The ShowMeTheMoney manual

Three ideas run through the whole app. Every dollar goes in an envelope — accounts hold real money, envelopes decide what it's for. Nothing is deleted by import — importing only ever adds transactions you approve, and likely duplicates default to excluded. And it's a single household's book, with room for more — see Books & backups if you ever need a second one.

Getting started

Signing in

The sign-in page has Email and Password fields and a Log in button (passwords need at least twelve characters unless the server asks for more; see Security). If your administrator has enabled single sign-on, a Sign in with {provider} button appears as well.

Creating the first account

The Create the account link registers the household's first login, and only before anyone has an account yet — every attempt after that returns "registration is closed." That first account is the administrator, who invites everyone else under Settings › Members; each person opens their invitation link and chooses a password. A separate budget for the same household is a second book, not a second registration.

Layout & navigation

Every screen shares the same frame: a top bar, a left sidebar, and the current page in the middle. The sidebar is where almost all day-to-day account and envelope management happens.

The top bar

Transactions, Reconciliation, Reports, and Budget on the left. Transactions is context-aware: it jumps to whichever account you're reconciling, or to an envelope's own list while that envelope is focused on the Budget page. On the right: the book switcher, Help, and Settings; on a server, also your email and Log out.

The sidebar

Two panels, Accounts and Envelopes, each with a + button for adding a new one. Every row links to its register or transaction list, and every row — plus empty space in either panel — is right-clickable:

Reassigning a transaction by drag-and-drop

From an envelope's transaction list, drag a row (or a multi-selection) onto a different envelope in the sidebar to move it there. If the transaction is split across several envelopes, only the allocation on the envelope you dragged from moves.

Importing by drag-and-drop

Drop a .csv, .qfx, .ofx, or .pdf file anywhere on the window and a prompt asks which account it belongs to (or offers to create a new one). A book-backup .json file works the same way — see Books & backups.

Switching and creating books

The book switcher in the top bar lists every book you belong to, plus + New book. Choosing a different one reloads the app into it; + New book asks for a name and creates a brand-new, empty household. See Books & backups for renaming, exporting, and deleting a book.

Keyboard

Esc closes whatever's open on top — a right-click menu, an edit dialog, or the drag-and-drop import prompt.

Accounts

An account is anywhere real money sits — checking, a credit card, cash. Its balance is always the plain sum of its transactions; there's no separate "starting balance" field to keep in sync (see Initial balance for how history before day one is represented).

Creating an account

Click + above the Accounts panel. The dialog asks for a Name (required), a Type (checking, savings, credit card, and so on), and an optional Institution — free text that autocompletes from ones you've used before and lets the sidebar group accounts by bank.

The account register

Opening an account shows a table of every transaction: Date, Payee, Memo, Status, Envelope, Amount, and a running Balance. Click any column header to sort by it.

Adding and editing a transaction

Click Add transaction, or Edit on an existing row: Date, Payee, Memo, Status (Pending or Cleared), an envelope split, and Amount. Enter in any field saves the row. Leaving the Payee field after typing a payee you've assigned before auto-fills the envelope, if you haven't already picked one — see assignment rules.

Splitting a transaction across envelopes

One trip to the store might cover both Groceries and Household Supplies. The envelope-split editor lets you add several envelope/amount rows under one transaction, as long as they add up to exactly the transaction's total.

Merging, transferring, and deleting

Select more than one row and right-click for:

• Merge N transactions — folds several rows into one. A confirmation previews the merged date, payee, and total and warns this can't be undone.
• Create transfer — appears when exactly two transactions are selected, one in each of two different accounts. Links them instantly, with no confirmation step.
• Delete — if any selected row is assigned to a real envelope, the confirmation warns that envelope's balance will change.

A single row's menu also has Always assign "{payee}" here, creating an assignment rule from that one transaction's payee and envelope.

Reconciled transactions

Once a transaction is checked off in a completed reconciliation, its date, amount, payee, memo, and status all lock. You can still re-file which envelope it's assigned to. To change anything else, undo the reconciliation itself — see Reconciliation.

Initial balance

Opened from an account's Settings link, this represents everything that happened before you started tracking the account here. With nothing set, the balance is assumed to be $0.

Click Set initial balance and fill in a Date and Amount — or use "Or, derive it from the current balance": type what the balance should be right now, and the amount is worked out backward from transactions already entered. A confirmation screen shows exactly what will be created first; if one already exists, the same flow appears as Replace (warning if that money is already budgeted into an envelope, or locked inside a completed reconciliation) or Clear.

Where a transaction came from

Every row in a register carries small marks at its left, one per method that recorded the transaction or has since confirmed it: a pencil for one entered by hand, a grid for a CSV import, a document for an OFX/QFX or PDF statement import, and the download arrow for a SimpleFIN sync. Hover the marks to read them. A transaction usually has one; a merged one keeps every method that was involved, and a sync that recognises a record you entered by hand, or an import whose row turned out to be one already in the book, adds itself to that record — the more marks, the more independent sources agree on it. The marks travel with a book export and come back on restore. A faint dot means the row was written before this was kept.

Account settings

An account's settings page — Settings… on its right-click menu, or the Settings link at the top of its register — holds everything about the account in one place: its details (name, type, institution and the statement day that drives reminders), its icon (every type has a default; set your own from a website or image address, or upload one — drop a file anywhere on the window while the dialog is open), its bank connection (which account SimpleFIN reports it is linked to, with the bank's balance beside the book's, or a picker to link one — see Bank connection), the initial balance, and the auto-detect patterns it has learned from past imports, which let a future dropped file auto-select this account instead of asking. Each pattern has a Remove link. Change icon… is also on the account's right-click menu in the sidebar, as it is on an institution heading's.

All Accounts

The All Accounts row at the top of the sidebar opens a combined register spanning every account, with a filter box searching date, account, payee, memo, status, envelope, and amount at once.

Envelopes & stacks

One rule governs every envelope: money coming in is income and belongs in the Income envelope, money going out is an expense and belongs in any other. The envelope picker only offers what fits the amount's sign, a saved rule or a payee's usual envelope is skipped when it would break the rule, and the app refuses to save a mismatch.

An envelope holds a purpose, not an account. Its balance is computed from funding, spending, and transfers added together — never stored directly, so it's always exactly consistent with your ledger. A stack is purely cosmetic: a way of grouping related envelopes in the sidebar.

Creating envelopes and stacks

Click + above the Envelopes panel: a Name and a Stack (type an existing stack's name to put the envelope in it, or a new name to create one on the fly).

An envelope can only go below $0 by spending — assigning a transaction to it for more than it holds. Transfers can never overdraw one: moving money out is capped at the balance, because shifting a shortfall from one envelope to another hides it rather than showing it. A negative envelope therefore always means the same thing: you spent more there than you set aside.

The envelope drill-down page

Clicking an envelope shows its balance and every transaction assigned to it, with the same filter, multi-select, right-click merge/delete, and drag-to-sidebar reassignment as accounts. Edit on a row re-splits that transaction's envelope allocation inline; with only one allocation, Edit instead jumps to the transaction's full editor in its account register.

Filling one envelope

• Stuff to Zero — only offered when an envelope's balance is negative. Moves exactly enough from Income to bring it back to $0.
• Stuff Amount… — always available. Opens a dialog with one Amount field, showing how much Income has to give. You choose the amount.
• Stuff by Budget — funds this one envelope to whatever its own budget line items say is due, from Income, shown as a plan you approve first. The budget decides the amount, not you.

Archiving and deleting

Archiving hides an envelope from the everyday sidebar view without losing its history (toggle Show Archived to see it again). Delete is only offered for an envelope with a $0 balance and zero history — anything with a past gets Archive instead, enforced by the app.

Budgeting

A budget line item is a plan — how much, how often — not money moving on its own. Funding an envelope still happens by transfer, either manually or via Stuff by Budget.

Ready to budget

Every account balance added together, minus everything ever funded into an envelope — the money you haven't assigned a job yet. It should trend toward zero as a fully-budgeted household.

Creating a budget line item

On the Budget page, click Add income budget or Add expense budget. Expense budgets ask which Envelope they fund; income budgets are always tied to the system Income envelope. Both ask for a Name (optional label), Amount (positive for income; expense forces a negative sign as you type), a Start date and optional End date, and a time/fill period.

Spending history

Once you've picked an envelope for an expense budget, a Spending history box shows that envelope's Min, Avg, and Max spend over a lookback window you choose (last 3/6/12/24 complete months — the current month is excluded by default, since it hasn't finished yet; check Include this month to opt back in) — a quick way to ground the Amount you're about to enter in what the envelope has actually cost. Min and Max are the lowest and highest individual months that actually had spending; Avg is spread across every complete month in the window, including months with none, so it reflects true per-month cost even for something that isn't spent every period (an annual premium, say). The dropdown only offers windows the envelope actually has that much history for — a newly-used envelope won't offer "Last 24 months" just because the calendar goes back that far.

Time period vs. fill period

The time period is how often the whole budgeted amount recurs — a $1,200/year insurance premium has a time period of 1 year. The fill period optionally subdivides that: set it to 1 month and that same premium funds $100 every month instead of $1,200 once a year. Leave it as Once per period and the whole amount funds all at once.

Reordering expense budgets

Expense budget rows have a drag handle for reordering. This order sets stuffing priority — when there isn't enough Ready to Budget to cover everything, line items nearer the top get funded first.

Stuff by Budget

The wand icon above the Envelopes sidebar panel runs Stuff by Budget across every expense envelope: it works out each one's next scheduled funding, in priority order, shows the full plan before touching anything, and only moves money from Income once approved.

The same Stuff by Budget on a single envelope's right-click menu runs exactly that, narrowed to that one envelope — same plan-then-approve step, same priority order among its own line items.

The budget chart

Plots Income, Budgeted Income, Expense, and Budgeted Expense over time. Switch Chart type (Bar / Line / Bar + Line), Time Period bucket (day/week/month/year), and date range independently of the lists below. Clicking through from a specific envelope narrows both to just that envelope's actual-vs-budgeted picture.

Importing transactions

There is one import, for every file. Give it a bank export (QFX/OFX), a statement PDF or a spreadsheet (CSV) and it reads the file, works out which of your accounts it covers, and shows each with the transactions that would be imported. You are never asked which account a file is for before the file has been read.

Start it any of three ways:

• Drop the file anywhere on the window.
• Open an account and choose Import File.
• Right-click the Accounts heading and choose Import a File….

Started from an account — or dropped while its page is open — that account is where a file goes when the file itself does not say. Where the file does name an account we recognise, that account is used even if you started somewhere else, and the import says so.

The steps

1. File. Choose or drop it.
2. Read. Usually nothing to do. A spreadsheet whose columns we have not been told about asks which column holds what; a statement in a format we have no rules for sets them up.
3. Review. One card per account in the file, each with its own Accept and Discard. With several accounts, Accept all accepts every one that is ready.
4. Transfers. Once every account is accepted or left out, money that moved between your own accounts is proposed as transfers. Passed over when there is none.
5. Reconcile. A summary of every account and where it stands against the statement.

Which account

An account we recognise is matched and named on its card, with Not this account? to send it somewhere else. One we do not recognise asks: choose one of your accounts, or Create a new account. A new account is shown with the name and type it would have, and you can change both before it exists. Nothing is created until you say so. Leave out records nothing from that account and does not hold up the others.

Accounts are recognised by where the statement came from as well as its last four digits, so two accounts ending the same way at two different banks are told apart on their own. You are only asked when they genuinely cannot be separated — the same digits at the same bank — and then you are asked every time, because no remembered answer would be right for both. Your answer for an account we simply had not seen is remembered, so the next statement finds it.

An account created from a statement begins where the statement says it did: its initial balance is the statement's beginning balance, dated the day the statement opens. For an account you already had, that balance is offered on its card when the account has no initial balance and nothing earlier than the statement.

A statement's amounts follow the account they go into. What a card statement prints as owed is recorded in a credit card as a negative balance, and its charges as negative.

What the account already has

A transaction that could be one the account already has carries a checkbox, Duplicate. Checked means it is not imported. A transaction that resembles nothing has no checkbox — there is nothing to decide about it — and an account with nothing to ask about has no Duplicate column at all.

There is no other way to leave a transaction out, and so no way to leave out one that is plainly new. A statement's every line should end up either recorded or accounted for by one already recorded, or the account cannot be reconciled against it; a transaction you do not want is deleted from the register afterwards. Each transaction also shows the envelope suggested for it, which you can change before accepting.

Transfers

A statement covering a checking and a savings account holds both sides of every transfer between them, so transfers cannot be found while you review — until both accounts are imported, neither side has anything to be matched against. They are looked for once every account in the file is accepted or left out, across all of them and against your other accounts too.

Each pair is shown with both sides. Confirm records the two as one transfer, which counts as neither income nor spending and loses its envelope. Dismiss leaves them as two ordinary transactions. Anything you leave alone can still be found later from an account's menu, Find transfers.

Reconciling

A statement is the one document that says what an account should hold, so accepting its transactions also reconciles them against it. If what you accepted comes to the statement's closing balance, the account is reconciled there and then. If it does not — you marked a real transaction as a duplicate, say — the summary says by how much and offers Reconcile, which opens the reconciliation screen with the statement's dates and balances filled in. That is optional: the import is finished either way, and the next file can be imported straight away.

A reconciliation the wizard completed is marked Automatic in the account's reconciliation history, and its own page says so under Status, so it is never mistaken for checking you did by hand. It locks its transactions exactly as one you finished yourself would, and is undone the same way (see Reconciliation).

• A statement that was already reconciled is not reconciled twice.
• An account with no transactions in the period is left alone.
• A spreadsheet carries no statement balance, and a bank export only a closing one, so those are always offered reconciliation rather than given it.

To reconcile by hand always, turn off Reconcile automatically after a statement import under Settings › Importing. It applies to the ledger and to everyone who uses it.

One import at a time

While you have an import waiting to be finished in a ledger, starting another in that same ledger is refused, and you're offered the chance to discard everything still waiting there and then — all of it at once, since one statement can leave several accounts waiting. What's waiting is also listed whenever you open the import screen, so it's never lost track of. This only affects you and only that ledger — someone else in your household can import whenever they like, and you can still import into a different ledger.

Spreadsheet columns

A spreadsheet says nothing about itself, so the first time we meet a layout you say which column holds what: the Date and its format, the Description, and either one Amount column or separate Money out and Money in. Name the Account column only if the file covers more than one account. Under More options: a Memo column, a Status column with the statuses to leave out (declined charges, say), and The file shows spending as positive.

Whatever the format, an account's card on the Review step has Amounts are reversed: tick it when a file shows spending as money in and payments as money out — some card exports do — and that account's part of the file is read again with every sign the other way round, duplicates re-checked against the corrected amounts. For a spreadsheet it combines with the column option above, so a saved format can carry the usual case and the switch covers the odd file. For a statement PDF, Always, for the … format beside the ticked switch saves it on the format itself (also under the format's own settings as This format prints amounts the wrong way round), so every later statement read with it is flipped without asking. When a statement's format is new, the same option is on the Transactions step of its setup: tick it and the preview is read again with the signs turned, so you can see them right before saving the format.

Give the columns a name under Save as a format and the next file with those columns is read without asking. Saved formats are listed under Settings › Import Profiles, where each can be tested against a sample, edited or removed.

Statement formats

A statement in a format we have no rules for is set up in the import, from the file you gave. The rules are worked out from the statement itself and you confirm them step by step, by the values they read — the dates, the balances, the transactions, the account — ending with a check that the beginning balance and the transactions come to the closing balance. Name the format and save it, and the statement is read. Correcting a saved format from an import goes through the same steps.

• Each step shows the value it found. If one is wrong, pick another from the list or highlight the right value on the statement itself — no patterns to edit. The same goes for how a format is recognised: the Account step lists the lines the statement could be known by, and Manually select… lets you point at any line that every statement in the format carries. The Account step also takes the institution, read from the statement or typed, which tells apart two accounts at different banks whose numbers end in the same four digits.
• Dates printed day first. “03/04/26” is March 4 in the US and 3 April elsewhere, and the app assumes month first. The Format button beside each statement date, and beside the transactions’ Date, lists the common formats and what the date reads as under each; choose the right one, or write another under Another format.
• A statement that prints every amount as positive says which rows are payments or credits by the heading above them. On the Transactions step choose Every amount is positive; the section heading says which are credits and say what each heading means. A heading that is not listed can be added with Add a heading from the statement… or typed; it applies to the rows below it, up to the next heading.
• Read it with a format you already have — for a bank that changed its statement just enough to stop being recognised.
• Hand it to an outside AI tool yourself — the app has no AI built in, but from a format's page under Settings you can download an instructions file and the statement's extracted text, give both to any AI chat of your choosing, then import the configuration file it produces.

Correcting the rules during an import

"No transactions" means one of two things: the account really was quiet that month, or the rules for that statement format did not find the rows. Only you can tell which, by looking at the statement — so an account read from a statement says which rules it was read with and offers Correct them, and one that shows nothing or could not be read offers Correct the rules.

The correction happens where you are, against the file you already gave. For a statement covering several accounts the rules are judged against that account's part of it, not the whole file. You are shown what the current rules read and, when the statement itself suggests rules that read more, what those would read. Saving reads the statement again with the corrected rules. Accounts you had already accepted stay accepted.

Some statements print one transaction over several lines — the date and description on one, a reference beneath it, the amount on a third. The rules put such a row back together before reading it; how many lines a transaction takes is worked out for you when a format is set up, and when a statement full of transactions reads as empty the Transactions step offers Read them as one row with the number it finds. Dates written with the month's name (Aug 31, 2026) are read as well as numeric ones.

Picking values on the statement page

Wherever the setup asks you to point at a value — a closing date, a balance, an example transaction — it shows the statement's own page, drawn by the same reader that extracts its text. Click a word to pick it, or drag across words on one line to pick several. The chosen words appear beneath the page as the same fixed/varies template the text picker uses, and produce the same rule, so it makes no difference which way you pick. A click on any part of a date or an amount picks the whole of it. Drag over several lines (or select them in the text) to take a whole block: nothing is the value yet, so click the word that is, shift-click to widen it, and Keep only the value to ignore everything else. When the words that identify a value are printed on the line above it — a heading such as Monthly Statement Period over the dates — drag from the heading down to the value and name the value, so the rule finds it by its label rather than by its shape alone. On the Transactions step, picking an example row on the page also brings the table's columns, and Point at a field on the statement lets you click or drag across the words of that row that are the date, the payee or the amount — the columns reshape around what you pointed at.

Show on the page, on the rules overview, paints every match of the current rules onto the page: each transaction row the row rule reads (with its date and amount marked), and the closing balance, opening balance and statement period lines, each labelled. A row the rules miss is the one not painted. A transaction printed over several lines is painted, and picked, as one row. Where a match is on another page, a link says which. Pages are drawn one at a time as you look at them.

Switch to Text, at the top right of the page, switches to the extracted text for that pick (and Switch to PDF brings the page back); the text is also the keyboard path, and shows the same colours and legend. A scanned statement with no text to select goes straight to the text picker, where there is nothing to select either — a scan has to be typed up or read by other means first.

Bank connection (SimpleFIN)

Instead of downloading a file from your bank, the app can fetch new transactions itself through SimpleFIN, a service through which you grant read-only access to your own accounts. Your bank password never reaches this app.

Connecting

Sign in at SimpleFIN, connect your institutions there, and copy the setup token it gives you. In Settings → Bank connection (SimpleFIN) paste it and press Connect. The token works once and is not kept; the app stores only the access it exchanges it for, and never shows it. Each book has its own connection. On a server, only an administrator can connect, replace or disconnect; anyone can sync and link accounts.

Linking accounts

Every account SimpleFIN reports is listed. For each one, pick the account of this book it belongs to, Create account from it, or Ignore it. An account of the book can be linked to one reported account only. When you create an account from a reported one, its first sync also records an "Initial Balance" so the book's balance equals the bank's. The same happens when you link an account that is empty and has no initial balance yet; an account with its own history is left for you to set from its settings page, where the gap to the bank is shown.

Syncing

Press Sync now in the SimpleFIN settings, or the download button beside + in the Accounts sidebar, which appears once a connection exists (the Accounts heading's right-click menu also leads to the settings, and each account's own settings page shows its link). Nothing ever syncs on its own. Every transaction a sync recorded, or later recognised as one the bank reports, carries the SimpleFIN mark at the left of its row (see Where a transaction came from). Every linked account receives the transactions the bank reports since the last sync (the first sync reaches back just under 90 days, the most SimpleFIN allows in one request; anything older can come in by file import), recorded straight into its register — pending ones as pending, posted ones as cleared — with the envelope chosen the same way a file import would suggest it. Unlike a file import there is no approval step; instead, the sync ends on a results screen that asks only what it can't decide alone, in this order:

• A reported account that isn't linked. Its transactions are held back until you pick an account, create one, or ignore it.
• A likely duplicate — the bank reported something matching a transaction already in the book (same account and amount within two days), typically one you entered by hand or imported from a file. Merge keeps the one you had, with its envelope; Keep both is remembered and not asked again.
• A possible transfer — the same amount leaving one account and arriving in another within three days. Link as a transfer records one transfer instead of an expense and an income.
• A reconciled transaction the bank now reports differently. Reconciled transactions are locked, so nothing was changed. Accept unreconciles and updates it; Keep mine leaves it.

You can close the results screen at any point; whatever is undecided waits, and Continue reviewing in Settings reopens it. A sync records only into the book that is open. Amounts that aren't whole cents are refused and counted rather than rounded. If an institution needs your attention, its accounts are skipped with a message and the others still sync; if SimpleFIN can't be reached at all, nothing is recorded.

Disconnecting

Disconnect discards the stored access and the account links. Transactions already recorded stay, and the app remembers which ones came from the bank, so connecting again later doesn't record them twice. A book export never includes the connection. In the desktop app, the stored access is encrypted with your passphrase whenever one is set; without a passphrase it is as protected as the budget data itself.

Reconciliation

Reconciling an account means checking it, statement by statement, against what your bank actually shows. Once complete, every transaction it covers locks (see Accounts).

Starting a reconciliation

Open the account's Reconciliation page. Past reconciliations are listed with period, balances, and status; Create reconciliation starts a new one:

• Statement start date and Statement end date.
• Starting balance — locks to the previous reconciliation's ending balance if the dates are back-to-back.
• Ending balance — the number printed on your statement.
• Auto-finish if balanced — on by default; finishes immediately if everything already Cleared already adds up.

The review checklist

Every non-reconciled transaction on or before the statement date is listed with a checkbox. A summary bar tracks Starting balance, Ending balance, Cleared balance, and the Difference live as you check things off. Add transaction lets you enter something the statement shows without leaving the page; right-click a selection for Check Clear / Uncheck Clear. Unchecking Restrict to date range reveals older, still-uncleared transactions.

Finishing, mismatches, and missing statements

Finish reconciliation only becomes clickable once the Difference reads exactly $0.00. If it never balances, look for a wrong date, a missing entry, or an unrecorded bank fee. Skipping a period entirely shows a "Missing statement" row with a one-click Create to close the gap.

Reconciliation history & undoing

Every past reconciliation has a View link and a Delete. Deleting is the only way to undo a completed reconciliation — it reverts every transaction it covered back to Cleared (never deleting the transactions themselves) and removes the reconciliation record.

Reports

Set a From / To date range and a Group by dimension — Account, Institution, Envelope, or Stack. An Income vs. Expense bar chart always shows real transaction-level totals regardless of grouping. Below it:

• Breakdown — a doughnut chart of your top expense groups (past the top 8 collapse into "Other") plus a sortable Group / Income / Expense / Net table.
• Trend — a line chart following your top 5 expense groups over time.

There's no export button here — for taking data out of the app entirely, see exporting a book.

Statement reminders

Give an account a statement day and the app reminds you when a statement is due. Open the account's Settings page and set a day of the month between 1 and 31. Leave it blank and that account never produces a reminder — which is how every account starts.

A credit card or a loan also has a payment day, the day of the month a payment is due, which reminds you the same way. Only those two kinds of account have one: nothing is owed on a checking, savings, cash or investment account, so the field is not offered there.

If you pick a day the month doesn't have, the reminder lands on that month's last day instead: a statement day of 31 reminds you on 28 February.

The statement day also drives a mark in the account list while you are on the Reconciliation pages: an amber dot on an account means its most recent statement (the latest statement day that has passed) has no reconciliation yet; an outlined dot means one has been started but not finished. Hover the dot for the statement's date. A reconciliation dated a few days before the statement day still counts, since banks shift a statement around a weekend. Accounts without a statement day are never marked.

Where reminders show up

Reminders always appear in the app, on the bell in the top bar. That doesn't depend on email or on any setting — turning everything off never stops reminders being created, it only changes how you're reached. Everyone in your household sees the same reminders, and dismissing one clears it for you alone. Clicking a reminder takes you where it points: a statement reminder to that account's reconciliation page, a payment reminder to its transactions. The reminder stays on the bell until you dismiss it — except a statement reminder whose statement you have since reconciled, which goes on its own: it has been answered.

In Settings → Notifications you can additionally choose, for yourself, to be shown waiting reminders when you open the app, and to be emailed them. Both start off. The email option stays visible but unavailable until an email server is set up, and your choice is remembered if the server is later removed.

A reminder that appears late says the date the statement was originally due, not the day it turned up. If the app has been closed for a while it catches up the last month when you open it; anything older is not resurfaced.

Email, and the passphrase (desktop app only)

On the desktop app, email settings live in Settings → Passphrase & email server. Because the mail password is stored on your own computer, it's encrypted with a passphrase you choose, and the email fields stay disabled until you set one.

Two things to know before you set a passphrase:

• You'll be asked for it every time the app opens. There's no way to skip it.
• It can't be recovered if you forget it. There's no reset. Removing it from Settings erases your saved email settings at the same time, on purpose — the password can't be kept without the passphrase that unlocks it.

The passphrase protects your saved email password and this application. It does not encrypt your budget data, which stays readable on your computer — so treat it as a lock on the app, not as disk encryption.

If you run ShowMeTheMoney on a server instead, none of this appears: mail is configured by whoever runs the server, and there's no passphrase.

Settings

This book

Name, a Backup section, and a Delete this book zone — see Books & backups.

Appearance

Theme (Match system / Light / Dark), Date format, Sidebar layout (stacked or side by side), and Content pane minimum width.

Importing

Reconcile automatically after a statement import, on unless you turn it off. It belongs to the ledger, not to you or this browser — see Importing.

Import profiles

Every saved spreadsheet and statement format (see Importing), plus an export/import tool that bundles selected formats into one JSON file.

Envelope assignment rules

A rule says: "any payee containing this text goes to this envelope automatically" — on import, and while typing a transaction (always overridable before saving). Add one directly, or accept a Suggested rule the app noticed after the same payee was manually filed to the same envelope three or more times.

Security

On a server (not the desktop app), Settings › Security is where your own sign-in is managed. Everything here is about your account; an administrator's view of the whole household is under Settings › Members.

Where you are signed in

Every browser that currently holds a session, with its address and when it was last active. A session ends after a stretch without use and after a maximum age either way — both are set by whoever runs the server (ten minutes idle and four hours in all, unless changed). Any request counts as use, and a browser you chose to remember still skips the second factor when you sign in again. Sign out everywhere else ends every session but this one and forgets every remembered browser, so a code is asked for again everywhere.

Password

Change it here with your current password. Passwords need at least twelve characters (the server can require more) and are refused when they appear on a list of the ten thousand most common ones. Changing it signs out every other device. If the rules have tightened since you chose your password, the app asks you to change it the next time you sign in, before anything else.

Second factor

After your password, a code from something you have: an authenticator app (scan the QR code, or type the key by hand; codes change every thirty seconds), or a code by email when the server can send mail. You can enrol both. The first factor you enrol comes with ten recovery codes, shown once — each signs you in one time if you lose your phone or cannot receive mail. Generate a new set any time; the old ones stop working. Removing your last factor also removes the recovery codes.

When signing in, Remember this browser skips the code on that browser for thirty days; the list under Security shows every remembered browser, and any can be revoked. A server can be set to require a second factor, in which case you are asked to enrol one right after signing in and nothing else opens until you have. Signing in through an identity provider uses its second factor instead.

Changing your email address

Your address is how you sign in and where security codes are sent, so changing it takes two steps. Under Settings › Security › Email address, enter the new address and your current password. Nothing changes yet: a link goes to the new address, and a short notice goes to the one you hold today. Your address only moves when that link is opened.

The link works once and expires an hour after you ask for it. Until then the form shows what it is waiting for, and a Cancel this request button if you mistyped. Asking again replaces the earlier link rather than adding a second one.

If you sign in through an identity provider, the control is replaced by a note: your address belongs to that provider and is changed there. If the server has no mail configured, the change is refused outright rather than left waiting for a confirmation that cannot be sent.

Sign-in history

Your recent sign-in attempts: password accepted or refused, codes accepted or refused, recovery codes used, and sign-ins through the identity provider, with the address and browser. Administrators see the whole household's history under Members, including attempts against addresses that have no account — what a guessing attack looks like. History is kept for ninety days unless the server says otherwise. Revoking or restoring someone's access appears here too, as does an attempt by someone whose access was revoked.

Removing someone's access

Administrators have Disable… against each member under Settings › Members. Disabling ends every session that person holds, refuses them at sign-in by every method the server offers, and invalidates any invitation or pending address change of theirs. Browsers they had marked as remembered must pass the second factor again.

It is reversible: Enable restores their access with the password, role and second factors they already had. Nothing they created is removed — their reconciliations and imports still name them, which is the reason the account is disabled rather than deleted.

Someone who was invited and never accepted is different: there is nothing to preserve, so they get Withdraw… instead. That removes the half-created account and stops its link working, and you can invite the address again afterwards.

Books & backups

A book is a complete, self-contained household: its own accounts, transactions, envelopes, budgets, and reconciliations, sharing nothing with any other book except your login.

Exporting a book

Export book… in the book menu — the ⋯ button beside the book name, or a right-click on the name — saves everything in the book as one JSON file. Over HTTPS, a checkbox offers to Encrypt this export with a password.

Importing a book

Import a book… in that same book menu, or dragging an exported .json file onto the app window — each starts a book import, run as a background job. An encrypted file prompts for its password.

Creating a book

Create new book… in the book menu. A new book starts empty and switches you to it; the book you were in is left exactly as it was.

Deleting a book

Glossary

Envelope

A named bucket of purpose for money, independent of which account it physically sits in.

Stack

A cosmetic grouping of related envelopes. Deleting one never deletes the envelopes in it.

Ready to budget

Every account balance added together, minus everything ever funded into an envelope.

Cleared / Pending / Reconciled

A transaction's status — entered but unconfirmed, confirmed by the bank, or checked off against a real statement and now locked against most edits.

Duplicate / Needs review / New / Transfer

The four statuses an imported row can get — see Importing.

Book

One complete, independent household. Switch between them from the top bar.

Stuff by Budget

Funds an envelope's next scheduled amount from Income, following the budget — every expense envelope from the wand icon, or just one from its right-click menu, in priority order either way. Stuff Amount… is the manual counterpart, where you name the amount instead of the budget.

Assignment rule

A saved "payee contains X → envelope Y" rule, always overridable before saving.

Before you click…

Every action in the app that can't be undone, or can't easily be:

Still stuck?

See the FAQ or support, or email support@ohbrer.com.