The Shelf is where your organization's paperwork lives — grant award letters, board minutes, insurance policies, contracts, and the bank statements GoodBooks files for you. It's included on every plan, and every download is logged, which is exactly what you want for documents that matter at audit time.
Where: left menu, The Shelf.
Folders and files
The left sidebar is your folder tree; the file list shows the current folder's files with name, size, and upload date. Create folders with New Folder (folders can nest). Hovering a folder in the sidebar reveals rename and delete buttons — a folder must be empty before it can be deleted (move or delete its files first), so nothing disappears by accident.
Two built-in views sit at the top of the tree: All Files shows every document with a Folder column (click a folder name to jump there), and Unfiled shows just the files that haven't been put in a folder yet.
Uploading
Upload File → drag and drop or browse. Up to 50 MB per file, any file type. You can give the file a friendly Display Name (otherwise the filename is used), pick its folder, and add a short note — the note shows as a tooltip on the list and is searchable.
Each file's row has Download, Rename, Move to folder, and Delete buttons. Deleting is permanent and confirmed first.
Files GoodBooks manages for you
When you attach a bank statement to a completed reconciliation, it's filed automatically under Bank Statements → [year] with a tidy name like "03 March Operating Checking Statement.pdf" — so the folder reads in date order and your whole statement archive builds itself.
These auto-filed documents are protected: you'll notice they have no delete button. That's deliberate — they're part of the audit trail. You can still download, rename, or move them.
Register attachments are separate. Receipts and invoices attached to transactions live with their journal entries (viewable from the register's paperclip), not on the Shelf — the entry is their context. They do count toward your storage total, which is why the Shelf's storage figure can be larger than the files you see.
Finding things
Use the global search bar at the top of the app — it searches file names and notes, and clicking a result downloads the file. On the Shelf itself, the All Files view lists everything in one place, and filing things into folders as you upload keeps the tree browsable.
The access log
The View History button shows who downloaded what and when — date and time, document, person, and IP address, newest first (the most recent 500 events). It's printable, and it's one of the always-on internal controls: document access is always recorded.
Storage
Your plan includes storage for the Shelf plus transaction attachments (Free: 100 MB, Foundation: 1 GB, Core: 5 GB, Pro: unlimited). Your current usage shows at the bottom of the Shelf — e.g. "Total Storage: 250.00 MB of 1.00 GB." When you reach your plan's limit, new uploads are blocked until you delete files you no longer need or upgrade — existing files can always still be viewed and downloaded. Document-class files (PDFs, spreadsheets, scans) go a very long way; the Shelf isn't meant as a photo or video library.
Good to know
- Everyone in your organization with a login can see the Shelf — don't store personal documents there.
- There's no bulk download; files download one at a time.
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