FAQ — Finance Planner
Do I need an account? Does it connect to my bank? What does it cost? Which currency? The questions people ask before starting.
Start planning — it is free, and needs no account
Where is my financial data stored?
In your browser, on your device. Every change is written to this browser’s own storage first, and that is the copy the app reads and writes — not a cache of something on a server. If you turn syncing on, a copy also goes to a private, app-only area of your own Google Drive. Our server is never in that path: it does not receive, proxy or store your plan, in transit or at rest.
Do you track what I do in the app?
We count how the app is used, and that is all: that somebody visited, that a “Start planning” button was pressed, that the Forecast page was opened, whether an account uses syncing. Those counts go to Google Analytics, which also sees the ordinary things any website sees — a city-level location, your browser and device, the link you arrived from. What it never sees is anything in your plan: no amount, category, budget or year, and no email address or account id, because the code has no way to send them. Ad personalisation is off, nothing is sold, and if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal we load none of it at all. The privacy page lists every single count in full.
Do I need an account?
No. The planner is complete without one — every page and every feature — because your plan lives in this browser’s storage and works offline. An account exists for one reason: to back your plan up to your own Google Drive, so it opens on your other devices and survives clearing this browser.
What does it cost?
Every feature is free, forever — there is no page, chart or calculation held back, because all of it runs on your own device. The single paid thing is backing your plan up to your own Google Drive, and it is free for everyone while the app is in beta; the pricing page carries the rate it will be after that. No card is asked for anywhere, and there is nothing to cancel. If that changes you will be told well in advance.
What happens if I clear my browser data?
The plan goes with it, unless you had syncing switched on or had exported it. We hold no copy, so we cannot restore one — that is the direct cost of keeping your figures off our servers, and we would rather state it here than let you find it out. If a plan matters to you, either connect a Drive or take a JSON export from Settings; both take a minute.
Does it connect to my bank?
No. There is no bank connection anywhere in the product: no open banking or PSD2, no bLink, no Plaid, no screen-scraping, no card linking and no import of transactions. You enter the plan yourself, which is why nothing about your accounts — no login, no account number, no statement — ever has to be handed to us or to anybody in between.
Is this financial advice?
No. It is arithmetic on figures you supply, and it is a tool for getting a clear view of your own money — not a recommendation about what to do with it. It will tell you that August is the tightest month in your plan; it will not tell you what to buy, sell or invest in. It takes no commission from anyone who sells financial products, and for a decision that matters you should talk to a qualified adviser.
Where is it built?
In Switzerland, by a very small team, under Swiss data protection law — and under the GDPR too, because we offer this to people in the EU, which brings us inside it wherever we happen to sit. That is worth saying for a finance tool: it is who writes the code, whose courts a dispute would go to, and the two bodies of law we answer to, both of which start from the assumption that your data is yours.
Is there a password?
No. Signing in asks for your email address and sends an eight-digit code that works once and expires in ten minutes. There is nothing to choose, forget or reuse.
Can I plan more than one year?
Yes. The year is switched from the top bar, and each one is a plan of its own: income, spending, budgets, goals and balances are all separate, so planning next year cannot disturb this one. If you sync, each year is its own file in your Drive.
What happens to my plan when I sign out?
It stays in this browser, exactly as it was. Signing out ends the session; it never deletes a plan. If signing in ever replaced what was here, the previous plan is kept aside so that it is recoverable.
Can I export my data?
Yes — Settings exports every year you have planned as one JSON file, and reads the same file back in. It is the same shape the app stores and syncs, so there is nothing proprietary to be trapped in. If you sync, the file in your Drive is also yours to take.
Which currency does it use?
Yours. Sixty-odd of them — every major world currency, every European one, the euro included — set in Settings and applied to the whole plan. Numbers and dates are formatted to match: CHF groups on apostrophes the Swiss way, RON on full stops, INR on lakhs, while month names stay in English. A plan holds one currency at a time; there is no conversion between them and no live exchange rate, because nothing here is ever worth a different number tomorrow than it was today.
Can I try something without wrecking my plan?
Every change can be taken back from the toast that reports it, so an edit you did not mean costs one click — including the ones that delete something. Budgets are the place to try a number without committing to it: they sit beside what you actually planned rather than replacing it.
Does it work for a Swiss household?
Yes, and that is the household it was first written for. The plan counts in CHF and groups the figures the Swiss way. The costs that break a flat monthly budget are handled by being planned rather than averaged: the tax bill nobody deducted at source is a one-off entry in the month it falls, the health-insurance premium is a recurring cost, and a pillar 3a sits on the Pensions page beside the state and employer ones. What it does not do is know Swiss tax law — it will not tell you the 3a ceiling or work out what you owe. You type the figures; it does the arithmetic on them.
Is this a replacement for my budgeting spreadsheet?
That is what it is for. It began as one person’s own yearly planning spreadsheet and keeps the same arithmetic, with the parts a grid makes painful done for you: no formula to drag down twelve columns, no row that quietly stopped being included in a total, and no rebuilding it every January — a new year can carry last year’s standing setup forward. Every total still opens onto the rows that made it, and the whole thing exports as one JSON file if you ever want to go back to a grid.
Does it work if my income changes every month?
Yes — that is how income is entered in the first place. A stream can be one figure that fills the year, or a different figure in each month, so a quiet spring and a busy autumn stay two different things instead of an average that flatters both. Savings then shows the trajectory against your minimum buffer, so you can see the month the balance comes closest to it — which for an uneven year is the month that decides whether the whole thing works.
How far ahead can it look?
Past December. The year itself is planned month by month, and the Forecast page carries everything after today forward — savings, investments, pensions, assets and net worth, each growing at the rate you set for it — so you can see where the long run is heading without leaving the plan. It is arithmetic on your assumptions rather than a simulation: change a rate and every figure after it moves.
Can two people use the same plan?
Two devices signed into the same account share one set of files in your Drive, so yes — but not at the same time. Whichever device syncs last replaces the other’s unsynced changes. The app tells you when it spots this; it cannot prevent it, and that limit is stated in the terms.
The planner itself needs JavaScript: every figure on screen is calculated in your browser.