These are crops of the file itself, version 1.4.4, rendered in an ordinary browser on a fictional business called Birchbark Strategy. They follow the order an owner meets them: the first opening, the Compass, a bank CSV, the ledger, Standing, the tax reserve, the reconciliation, the Filing Room, the Preparer Package, and the Vault's proof that the save landed. Tap any frame to open it at full size.
The first screen is not an empty ledger. It asks questions until it knows where you and
your business actually stand, and each answer turns on a named part of the app.
Answer what you know, say I don't know to the rest, and the app keeps a list of what's
still open instead of pretending you told it zero.
33 questions apply so far · fewer as you answer.
The Compass sits at the top of every screen with one move on it. Here the interview is done
and the ledger is empty, and it already has one:
Q3 estimated payment ≈ $5,350 is due in 2 days — 2026-09-15.
Log it in the Filing Room once it's sent. The reserve gauge counts payments, not
intentions.
Then: import the year. Below it the dashboard says so in plain words —
nothing in the ledger for 2026 yet; one import or one entry starts everything.
Columns are mapped from the bank's headers; the sign convention is one choice and the app says what getting it backwards would do. Before a row lands, the preview shows the first four as they will land: the coworking membership is an expense; the card autopay is a transfer · not a deduction; the retainer is income; the transfer to personal checking is an owner draw — not a deduction. 117 rows will import.
227 shown. With the year's rows in, the rules have written the category on the recurring rows — Meals (50%), Supplies, Advertising, Software & Subscriptions, Consulting. The $6,500 transfer to personal checking is held with its reason on the row: looks like an owner draw — not a deduction — click to keep. The card statement's own payoff row, at the foot of the crop, is held the same way — looks like a payment received on this card — not income — click to keep — and shown as a transfer into Birchbark Business Visa, in no income total. One row stays uncategorized until you say what it is.
KNOWN 100% · BOOKED 100% · SORTED 80% · PROVEN 22%. Under each lever
is what low means: keep answering; import a bank CSV; twenty minutes of sorting; go collect
paper. And the distinction the app insists on: Readiness asks whether this year is ready to
file. Standing asks whether the app knows your situation.
Standing here is 83%;
readiness is 52%.
Cash position $82,566; Net YTD $60,064 — income less
everything that left the business this year, owner draws included, which is why it is not the
package's net profit and should not be; and against the projected tax the reserve reads SHORT $25,568.
The strip beneath does the arithmetic out loud: Projected fed+state $33,968 vs $8,400
paid + $0 reserved. Draws taken YTD: $58,500 — the next one should carry ~39% into the Tax
Reserve Transfer category. Detail in the Filing Room.
The app asks for two numbers you can read off a statement — the opening balance on a date
and the ending balance the bank printed — and derives the rest.
Cleared balance through 2026-08-31: $78,377.76 vs statement $78,377.76
— RECONCILED ✓. On sample books the statement is the CSV itself, so the two
numbers agree by construction; the check is real, the test was easy. In the room's own words: When a statement arrives,
Reconcile is the five minutes that turns opinion into evidence.
Safe harbor — 100% of last year's $21,400 = $21,400, or $5,350 a quarter.
Two quarters
logged at $4,200 each: $2,300 behind. The federal picture is
headed for what it is — a reserve estimate, deliberately high — and says why: no
above-the-line deduction slot, no credits. Total federal $28,003,
payments logged −$8,400.
A preparer signs the return.
The Filing Room prints this. The header carries
basis of accounting: CASH · generated 2026-09-13 by The Keep (fully local books)
· ALL FIGURES DIRECTIONAL — preparer to verify. Before the first figure it says what
cash basis means for these books and what the engine does not model — retirement
contributions, HSA, home office, credits, itemizing, carryforwards, K-1 — so the direction of
the error is one-sided and the preparer knows it. Then the federal summary, by line —
Lines shown to the cent; each subtotal is the sum of the lines above it, so the column
foots.
Net profit $118,481.78, interest $20.53,
half the self-employment tax off, AGI $110,131.84; standard deduction and
QBI off, taxable income $75,225.47. Below this crop, the Schedule C draft
carries one line labeled (unmapped) — uncategorized, not yet reviewed; carried until
sorted: those are the rows left unsorted on purpose, and the draft carries them until they
are. That line is in the sample package.
Browser storage is a cache, not a home.
The books are bound to a file, rewritten on every
save — and the save is not reported done until the file has been
reopened and counted: Encrypted file saved and reopened at 12:38:35 PM —
227 entries verified in TheKeep-books.keep.json. On your machine that file is one you
choose with the browser's file picker. A headless capture cannot open a picker, so the file on
this frame lives in the browser's private file store — same write, same read-back, different
address. A rolling ring of auto-snapshots and manual backups sit beneath it.
The frames above are the shipped file on sample books; yours will carry your books and phone nobody. Check the file's checksum against the one printed on the front door before you open it.