How YouFinance works.

▶ Watch tutorial YouFinance brings your whole money life into one honest picture — spending, budgets, net worth, and travel together, instead of five disconnected apps. A few things make it different: • Private & offline by design — there are no bank logins and no cloud sync. Your financial records stay on your device. • Built for expats & travellers — track each trip in its local currency and see it all converted back to your home currency, automatically, with no mental math. • Habits that stick — take on small, gentle money challenges and turn good weeks into lasting habits, without guilt trips. • Statements you can actually keep — generate professional, dated reports to share with your financial advisor or keep for your own records. Throughout, YouFinance aims to be clear and honest: prices are shown up front, and the app never hides costs behind a checkout wall.

YouFinance is private and offline by design. There are no bank logins to set up and no cloud account to sync to. The financial records you keep in YouFinance stay on your own device. The main time the app reaches the internet is to fetch live exchange rates (see "How exchange rates work") — and even then, it works from saved rates when you are offline, so your day-to-day use does not depend on a connection.

Deduplication stops the same transaction from being counted twice. When you import a bank statement, some of those transactions may already be in YouFinance — perhaps you added them by hand, or you imported an overlapping statement earlier. YouFinance recognises these repeats by looking at the date, description, amount, and account together. If it spots a possible duplicate, it pauses and asks you what to do rather than silently deciding for you. You stay in control: you can keep the transaction (if it really is a separate, genuine charge — for example, two identical coffees on the same day) or skip it (if it is the same charge already recorded). The app never blocks a legitimate repeat purchase — it simply makes sure the choice is yours. If you later delete a transaction, its duplicate "fingerprint" is cleared too, so re-importing it works cleanly.

You can import transactions from a bank statement saved as a CSV file. YouFinance asks you to choose the ACCOUNT first, then imports. This is deliberate: a bank statement is always in its own account's currency (your bank has already converted any foreign purchases for you). By picking the account first, the currency is settled automatically — there is no guessing, no currency declaration, and no confusing mismatch to resolve. During import, YouFinance skips the header row automatically and checks each transaction against what you already have, so duplicates are caught (see "Deduplication"). If a possible duplicate is found, you decide whether to keep or skip it.

The "Find a transaction" search helps you track down a specific transaction across ALL your accounts — without scrolling through page after page. It is built for the way memory actually works. You rarely remember the exact date; more often you recall fragments — roughly when it was, where or what it was for, and about how much you paid. So you can fill in any combination of three fields: • When — this month, the last three months, or a custom date range. • Where / What — part of the description (for example "Circle Mall" or "coffee"). • Amount — a minimum, a maximum, or both (for example 19 to 25). You only fill in what you remember; the results narrow to match everything you entered. Tap a result and YouFinance takes you straight to that transaction in its account and highlights it. You will find it inside "View Accounts & Transactions".

YouFinance is built with expats and travellers in mind. You can set up an account as a trip, kept in the local currency of wherever you are going. As you spend on the trip, you record everything in that local currency — no converting in your head at the point of purchase. YouFinance then converts the trip back into your home currency for you, so you can see what the trip is really costing you in the money you think in. Trips are also handled thoughtfully in your reports, so a holiday doesn't distort your everyday financial picture.

▶ Watch tutorial YouFinance connects budgeting into one continuous loop, from plan to reality: 1. Budget Calculator — work out what you can realistically allocate across your spending categories. 2. Budget Plan — turn those numbers into your plan for the period. 3. Today / Home — as life happens, add your transactions (manually or by importing a statement). 4. Budget Plan full table — your real spending flows back in, so you can see your actuals against your plan, category by category. Because the plan and your actual transactions live in the same place, you always know how you are tracking — not just what you intended, but what actually happened.

Bamboo is YouFinance's way of rewarding steady, healthy use of the app. As you engage with YouFinance, your bamboo grows through stages. When it reaches full maturity it BLOOMS — and a bloom earns you a free Personal Financial Report, as something you have genuinely worked towards rather than simply been handed. A bloomed report is perishable: you have a 30-day window to download or print it before it is gone. This keeps the reward meaningful and encourages you to actually use what you earned. Bamboo is a bonus that sits ALONGSIDE any paid plan — it is not tied to your subscription. Free users earn their report this way; paying members receive their plan's reports and a bamboo bloom on top as an extra.

Challenges are small, gentle nudges to help you build money habits that stick — without guilt trips. You take on a manageable challenge, and YouFinance helps you keep track of how you are doing over time. The idea is to turn a few good weeks into lasting habits, one small step at a time, rather than demanding a dramatic overhaul. Staying engaged with challenges is also part of what helps your bamboo grow.

YouFinance can generate a Personal Financial Report — a clear, shareable summary of your finances for a period you choose. Reports come from two separate sources, and YouFinance is always transparent about which one you are using: • A bamboo bloom — a free Personal Financial Report you earned by growing your bamboo (with a 30-day window to use it). • Your subscription allowance — the reports included with a paid plan. When you generate a report, YouFinance tells you exactly what is being used and what you have left. If you happen to have both a bloom and paid reports available, it lets YOU choose which to spend — nothing is consumed silently. If you have run out of both, you can buy a single report on its own, or upgrade your plan — with the price always shown up front, in your own currency.

YouFinance works across many currencies and converts everything into your base currency so you always see one consistent picture. To keep those conversions accurate and reliable, it fetches exchange rates through a series of fallbacks — so you are never left stuck: 1. Live rate (online) — when you have an internet connection, YouFinance fetches the current rate from Frankfurter, a well-regarded exchange-rate service that draws on European Central Bank data. 2. Recent cached rate — if you are offline, it uses the most recent rate it saved. A rate is considered fresh for 24 hours; after that it is flagged as older, so you know it may not be current. 3. On-device fallback — for a few currencies that Frankfurter does not cover directly (such as AED, SAR, PKR or NGN), YouFinance computes the rate via US dollars using a built-in rate table. If none of these can supply a rate, YouFinance simply asks you to enter one yourself, rather than guessing. Whenever a rate is used, the app is upfront about how fresh it is.

Billable Income is for anyone who earns by billing their time — freelancers, consultants, and the like. You log a piece of work as hours × your rate, under a particular Client (you can add a new client on the spot), for a given date. If that job also had a cost you paid out — materials, a fee, travel — you can add that expense too, and choose which account it was paid from. As you enter the details, YouFinance shows your live net for the job (what you earned, less any expense). When you save, it posts both sides to your ledger — the earnings in, and any expense out — so your accounts and reports stay accurate. You can also open a client overview to see your records for each client.

The Discover area includes a set of financial calculators to help you think through common money decisions. Each is a quick, private "what if" tool — nothing you enter is saved to your accounts. • Budget Calculator — enter your income and choose a budgeting rule (such as 50:30:20 for Needs, Wants and Savings, or 70:20:10, 60:20:20, 30:30:30:10, or your own Custom split). It divides your income across the categories so you can see, at a glance, how much to put where. This is the starting point of the budget cycle. • Compound Interest — see how savings grow over time with compounding and regular contributions. It also adjusts for inflation, so you can see what your future balance is really worth in today's money, along with your return and how long it takes to double. • Retirement — project what your savings could grow to by retirement, and compare it against "The Number" you need (based on the Rule of 25 / 4% Rule). It shows whether you are on track and what monthly contribution would get you there. • Debt Payoff — plan how to clear multiple debts using either the Snowball method (smallest balance first, for quick wins) or the Avalanche method (highest interest rate first, to save the most). As each debt clears, its payment rolls into the next, and you see the payoff order, time, and total interest. • Loose Cash — enter your income and your regular outgoings to see what is genuinely left over — your real spare cash. • Mortgage — work through the numbers on a home loan. These tools connect to ideas explained in Fin 101, such as "The Number" and the 4% Rule.

Fin 101 is YouFinance's built-in financial literacy library — a plain-English glossary that helps you understand money terms and ideas without needing a finance background. It holds a large A–Z collection of financial terms, each with a clear definition. You can search for a term directly, jump to a letter, or browse by topic — areas like Budget, Cash Flow, Compound, Credit & Debit, Investment, Mortgage, Retirement, Insurance, and more. Fin 101 also ties into the rest of the app: several of the ideas behind the calculators — such as "The Number" and the 4% Rule — are explained here, so you can understand the thinking, not just the numbers.

Fin 101 Kids is a gentle introduction to money for younger learners. It presents age-appropriate money terms grouped into four age bands — roughly ages 5–7, 8–10, 11–13, and 14–17 — with each group building on the last. Younger bands start with the basics like saving, spending, and wants versus needs; older bands move on to ideas like interest, investing, net worth, inflation, and a first paycheck. It is a simple way to help children and teens build a healthy understanding of money, one idea at a time. You can open it from the top of the Fin 101 screen.

A Shared Goal lets you save towards something together with someone else — a partner, a family member, a friend. You create the goal, then share a short code (or a QR code) with the person you want to join you. They tap "Join a Shared Goal with a Code" and enter it — no scanner needed, though they can scan the QR if it is easier. Once joined, you both contribute towards the goal, and progress stays in step across your devices, so each of you always sees the same up-to-date total. It turns a savings target into something you are working on side by side.

A Shared Challenge is a money challenge you take on with your circle. When you create one, you choose how it works — three different lenses on the same idea: • Pooled — everyone's efforts add up towards one shared group target. You succeed together. • Parallel — each person works towards their own target, shown side by side. You are all in it, but each on your own track. • Competitive — a ranked leaderboard, with a crown on whoever is leading. A little friendly rivalry. You pick whichever suits the group and the goal, so a challenge can be collaborative, personal, or competitive — whatever keeps everyone motivated.

Global Challenges are app-wide challenges that anyone using YouFinance can join — not just your own circle. When one is running, you can opt in with a single tap, and you will see a live count of how many people are taking part alongside you. It is a way to feel part of the wider YouFinance community, working on a shared money habit at the same time as people everywhere.

YouFinance is free to use, with optional paid plans for people who want more financial reports and extra perks. See current plans and pricing in the app — prices are always shown up front in your own currency before you commit, never hidden until checkout. You can also always earn a Personal Financial Report for free by growing your bamboo (see "Growing bamboo & blooming"), on top of whatever plan you're on.

Your Membership Pass is a live digital pass that identifies you as a YouFinance member and can be scanned at partner events. For security, the pass is not a static image — it refreshes every 30 seconds, so an old screenshot will not work. It carries your name and membership tier, and the rotating code confirms it is genuinely live at the moment it is scanned. The name shown is your legal name (as on your ID) when you have set one, so the pass can be verified against identification at events. You can set your legal name in Settings.