Guide

How BudgetScroll works, from your first account to the summary. It takes five minutes, and you don't have to read all of it: every section stands on its own.

The timeline

The main screen is a vertical timeline: today sits at the top and you scroll into the future. As you scroll, a fixed reading line shows the projected balance for the day it crosses, which answers the question "how much will I have on that day". When the line sits on today the projected balance label disappears, because today's balance is already the one at the top of the page.

Past and scheduled entries sit on the same line, in date order. The Today button brings you back to the top from anywhere, and the month bands tell you where you are once you have scrolled a long way out.

The total of every active account stays at the bottom. If you have more than one account, you move between them by swiping sideways.

Accounts

An account is where the money sits: a current account, the cash in your pocket, a savings account, a prepaid card. Each one has its own balance and its own page in the timeline.

The currency is chosen when you create the account and locks with the first entry. Accounts in different currencies are never added together, because no exchange rate is stored: the overall total shows one currency at a time. Amounts use the decimals of the account's currency: two for the euro, none for the yen.

Mark the account you use most as your favourite and the app opens there. The order of the pages is a separate setting, and it belongs to this device.

Accounts aren't deleted, they're archived: the account leaves the timeline and the totals, but its entries stay where they are, so your past still adds up.

How money moves

The account says where the money is; the payment instrument says how it comes in or goes out. Every account has at least one, and every instrument belongs for good to the account it was created on.

• Bank transfer and cash come with the account: one of each, and they can't be removed.
• A debit card is optional, one per account, and takes the money straight away, like a transfer.
• Credit cards have a name you choose, and you can have as many as you like on the same account. They are the only ones that pay later.

A prepaid card is the exception: it isn't an instrument but an account, because it holds money of its own. Its available amount is its balance, and topping it up is a transfer.

Recording an entry

The round button at the bottom of the timeline offers two paths: New entry and New transfer. An entry is recorded in steps, one question per screen: which account (the one you were looking at sits on top), income or expense, and with what, meaning the payment instrument. When a question has only one possible answer, say because you have a single account, that step is skipped.

The form comes last, already filled in with your choices: what's left is the amount, the category and the date, while description and note are optional. Everything can still be changed, including what you picked in the steps, and you can always go back to the previous step.

Two switches are worth a word. Repeat turns the entry into a series (more on that below). Exclude from summary keeps the entry in the timeline and in the balance, which stay true, but leaves it out of the summary totals: useful for the large one-off figures that would otherwise ruin any comparison between months.

Nothing is stored until you tap Save, so you can change your mind and leave without a trace.

Categories

Every entry has a category, and categories mostly serve the summary. They are split by direction and grouped, so the list stays readable.

For income: Work (Salary, Extra pay, Welfare, Freelance, Pension), Assets (Investments, Rental income), Occasional (Refund, Sales, Gifts received). On its own at the end sits Loan received: the capital your bank pays out when you take on a loan. It isn't earnings, it's debt arriving as cash, and the instalments that repay it go out under Financing.

For expenses: Home, Everyday, Fixed costs and Leisure, plus Other at the end for whatever fits nowhere else.

One note on a mortgage: it belongs in Home, not in Financing, because the question it answers is "what does the house cost me". Financing is for loans and instalment purchases.

Transfers

Moving money between two of your own accounts is neither income nor an expense, so it's recorded as a transfer: one entry, not two. You pick where it leaves from and where it lands, and the app updates both balances.

A transfer goes in steps too: from which account, with which instrument the money leaves, and to which account. The outgoing instrument matters because it decides when the money really leaves: straight away by bank transfer, with the following month's statement on a credit card. The app picks the incoming one, and you can still change it in the form.

Transfers always stay out of the income and expense summary: counting them would invent earnings and spending that never happened.

If the two accounts use different currencies, you also enter how much actually arrived, because only you know the rate your bank applied. That is why a transfer between currencies can't be a recurring one.

Credit cards

This is the part that surprises people most, and it's deliberate. A credit card purchase doesn't touch your balance on the day you make it: it shows up in the timeline as a line for information, but no money leaves the account.

Every purchase in a month is pooled into a statement, charged in one go on the day you set for that card, the following month. On the timeline the statement carries the card's name, so several cards stay apart, and tapping it opens the purchases that make it up. This is what lets the timeline tell you what you will really have on the day it lands.

A card's available amount is a different thing from a balance: it's the spending limit minus what you have already spent in the current calendar month, and it resets on the first, whatever day the card is charged. It counts everything that goes through the card, including prepaid top-ups.

Recurring entries

Salary, rent, subscriptions, bills: record them once with the right frequency and they fill the timeline on their own, months ahead. It's what makes the projected balance a number worth trusting.

Any single occurrence can still be changed. If you edit one month, the app asks whether to apply the change to that one only or to this and following ones: the series survives either way. In the same way you can skip a single occurrence, say the month the gym is closed.

The list of series lives in Settings → Recurring, grouped by account: in each one income comes first, then expenses and transfers, and every series shows its next occurrence. At the top, the same type filters as in search show one type only. Skipped occurrences sit at the bottom, where you can bring them back.

Finding an entry

The magnifier at the bottom left, above the timeline, opens a search that runs across every account at once — the one place in the app where you look at the whole picture instead of a single page.

You can search by description, note, category, account or card. The two rows of filters narrow things down by type — income, expenses, transfers — and by period, which can be this month, this year, a single day, or a date range you pick yourself.

From any result, one tap takes you back to its day on the timeline, even when it's months back or on another account: search is there to find things, not to pull you away from where you were looking.

The summary

The summary adds up income and expenses over a period and breaks them down by category, showing how much each one weighs. It answers "where did the money go", which is a different question from the one the timeline answers.

That's exactly why the two figures can disagree, and that's correct. The timeline follows cash, meaning when money actually moves; the summary works on an accrual basis, meaning the day the spending belongs to. On a credit purchase those two dates fall in different months.

On an unfolded iPhone Duo the summary sits next to the timeline and follows the month of the reading line: as you scroll, it changes month on its own.

The widget

You can keep an eye on your entries from the Home Screen without opening the app, in medium and large sizes. Press and hold the widget to choose what it shows (upcoming payments, today's entries or recent entries) and whether it follows one account or all of them; you can add more than one, each with its own. The switches hide the balance, transfers and amounts: across all accounts a transfer would take two rows, one for each side.

Settings and data

The language can be one of ten, or follow your iPhone's. The theme can be light, dark or system, and density decides how tightly the timeline rows sit together.

The app lock puts Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode in front of the app.

Under Data you can export everything to a readable JSON file, choosing the date range, and import it back whenever you want. It's also your only safety net against erasing everything, which is permanent and reaches your other devices.

Your data stays on your device and in your private iCloud, and syncs itself between iPhones signed in to the same account. It never passes through any server of mine: the details are in the privacy policy.

If something doesn't add up, or this guide is missing what you were looking for, write to me from the support page: I answer personally.