Conscious Spending — User Guide

Guilt-Free is planned fun money. You set this amount aside on purpose, so spending it carries no guilt. It does not mean spending you feel guilty about. If you overspend it, the app shows it honestly; the point is that the choice was yours and planned.

Yes, every expense sits in exactly one bucket. An impulse purchase normally goes in Guilt-Free (or in the optional Buffer bucket if you have turned it on). To see impulse spending separately, tick "Unplanned / impulse purchase" on the transaction: it stays in its bucket but shows up in your weekly check-in and monthly report.

The Unplanned label is a tag: it describes a purchase and changes nothing about your budget. The Buffer is an optional fifth bucket with its own allowance (taken from Guilt-Free, so targets still total 100%) that gives unplanned spending a hard limit. Use the label to learn your habits, and the Buffer if you want a limit. Turn the Buffer on in Manage → Budget or during first-launch setup.

By default the overflow draws from Guilt-Free: spending above the Buffer target also counts against Guilt-Free, so an impulse overspend visibly costs you fun money. Example: Buffer target 500, spent 700 → Buffer shows "Buffer Used Up" and Guilt-Free shows 200 more used. Your total spending does not change. You can switch this off in Manage → Budget ("If Buffer runs out, draw from Guilt-Free").

Its percentage goes back to Guilt-Free, and any Buffer transactions and categories move to Guilt-Free so nothing is lost. Your choice about overflow is remembered if you turn the Buffer on again later.

No, they are a starting point. The app is inspired by the widely-used four-bucket approach (fixed costs, investments, savings goals and guilt-free spending); 50/30/20 is a popular alternative. Set your own targets in Manage → Budget. They should add up to 100%.

Buckets, the dashboard and Analytics are monthly (the dashboard and Analytics have month arrows to look back). Savings goals and the Savings & Investments report are running totals that never reset. Cards are labelled "This month" or "All time" so you can tell.

If last month you finished under your Fixed, Guilt-Free or (when the Buffer is on) Buffer target, a banner offers to move the unspent amount into a savings goal. It only appears for months you actually tracked, and once you move it or dismiss it, it does not return for that month. It adds to the goal's saved amount; no transaction is created. You can also let it happen automatically — see "How does auto-saving unspent budget work?".

In Settings → Budget, turn on "Auto-save unspent budget" and pick a savings goal. The first time you open the app in a new month, the previous month's unspent Fixed, Guilt-Free and (only if the Buffer bucket is switched on) Buffer budget is added to that goal automatically — the same movement the rollover banner offers, without a tap. It happens once per month: months you already moved or dismissed by hand are never touched again, and if your chosen goal is missing the manual banner asks you instead. Undo on the confirmation banner takes the money back and re-offers the month. It is off by default, and turns on take effect from the next month.

Entries marked "Paid from savings" or "Transfer" are deliberately left out of the monthly bucket totals (they are still in your transaction list). Check the transaction: if one of those boxes is ticked, that is why. Edit the transaction to change it.

Yes, optionally. Open Manage → Category budgets and enter a monthly limit for any spending category. Limits sit inside their bucket (Dining Out inside Guilt-Free, for example) and show on the dashboard and in Analytics with a progress bar: green on track, amber from 80% of the limit, red when over. They are a guide, not a rule: your bucket targets still decide your overall plan, and the screen tells you if your category limits add up to more than the bucket allows. Transfers and entries paid from savings are not counted.

It is an estimate, not a guarantee. The card leads with what is left of your Guilt-Free money this month, and underneath shows that amount divided by the days left, including today, as a per-day pace. Tap "Guilt-Free" on the card to open those transactions. It appears only for the current month and only when you have a Guilt-Free target. If you are already over, it says by how much instead. Fixed bills still to come are not subtracted, so check "Coming up" (recurring items and debt due dates in the next 7 days) too. The home-screen widget shows the same figures in a shorter form.

Both, because they do different jobs. The monthly income in Manage → Budget is your plan: the bucket targets are calculated from it (for example 55% of it is your Fixed Costs target), and it only changes when you edit it. A recurring Income rule (Manage → Recurring, type Income; the day you pick is your pay day — there is no separate pay-day setting; choose "First working day" or "Last working day" if that is how you are paid) records the money actually arriving each month: it feeds "Total income" and the net balance on the Overview, the income-versus-spending view in Analytics, and the monthly report, but it does not change your targets. If you only set the Budget income, the app never shows income received; if you only add the recurring rule, your targets stay at whatever you typed at setup. Nothing copies between them by itself. When you save an Income rule whose total differs from the budget income, the app asks "Use this as your monthly income?" and changes the budget only if you say yes. And once your pay day has passed, if the income recorded this month is more than 10% above or below the plan, "Needs attention" on the Overview says so and takes you to the budget. Bonuses and other one-off income are best added as a normal Income transaction, not a rule.

Tap the ? on any screen. Every tab has one in its header, and the features that need explaining (Safe to spend, Needs attention, Coming up, Tip for you, Recurring, Notifications, the widget, budgets, debts, holdings) have their own ? that opens the matching answer. Manage → Help & FAQ opens the full searchable list; Manage → Conscious Spending guide explains the four buckets. The help itself works offline (only a few features, like exchange-rate lookup and receipt scanning, use the internet). If an answer is missing, Profile → Send feedback tells us what to add.

They moved to the Manage tab (the grid icon in the bottom bar) so they are one tap away instead of inside a long settings page. Manage → Budget holds your salary and bucket targets, category budgets and categories; Manage → Money holds recurring, debts, net worth, savings & investments and the weekly check-in; Manage → Data holds import, export and backup. The remaining app-level options (currency, home-screen widget, notifications, Reset All Data) are under App Settings, reached from Profile or Manage → App.

The icon is an open ring with a small green coin in the gap. The ring is a C for Conscious, and it is also a month you are part-way through: most of it is already coloured in. The gap is what is still open, and the green coin sitting in it is the Guilt-Free money you can still spend without worrying. Green is the same colour the app uses for "on track" and for what is left; the indigo-to-violet of the ring is the colour of your plan, and the dark background is shared with the other Nurlogic apps. The home-screen widget and the notification icon use the same shapes and colours, so everything you see from the app looks like one thing.

From a small library written into the app, not from the internet. Each tip is paired with a trigger on your own numbers, for example a category running well above your three-month average, fixed costs above 60% of income, or several small subscriptions. The tip shows why it was chosen and names the idea it is based on (for example a four-bucket spending plan, "pay yourself first" from The Richest Man in Babylon, or the 50/30/20 rule). The wording is ours, not a quotation. They are general money habits, not personalised financial advice, and never tell you what to buy. Tap the card to read the full tip and open the related screen; set how often you get one as a notification in App Settings → Notifications.

It lists your active recurring items and your debts' due dates for the next 7 days, current month only. Tap Pay on a recurring item and, after you confirm, the app records it as an expense dated today, so it stops showing as upcoming. For a debt, tap Pay to open the usual form already filled in and linked to that debt, so its balance and interest estimate are updated. An item you have already logged this month with the same description is not shown again.

Yes, if you set a limit for that category (Manage → Category budgets). When saving an expense takes a category to 80% of its limit, or over 100%, a message appears once for that crossing. It does not repeat on every later purchase, and it is a heads-up only: nothing is blocked.

Ticking "Recurring Transaction" on Add Transaction saves that entry and also creates a monthly recurring rule from it (same description, amount, category and account) on the day you pick; the entry you just saved counts as this month, so nothing is added twice. If a rule with that description already exists, no second rule is created. A foreign-currency entry creates a rule in that currency at the rate you entered (the rule then keeps its own currency — editing the entry later does not change the rule). The Recurring screen (Manage → Recurring, or the Recurring shortcut on the Overview) is the full list of standing rules such as rent or subscriptions, where you can add, pause or edit them, pick any day of the month (1–31), "Last day of month" (days 29–31 fall on the last day of shorter months), "First working day" (the first Monday–Friday; a weekend 1st moves to the following Monday) or "Last working day" (the last Monday–Friday; the app has no public-holiday calendar, so a holiday on that day is not skipped), optionally tick "If it falls on a weekend, add on the next working day" so a plain day-of-month rule is added on the next Monday–Friday when its day lands on a weekend (at the end of the month it steps back to the last working day of that month instead of crossing over), set the currency (your home currency, or another one with its exchange rate), and set an optional end month, after which the rule stops posting and no longer appears under Coming up. You can also pre-assign the rule to one or several people ("Who is it for?") so every entry it adds is tagged for Spend by person.

The list opens on the current month so it stays short. Use the arrows at the top to go back month by month, or tap All to see everything. Searching always looks across every month, so a payment from months ago still turns up. Tapping "Guilt-Free" on the Overview opens this month's Guilt-Free spending.

Yes. After you delete a transaction (or several), an UNDO bar appears for a few seconds. On the Transactions screen, long-press to select several, then use "Move bucket" to re-file them together (it also has an undo), "Export CSV" or "Delete". If a deleted transaction paid off a debt, undoing it also re-applies the payment to the debt.

In the import preview, check the line "first row reads as …" and switch the date order between Auto, Day first (31/12) and Month first (12/31). Switching re-reads the file and clears any category edits you made in the preview, so fix the date order first. Dates like 03/04/2026 are ambiguous, which is why you can choose.

Tick "Transfer / card-bill payment" for money you move between your own accounts, or for paying a credit card bill whose purchases you already logged. Transfers are never counted as spending or income and stay out of your buckets, trends and reports. The statement importer pre-marks lines like "credit card payment" as transfers; tap the "Transfer" tag in the preview to count one as spending instead.

Log either each purchase or the bill payment, never both. If you log every purchase, mark the later bill payment as a Transfer. If you would rather not log each purchase, log the monthly bill payment instead (as an expense in the right bucket).

Ask one question: would I still pay it in a tight month? If yes, it belongs in Fixed Costs (kids' transport, childcare, regular support for parents). If no, it belongs in Guilt-Free (a birthday dinner, a gift). Occasional costs like birthdays and festivals work best as a Savings Goal you fund a little each month, so one big month doesn't hit your fun money. The app suggests family categories (Kids – Transport, Family Support, Family Gifts & Celebrations and more); add them from Manage → Categories → "Add suggested categories". This is a way to classify, not a rule, so use what fits your life.

Yes. In Manage → Categories tap the pencil next to a category to rename it, change its icon, or move it to another bucket. When you change the bucket you can choose whether past transactions move too. Renaming updates your past transactions, recurring items and category budget so nothing is left behind. "Merge into another category" moves everything into the category you pick and removes the old one. An Undo button appears right after, and stays until you leave Settings; after that the merge is permanent.

An optional tag on an expense (Me, Partner, Kids, Parents, or names you add) so you can pick several people for one expense (tap all that apply). It does not change your buckets or totals. Analytics shows "Spend by person" for the month once at least one expense is tagged: an expense shared between several people is split evenly between them (a $90 dinner for three people counts as $30 each), so the per-person rows always add up to your real spending. You can filter by person in Transactions (a dropdown, like Category) or search by name. The PDF monthly report includes the same breakdown. Spending without a tag appears as "Not tagged" so the totals still add up. The tags are included when you export and re-import a CSV (several people export as "Dad;Emma"). The list holds up to 12 people. Recurring expense rules can be pre-assigned to the same people (Manage → Recurring); every entry they add is tagged automatically.

Yes. In Add Transaction, pick the account you mostly use (Credit Card, Cash, or a name you added) and tap "Set as default" right under the picker. From then on that account is prefilled on every new entry — save as-is, or change it only when you paid somewhere else. Tap it again to clear the default. Transfers start from the same default. The default is prefilled only while that account still exists: if you switch the account type off (Profile → Account types) or delete a custom account, the field goes back to "Select account" rather than showing something that is no longer there.

Yes, by default. On a recurring item's due day the app adds it to your transactions (dated that day) the next time you open the app, and shows a banner with an Undo button. Each item is added once per month, even if you delete it afterwards, and it is skipped if you already recorded it yourself that month (same name, or same category and amount — and in the same currency, for a rule in a foreign currency). A rule in a foreign currency is posted at the rate stored on the rule, not a live rate — see "Which exchange rate does a recurring bill in a foreign currency use?". You can switch this off in Manage → Recurring ("Add automatically when due"); the calendar button there adds anything due right now. Items due later this month are not added early: they appear under "Coming up" with a Pay button. Older versions showed three sample items (rent, internet, Netflix); they are labelled as samples, never added automatically, and can be edited or deleted. Besides monthly, a rule can repeat daily, on weekdays (Mon–Fri), on weekends, or weekly on a day you choose. These are added only for days you open the app: a day or week you skip is not back-filled, so a daily rule records fewer entries if you do not open the app daily. Daily, weekday and weekend rules do not appear under Coming up (they are habits, not bills); weekly rules do, and each week needs its own entry to count as paid.

The rate stored on the rule — the one set when the rule was created (or the last time you edited it). Every month the rule posts that exact amount in that currency at that stored rate, so a fixed bill always lands at a predictable value in your home totals. It deliberately does NOT look up a live rate on the due day: a fixed bill is a fixed budget, the rate service the app uses (Frankfurter, a free public service based on central-bank reference rates, with a second public service as fallback) publishes once a day and can lag the market by a day or two, and the automatic poster must work even when you are offline. To use a new rate, open the rule under Manage → Recurring and tap "Use current rate" (or type a rate by hand) and save — the refresh is always something you do yourself, it never happens silently, and it applies from the next posting, never to months that were already added. Editing an already-posted entry is different: changing that entry's currency or rate changes only that one entry — the rule keeps its own currency and rate, so the Recurring screen always shows exactly what will be posted next month (this is on purpose; unlike the savings goal, which you can re-point from the entry).

Yes. In Manage → Recurring, open (or add) an expense rule and use "Who is it for?" to pick one or several people from the same list as Add Transaction (Me, Partner, Kids, Parents, or your own). Every entry the rule adds — automatically on the due day, via "Add due now", or when you tap Pay under Coming up — is tagged to those people, so Spend by person in Analytics (and the PDF report) includes the recurring spending from the first month on. The people you pick are shown on the rule itself ("for Kids, Parents"), and you can change or clear them at any time by editing the rule; entries already recorded keep the tags they were created with. Income rules have no people, like normal income entries.

After you import a statement, some lines may not be recognised. If you tap "Categorise with AI", the app sends only the cleaned merchant names of those lines (for example "Cold Storage", with long numbers, emails and account details removed) to Google Gemini, using your own API key, to suggest categories. No amounts, dates, notes or account details are sent, and nothing is sent unless you tap and agree. Suggestions are marked with a star and you can change any of them; your corrections are remembered. It needs your Gemini key (Profile) and an internet connection, and Google's terms apply to what you send.

Yes. Your home currency (App Settings) is what every total, budget, chart, report and widget uses. On Add Transaction, use the Currency field under the amount to pick another one, then enter the exchange rate: how much 1 unit of that currency is worth in your home currency. The app fills in the rate you used last time, or tap "Use current rate" to look it up. That lookup contacts a public exchange-rate service and sends only the two currency codes, nothing else. A foreign entry is saved with the rate you entered, so its home value never changes later; lists show both amounts (for example RM 100 ≈ S$ 31) and all totals count the home value. A foreign entry cannot be saved without a valid rate. Recurring rules can be in a foreign currency too: set the Currency field on the Recurring screen, or tick "Recurring Transaction" on a foreign entry (the rule inherits that entry's currency and rate). A rule is always posted at the rate stored on it — see "Which exchange rate does a recurring bill in a foreign currency use?". If you change your home currency later, existing entries are not re-converted. The CSV export adds Currency and FxRate columns.

Add it as an expense in the Investments bucket and tick "One-time / lump sum". It still counts in that month's bucket, but forecasts, trends, anomaly alerts and week-over-week comparisons ignore it so one big item does not distort your picture. If the money came from savings rather than this month's income, also tick "Paid from savings".

"One-time" answers: is this normal spending? (If not, trends and forecasts ignore it.) "Paid from savings" answers: did it come out of this month's income? (If not, it is left out of this month's bucket totals.) They are independent: an IPO paid from savings is both; a big planned purchase from income is only one-time.

Open Savings from the dashboard. It shows your all-time invested and saved totals, this year's investing against an optional annual investment target (set it in Manage → Budget), the last 12 months against your plan, and totals by year. It counts money paid from savings and one-time items too, because that money is still invested.

Open Net Worth → Holdings and add each investment (an IPO allotment, an index fund, a bond…) with the amount you put in and what it is worth now. The app shows the gain or loss, and adds the total to your Net Worth. It does not fetch prices, so update the value yourself when you check your broker. Do not also list the same money as an Investments account in Net Worth, or it will be counted twice. Your monthly investing contributions are still recorded as transactions in the Investments bucket; holdings are the other side: what that money became.

Yes. When you record an expense in the Savings Goals bucket, a "Contributes to goal" row lets you pick the goal; new entries start on your first goal, and "No goal" keeps the entry out of every goal. The amount (converted to your home currency if you paid in another) is added to that goal's "Saved So Far". Editing the entry, deleting it, or tapping Undo after a delete takes the contribution back or re-applies it exactly. A goal's Contribute button fills this form in for you. If the entry is also a recurring rule (tick Recurring Transaction), every future posting, automatic, from "Add due now" or via Pay under Coming up, adds to the same goal, and changing the goal on the entry changes it for the rule. Editing an old entry that was not linked to a goal never adds it to one by itself.

Pick the card you actually used. They are separate because they behave differently: a debit purchase takes your money immediately, while a credit purchase means you pay the card later. Accounts are just labels on each transaction (the app does not hold balances there). Logging a credit card expense does not create a debt entry by itself — to see your card balance and payoff on the Debts screen, add the card once in Net Worth as a Credit Card debt, then mark each bill payment as "Pays off a debt" to reduce it. You can add your own account names from the account picker on Add Transaction, or from Manage → Accounts, which also lets you delete labels you no longer use.

Open Manage → Accounts. Add any label you like (for example "Revolut" or "Joint account") with the field at the top. To delete one, tap its trash icon. If nothing uses the label it is removed after a confirm; if transactions or recurring rules are tagged with it, you are first asked which account they should move to, then confirm the move and the delete together. Account labels never hold balances — those live in Net Worth, which is not affected.

Do not log the old balance as a transaction. Add the debt in Net Worth as a Loan, Credit Card or Other Debt, with its balance, interest rate, minimum payment and due day. Then, each time you pay, add an expense and choose the debt under "Pays off a debt". The payment reduces the balance and the Debts screen tracks your progress and estimated payoff date.

Regular or minimum payments belong in Fixed Costs (category "Debt Payments"). Extra payments beyond the minimum belong in Savings Goals (category "Extra Debt Payoff"), because paying down debt faster is a form of saving towards a better position. Interest and fees are part of the regular payment, so they stay in Fixed Costs.

They are estimates. The app uses your balance, your interest rate and your payments with the standard monthly formula (interest = balance × rate ÷ 12). Real lenders may compound daily, add fees or change rates, so treat the dates as a guide, and update the balance in Net Worth from your statement when you can. The Debts screen warns you if a payment is too small to ever clear the debt.

Both pay the minimum on every debt and send any extra money to one target. Snowball targets the smallest balance first: quick wins that help you stay motivated. Avalanche targets the highest interest rate first: the least total interest. The Debts screen shows the time and interest for both so you can compare. Sometimes they give exactly the same plan, and the card says why: you have one debt, your smallest debt also has the highest rate, the rates are equal or not entered, or there is no extra payment to redirect. That is not a bug; the two methods only differ in which debt gets the extra money first. The choice is yours.

It is an optional shortcut on your phone's home screen. The small size shows "safe to spend today" (your remaining Guilt-Free money divided by the days left) plus the month; the medium size shows this month's bucket progress bars. It is off by default — turn it on in App Settings → Home-screen widget. Because it can be seen without unlocking the app, you can also switch on "Hide amounts" so it shows only labels and bars, no figures. It stores just the few numbers it displays (never transactions or descriptions), and that data is cleared when you Reset All Data or turn the widget off. On iOS it uses the system widget framework; on Android it uses an app widget.

They are reminders planned on your phone from your own data — the app has no server, and notifications never contact one. Types: Guilt-Free over target (the morning after, once a month), Guilt-Free running fast (80% used with more than a week left), a category reaching 80% or 100% of its limit, a bill or debt payment due tomorrow (9am the day before), the Sunday check-in with the week's numbers, savings-goal milestones, and a "Tip for you" (weekly by default, or daily). Three more are off until you turn them on: month wrap-up, new month, and a nudge after four days with nothing logged. Tapping a notification opens the screen it is about. No more than one insight a day, and nothing between 22:00 and 08:00 (quiet hours). Choose each one in App Settings → Notifications. Because reminders are planned when you open the app, someone who never opens it only gets what was already scheduled.

Your transactions, goals, accounts, holdings, people tags and settings are stored on your device. The app has no bank connections. A few small requests go out, each limited to the bare minimum, and none of them carries your transactions or other financial data: (1) exchange-rate lookups for foreign-currency entries — one when you first pick a currency for which no recent rate is stored, and whenever you tap "Use current rate" — which send only the two currency codes to a public rate service (Frankfurter, a free service based on central-bank reference rates, with a second public service as fallback); (2) the optional AI features, only if you turn them on with a Google Gemini API key you provide yourself — receipt scanning (sends the receipt photo, after you confirm on first use) and AI assist in statement import (sends only cleaned merchant names); (3) an automatic update check on launch, which sends the app version and the device identifier used by the update mechanism to Expo's servers. Your key, and both AI consent records, are stored on your device and are never included in backups.

Manage → Export & backup creates a file with your data; on the new phone use Restore. Sign-in records (the accounts created on this phone and their passwords) are not part of a backup — they belong to the phone, not to the data. On the new phone, create your account or sign in first, then restore: the data lands in the account you are signed in as. Secrets (your Gemini key) and device-specific settings (biometric, theme, auto-lock, home-screen widget) are not included either, so you will need to set those up again. Backups from a newer app version cannot be restored into an older one.

Yes. Each account has its own separate set of data: transactions, budgets, goals, accounts, holdings, people, recurring rules, your home currency, and its first-run setup. Signing in as a different account on the same phone shows only that account's data, and signing back in brings yours back exactly as you left it. If you upgrade from an older version, the data that was on the phone is claimed by the account that is signed in, so nothing is lost. Some settings are shared across the whole device on purpose: theme, auto-lock and biometrics. Deleting an account from the profile screen deletes only that account's data, and Reset All Data only affects the account that is signed in.

Open Profile → Send feedback. It opens an email to admin@nurlogic.ai with your app version, phone platform and OS version filled in, so we can reproduce the issue. It never includes your transactions, balances or settings; write only what you are comfortable sharing. If no email app is set up on your phone, write to admin@nurlogic.ai directly.

No. The app is a budgeting tool and the FAQ and Guide are general information. Percentages, payoff dates and strategies are illustrations based on the numbers you enter, not personal financial, tax or legal advice. For decisions about your situation, speak to a qualified professional.

Yes, while you are signed in. After 10 minutes without use, or when you come back after being away that long, the app shows a lock screen above everything, including open forms. Unlock with Face ID or fingerprint (if you enabled it for the account that is signed in) or with that account's password. "Sign out" on the lock screen really signs you out. Change the delay (1, 5, 10 or 30 minutes) or switch it off ("Never") in App Settings → Auto-lock. A fresh launch of the app is not locked, because you just opened it yourself. Everything stays on your device; the lock only hides the screen.

Yes. In App Settings → Privacy, switch "Show income" off. On the Overview it hides the Income total, the Remaining amount (which would reveal income minus spending) and the "income is above/below plan" item under Needs attention, and masks the amount of income entries in Recent transactions. On Transactions it masks the Income and Net totals and the amount on income rows. Expenses are still shown. It does not hide budget targets (they are percentages of your income, so they can hint at it), the Analytics screen, exports and reports, or the home-screen widget (which has its own "hide amounts" switch). Income is shown by default, and Reset All Data switches it back on (only for the account that is signed in — other accounts on the phone are unaffected).

Set up password recovery while you can still sign in: Profile → Password recovery, choose two security questions and save your answers (they are stored on this device only, never in plain text). If you later forget your password, tap "Forgot password?" on the sign-in screen, enter your email, answer the two questions, and set a new password — your transactions and settings stay. Accounts without security questions cannot be reset: the only way to start over is clearing the app, which erases its data. After your first sign-in the app offers the setup once; choosing "Later" is remembered, and the Profile row stays available.