Budget v0.5.0 — 2026-11-02

The long view. A monthly check-in with a Progress screen right after it that tracks you against a goal and a plan, Models for what-ifs (a projection with scenarios, mortgage, cost of living, deposit planner), an Investments and a Loans screen, and tracking accounts for the things you own — a flat, a car, a brokerage account. The sidebar is regrouped into Money, Wealth and Models, with go-to shortcuts everywhere. And a lot of polish: updates show their progress, screens that can't load say so, and money adds up the same everywhere.

New

Check-in and Progress

• Check-in — once a month, type each account's balance as your bank shows it. Last month's figure sits beside each field; Enter moves on, ⌘ Enter saves. Logged balances are their own series and never change the balances computed from your transactions (except for tracking accounts, below, where the logged value is the value).
• Logged vs computed — a colored accounts × months grid. One odd month stays pale; a gap that holds for two check-ins turns solid (usually a missing statement), and months logged ahead of your last import show as “not imported yet”. Rows are grouped by account group with subtotals; hover highlights the row and column, click a cell to fix a logged value in place, click an account to open it. Months and tolerance are remembered.
• Progress — finish a check-in and you land here: net worth, this month and the total against your plan, the share of your goal, and when you'll reach it (plan pace, last 12 months' pace, or your projection). A goal chart, monthly change against plan, change by member / currency / group with saved vs currency moves split out, and debt coverage: do the accounts you pick cover a debt — chosen liability accounts or an amount you type. Step back through any past month.
• Plan — a goal plus a monthly savings target that can change on set dates and yearly bonuses, or a pinned Projection scenario. Import history from a spreadsheet (CSV) so the charts start with your past; Progress → History lists each month's imported balances to edit, add or drop.
• Several plans — switch between them, copy one to try other assumptions, and pick which opens by default; a projection can be the plan line of any of them.
• Plans count the accounts you choose — all, only some, or all except some (say, the flat you live in). A plan's goal can follow a projection's goal line, including its lasts-forever line.
• Pick the goal and the plan line right on Progress — a toolbar under the title holds the Goal (an amount, or any Projection scenario's goal line — e.g. the money that lasts forever, with its value this month), the Plan line (the monthly schedule, or a scenario), the Forecast, and the chart Horizon (auto, 6 months to 40 years, or your own like "18m"). The Plan dialog puts Goal and Plan line side by side too.
• Hover a monthly-change bar for the month in full: the change, split into what you saved and what currency moves did, the planned change and how far ahead of or behind plan you are.
• Property and vehicle values are spread over the months between two logged values, so a flat valued once a year rises a little each month instead of jumping (an option per plan).

Models

What-if tools that start from your real numbers and never change your data on their own. On Models → Overview, pin the ones you use to the menu; the rest are a click (or g-shortcut) away.

• Projection — your finances month by month, every number a timeline: click the chart to add a change from a given month on, with growth, one-offs, returns and currencies. Streams can link to your average spending or income, chosen categories or category groups, a cost-of-living profile or a mortgage, and follow when those change. Any stream can have a total limit and stops when it's used up. Hover the chart for a crosshair with the exact value and month; switch a projection's currency in its settings (amounts convert at today's rates). Save versions, compare, and pin one as your plan.
• Pots — your money sits in pots, each with its own currency and rate; what a pot earns counts as income, each month's savings land in the pot you choose, and transfers move money between pots while the source lasts. Set a stop working month and income marked as work income ends there. How it adds up shows every year (and month): income, spending, savings and what each pot holds.
• Projection scenarios — keep several sets of inputs in one projection, switch between them, and compare scenarios (across projections too) side by side. Pin any scenario as a plan line.
• A goal that lasts forever — instead of a fixed amount, the goal can be the money that never runs out: a year's projected spending ÷ (return − inflation). The chart shows how far ahead or behind the goal you are each month. Use as plan on a scenario makes it a plan's line or its goal.
• Milestones under the projection chart — the scenario's timeline in words: every dated change, a stream's total running out, the goal reached, the money running out. Click one to open it in the inputs. The chart stays in view while you edit the inputs beside it.
• Mortgage — when the last payment happens, what the credit costs in total (interest + fees) and per month. Property price and down payment or a current balance, rate changes, fees, and extra repayments — one-off, regular, or “from this month I put X a month in total” — that shorten the term or lower the payment. Compare variants side by side; use one in a projection.
• Cost of living — what your actual spending would cost in another city, adjusted category by category. Prices come from Numbeo for free: open its "compare cities" page for your two cities and click the Send to Budget bookmarklet (or copy the page and paste it) — the app reads the cost of living, rent, restaurant and grocery differences, plus transport, utilities, leisure, clothing and childcare from the price table. Numbeo's API (with your key) or your AI work too.
• Deposit planner — the strategy modeler, plus a reserve ladder that places N months of spending into deposits so money matures as you need it, and can create those deposits.
• Category sets — name your own groups of categories ("Essentials", "Housing"…) and use their average spending in a Projection stream or the reserve ladder.

Investments

• Wealth → Investments (was Deposits) — every deposit with its rate, maturity and interest, plus your investment accounts: what you put in, what it's worth now, the gain and the return. The sidebar shows totals for deposits and investment accounts.

Tracking accounts: property, vehicles, investments

• Give an account the type Property, Vehicle or Investments and it becomes a tracking account: it counts toward net worth but stays out of your budget, spending and income.
• Log its value whenever you know it — on the account page or in the check-in. The change is booked as a revaluation, so the balance always matches what you logged. Edit or delete any logged value; everything after it follows.
• Account type is now a picker, and it drives behavior: deposits get terms, loans get loan terms, property/vehicle/investments become tracking accounts.

Loans

• Wealth → Loans — what you owe, monthly payments, the average rate, interest this year and still to come, and when each loan is paid off.
• Loan terms on a mortgage or loan account: rate, payment and payment day, interest by actual days or monthly. The account page shows the next payment, payoff date, payment history and the remaining schedule by year, with one click to model a prepayment.
• Payments split themselves — import a statement and each loan payment is split into the principal (a transfer to the loan) and the interest (spending in the category you pick), at the exact interest for the days since the last payment. A payment that would need an exchange rate you don't have is left for you rather than split at a guessed rate.

Settings → Currencies

• Add any currency the National Bank publishes, pick its color, and convert between currencies with a rate chart.

Also new

• Updates show their progress — after a new version, the app shows "Updating Budget…" with each step while it brings your data up to date (the desktop app backs up its data first), then opens on its own.
• Go anywhere from the keyboard — press g then a letter (g p Progress, g j Projection, g c Check-in…), ? for the list, and ⌘K now finds actions and saved models too.
• Tutorials for Check-in, Progress and each model.
• Your AI can help — new MCP tools to log balances, read progress and plans, import history, research city prices, plan a reserve ladder, read loans and split loan payments, set loan terms, read investments and deposits, log a value, and read projections.

Improved & fixed

• A regrouped sidebar — small Money / Wealth / Models labels, Review at the top, and Spending now sits with Money. Old links and bookmarks open their new page; an unknown address opens the budget.
• Filters move to a compact one-line bar at the top of Register and Spending: the period is a single pill (month arrows, 1–12 month and all-time ranges, exact dates inside), each active filter is a chip you click to change or × to drop, and + Filter adds the rest. Every filter takes several values and can be flipped between only these and all except these (the register gains "exclude categories" too). Search on the register tucks into an icon — press / to search. On Register, Net, the month's budget and Add transaction sit in the bottom status bar, and batch actions get their own bar (shorter labels: Transfer, Link, Legs…, Archive) that appears only while rows are selected.
• Every transfer is two rows — one leaving an account, one arriving in the other, linked together — and each account's balance comes only from its own rows, so a balance never appears without transactions behind it. Existing one-row transfers got their arriving row added automatically (no balance changed). A transfer still missing its second row is flagged in the register and on the receiving account's page, with one click to add it.
• Deposit history — every term a deposit has run (the first placement and each roll over, usually at a new rate) is kept, with the interest each term actually earned against what its terms promised. Interest paid out to another account (e.g. monthly to a current account) can be linked back to its deposit — the app finds likely payouts by date, wording and amount, and only from the deposit owner's accounts. Wealth → Investments lists all deposits, closed ones too, with lifetime interest and average rate.
• One account picker everywhere — every place you choose accounts lists them under their groups, with search, and a group heading picks every account in it.
• One look for every dropdown — the remaining browser-native pickers now use the app's own.
• Dialogs keep their buttons in view — long dialogs scroll inside, with compact buttons in a footer flush with the bottom edge.
• Dates read the same everywhere ("Nov 02, 2026", "Nov 2026") instead of raw ISO dates.
• The Demo budget now has a maturing deposit, a brokerage account, a home whose value is logged and a mortgage with loan terms, so every screen has something to show.
• Safer and steadier — screens that can't load say so with a Retry instead of looking empty, a stale tab can no longer write into another budget, older backups restore in newer versions, and the Classify screen no longer slows the whole app down.
• Money adds up the same everywhere — the budget month view and the grid share one calculation; changing the base currency converts what's budgeted; a split must add up to its transaction; budgeting with an exchange rate you don't have is refused instead of guessed; an old manual rate no longer beats today's official ones; a deleted category's spending shows as Uncategorized.
• Exchange rates for every day — the app keeps the National Bank's rate for each day (it kept one a week for older months), so past months convert at that day's rate and two installs of the same budget show the same numbers.
• Net worth history ends exactly at today's net worth (it used to drift for multi-currency money), and "today" is your local day, not UTC's.

Deposits become first-class: track term and savings deposits with their rates and maturities, see them all on a maturity timeline, get nudged before one comes due, and model where maturing money earns the most. Plus you can now close accounts to get them out of the way, and the sidebar is tidier.

New

Deposits

Track a term or savings deposit as its own account, with the terms that matter.

• Deposit terms — set the interest rate, start date, term (or maturity), and how interest is paid: at maturity, paid out periodically, or reinvested (compounded). Give any account the type deposit and the terms panel appears.

• Your deposits, at a glance — a summary of everything you hold: total, balance-weighted average rate, estimated interest per year, and the next maturity.

• A maturity ladder — a timeline (with month markers) showing when each deposit frees up, how much, its per-month yield and total interest to term. Hover a point for the exact date.

• Rate and countdown everywhere — each deposit shows its rate and time-to-maturity in the accounts list and right in the sidebar, and anything maturing within about five weeks is highlighted so it stands out.

Maturing-deposit reminders in Review

• The Review digest gains a Deposits maturing section — what's coming due (or just matured), so the checkpoint prompts a renew-or-move decision. Dated to the reviewed period, so an old month shows what was maturing then.

Deposit strategy modeler

A place to decide where new — or maturing — money should go.

• Log your banks' offers — the products each bank quotes (rate, term, how interest is paid, and the date quoted). Offers are editable and kept as history, so past models reproduce.

• Compare over a horizon — pick an amount and 6 / 12 / N months, and it ranks every offer by what you'd end with, reinvesting each into its own terms (a 3-month deposit rolls every 3 months; a monthly-payout one compounds monthly). Each row shows ending value, per-month earnings, and effective APY.

• Model reinvestment in one click — from a maturing deposit (in Review or on its page), the modeler opens with the amount and currency pre-filled and runs on the spot.

• Save reports — keep a model run for later; it's frozen exactly as it was computed.

Close an account

• Mark an account Closed to drop it from the sidebar and collect it in a Closed accounts list at the bottom of the Accounts page — handy for a matured deposit or a bank account you've shut. It still counts toward your budget and net worth; it's just out of sight.

Improved & fixed

• A tidier sidebar — each account is now a single line (name on the left, balance right-aligned), account names read more clearly, and deposits show their rate and countdown right in the menu.

• The sample (Demo) budget now carries real historical EUR/USD exchange rates, so its multi-currency balances move the way they actually did.

• "Skip all tutorials" takes effect immediately — no page reload needed.

Split transactions become fully first-class — the classic mortgage payment (part principal, part interest) now tracks correctly on both sides — and re-importing a statement is safe after you've edited a transaction.

New

A second leg for a split transfer

A single transaction can be part transfer and part spending — the textbook case is a mortgage payment: some of it pays down the loan (a transfer), the rest is interest (real spending). You could already split a transaction that way, but the transfer half didn't actually move the other account. Now it does.

• Create or find the matching leg straight from the split editor. Each transfer line in a split shows Create / find leg (or Leg linked once it's set).
• It's a real transaction on the other account — so the loan balance actually goes down and the paydown shows up in that account's own register, not just as a label.
• Create a fresh leg — currency-aware, with the amount pre-filled at the day's exchange rate when the accounts differ (the same flow as whole-transaction transfers) — or link an existing transaction, e.g. the matching line from the loan's own imported statement.
• Remove it any time to detach the split again.

The result for a mortgage payment: your checking account is down the full amount, the loan balance drops by exactly the principal, and only the interest counts as spending.

Improved & fixed

• The transfer part of a split no longer counts as spending. Previously the transfer line of a split (the principal in a mortgage payment, or money you moved to savings inside one transaction) was mistakenly counted as an expense in Review, Spending, and the recurring-merchant anomaly flags. Now only the categorized part counts.
• Editing an imported transaction no longer creates a duplicate when you re-import. Changing a transaction's amount or memo used to make the next import of that statement re-add the row as if it were new. Imports now recognize an edited transaction as already-present, so re-importing a statement stays clean.

A new Review screen that tells you what actually happened with your money each period, a big Goals upgrade, smarter transfers.

New

Review & Proactive Insights

The headline feature: a dedicated screen that turns a period of transactions into a story you can read in a few seconds.

• Pick any period from a calendar — a month or a span. Months you've already reviewed are marked, so the gaps are the ones worth a look.
• Headline numbers — income, spending, net saved, savings rate, and net-worth change, each compared to the previous period.
• Where it went — spending by category, merchant, and owner, with anomaly flags ("vs your average") so an unusual month stands out on its own.
• Month-by-month — see the shape of a range: per-month income, % spent, % kept, and the change from the month before.
• Things to handle — uncategorized items, possible duplicate charges (the actual repeated groups, each a click away in the Register), and quiet accounts that may have stopped syncing.
• Per-member lens — on a shared budget, view flows and net worth for each member.
• Notes — attach a note, question, or hypothesis to any number; see it on hover, edit it in place.

Goals

• Reserve goals with no deadline — money you want available at all times, like an emergency fund.
• Momentum — every goal shows how much it moved this period versus the previous one, so you can tell whether you're speeding up or slowing down.
• Monthly contributions — the real money you put in each month (currency revaluation stripped out), as a bar chart with amounts on hover.
• Target and projected dates, the accumulated value as of the month you're viewing, and a reworked pinned-goal widget in the sidebar.

Transfers

• Currency-aware second legs — when the other account is in a different currency, the app proposes that account's currency and pre-fills the amount using the exchange rate for the day.
• Create legs in bulk — select many transactions and mint their opposite legs at once.
• The app remembers the account you used last, and a transfer you create now records both legs automatically.

Faster

• Results are kept warm in the background right after you make a change, so editing something and then opening Review no longer waits on a recalculation — while always reflecting your latest numbers.

Improved & fixed

• Fixed an inflated account balance caused by a transfer that was counted twice — affected accounts now read correctly.
• Snapshots now include your Review notes and history, so a backup or download is complete.
• Editing a transaction, budget, goal, exchange rate, or account now reliably updates every affected screen (Review, Net worth, Budget, Goals).

Your connected AI can now run your budget, not just read it — plus big performance gains, live updates, a smoother budget grid, and native Mac builds for both chip types.

New

Your AI assistant can now do the work (MCP)

The biggest change this release: the MCP server grew from a read-only view into a full control surface (15 → 43 tools). Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client (see the "Connect your AI" page) and it can now actively manage your budget, not just report on it:

• Transactions — add, edit, categorize (with ML suggestions or one-shot auto-classify), archive/unarchive, and link/unlink transfers.
• Structure — create/update/delete categories, apply a starter category preset, set category budgets, and create/organize account groups.
• Goals — create, update, and delete financial goals.
• Backups & data — take, list, and download snapshots; list and download your imported bank statements.
• Family — list and add members.

Changes an AI makes show up in the app automatically (see Live updates), and mutating actions are designed to confirm with you first. The "Connect your AI" page now reflects this full range.

Also new

• Native macOS builds for Apple Silicon and Intel. The download page now auto-detects your Mac and gives you the right native build — no more running the Intel version under emulation or hitting macOS's "not optimized" compatibility warning.
• Starter categories for new budgets. Begin with a ready-made set of category groups (Monthly Payments, Living, Savings) instead of a blank slate — in the new-budget flow and on the Categories page.

Faster

• Large budgets and long histories are dramatically quicker. The Register renders only the rows on screen (smooth scrolling and steady memory with thousands of transactions), and the Budget grid caches its heavy math and draws only the months in view.
• Snappier Goals. Pinning a goal is now instant, and the Goals screen loads noticeably faster.

Live updates

• Changes made by a connected AI (MCP), or in another open window, now appear automatically within a few seconds — no manual reload.
• Auto-refresh never interrupts you mid-edit, and your own edits update instantly without redundant reloading.

Other minor UX improvements

• Inline calculator in budget cells now capture + via shift-=.
• Budget-grid now has less content shifts.
• Keyboard nav: Home/End and Cmd/Ctrl-↑/↓ jump to the first/last transaction or category in the Register and Budget grid, and the focused row/cell always scrolls cleanly into view (clear of the header and status bar).

New features

Connect your AI. Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any other MCP-compatible AI assistant read access to your budget — transactions, accounts, budget, net worth, spending reports, and goals — plus the ability to import bank statements for you. One-click buttons for Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor; a ready-to-paste prompt for everything else. Find it under Settings → Connect your AI (or Settings → MCP Server on desktop).

Delete an account. Accounts can now be deleted from their edit dialog — history is kept (hidden, not erased), same as deleting a category.

Also in this release

• A friendlier first-run setup flow on desktop.
• A more compact way to manage a family member's budget access.
• Quick links between the Import and Statements pages.