send a test reminder now to confirm notifications work, and mute a reminder for the current month if you don't need it (it returns next cycle).
• Reminders are local notifications — no internet needed, and nothing is sent without you tapping it.

WhatsApp messages (More → WhatsApp messages)

The messages you send customers — balance reminder, installment reminder, guarantor reminder, bill/rent due — are also fully editable, in any language, with the same tokens.

Each template has the same Tap to insert tokens, a Show example preview, and Reset to default — so you can word every message exactly how you'd say it to a customer. Type a typo and nothing breaks: unknown tokens are simply left as-is.

14Reports & export

Need to share figures with your accountant or keep a record? Businessly exports clean PDF and Excel files.

• Choose a range — All time, This week, This month, Last month, Last 30 days, or a custom start/end.
• Export the cash book (PDF or Excel), or an individual customer statement (PDF).
• Share the file straight to WhatsApp, email or Drive, or save it to your phone.

15Backup & sync

Your data lives safely on your phone first. To protect it, Businessly offers two free, Google-powered options:

Turning on cloud backup

When you tap the backup nudge on Home (or Sign in with Google), Businessly first shows a plain-language screen — in your current app language (English or Urdu) — that explains what signing in does and which permissions it will ask for:

• Google Drive — to store your encrypted backup in your own Google account (only this app's data).
• Contacts — optional, only used when you choose to add a customer from your phone contacts.

Tap Continue with Google to sign in, or Not now to stay offline — you can always turn it on later.

Knowing your backup is healthy

Businessly watches its own backups so you don't have to:

• If a cloud backup hasn't succeeded in a while (or your Google permission lapsed), a gentle nudge appears on Home and in Settings with a one-tap Back up now.
• If you haven't backed up in 3 days, a reminder prompts you to export a copy.
• When restoring from Google Drive, a chooser lists your saved backups by date so you can pick exactly which one to restore.

16Multiple businesses

Run more than one shop? Businessly keeps each business's customers, cash, stock and bills completely separate. Tap your shop name at the top to open the switcher:

• Switch between businesses instantly — the whole app re-scopes to the one you pick (the active shop has a ✓).
• Add a business — give it a name and type; it starts empty and private to itself.
• Manage businesses — rename, or remove one you no longer need.

Keep an old book private: a business can be local-only — it stays on this device and is never synced or backed up to the cloud, so an offline shop survives even after you sign in on a new phone.

17Settings & language

The More tab is your control centre — here's everything it holds, grouped by what it does.

Look & feel

• Theme — choose a look: Ocean Blue, Premium Dark, or Bank Green.
• Language — switch between English and اردو (Urdu).
• Text size — Compact, Standard or Large, so the app reads comfortably at arm's length.

Your shop & account

• Shop name — edit the name shown on Home and on your exports.
• Account — sign in or out of Google for cloud backup and phone ↔ PC sync.
• Check for updates — see whether a newer version is out and jump to the store. Businessly also shows a quiet banner on Home when an update is available.

Backup & data

• Backup & restore — back up now, restore from a saved copy, and check your sync status (full details in Backup & sync).
• Export — save the cash book or a customer statement as a file to share or keep (see Reports & export).
• About & licenses — app version and open-source credits.

Delete all data

Removes all your data from this device — customers, entries, cash, products and bills.

Full Urdu & right-to-left support

The entire app is available in Urdu, laid out right-to-left. In Urdu mode the dates also read in Urdu — month and weekday names follow the language you choose.

18Businessly on your computer (Windows)

It's not just for phones — Businessly also runs as a Windows desktop app, free on the Microsoft Store.

It's the same Businessly, with the same data. Sign in with the same Google account on your PC and your phone, and everything syncs between them automatically. On a wide screen the app opens up into a roomier layout that makes good use of the space:

• Left sidebar — Home, Customers, Cash, Bills, Expenses, Products, Properties and Settings are always one click away (instead of the phone's bottom tabs).
• Two panes side-by-side — pick a customer, bill, product or property in the list on the left and its full detail opens on the right, so you never lose your place.
• Mouse & keyboard friendly — bigger forms open as centered dialogs, sized for a desktop window.

19Your data & privacy

• On your phone by default. Your ledger is stored locally in an encrypted database. Nothing leaves the phone unless you choose to sign in.
• Your own cloud. If you enable backup, data goes to your private Google Drive app storage — not to a company server you can't control.
• You're in charge. You can turn off backup, sign out, export your data, or delete everything at any time.

20FAQ & tips