How myfainance works

Getting started

Setup takes about fifteen minutes. Do it in this order and the dashboard is right from the first day.

1. Sign in and turn on two-factor. The first time you sign in you'll scan a QR code with an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, 1Password and so on). It's required for every account. Afterwards you can add a passkey so you can sign in with your face, fingerprint or PIN instead.
2. Set your pay schedule under Settings: any recent payday plus how often you're paid (14 days for every two weeks). This is what lets bills be reserved paycheck by paycheck.
3. Add your accounts: checking, savings and credit cards to track in detail, and mortgage, retirement and investment accounts to update with a balance now and then.
4. Bring in your history with Import, or start fresh with an opening balance. A starter set of categories is created for you; rename or add to them under Settings → Categories.
5. Add your monthly bills under Bills.
6. Optional: set budgets, create envelopes, and log anything you're waiting to be reimbursed for.

How it all fits together

Everything in myfainance exists to answer one question: how much can I actually spend right now? Each feature adds or subtracts from your account balances to get there.

Net worth is simpler: every account marked "include in net worth" (including the mortgage and retirement accounts) plus reimbursements owed. Reserved bills and envelopes don't reduce it, because that money is still yours.

What happens when you…

Dashboard

The first page you see after signing in. From top to bottom:

• Available balance with your next payday, and a breakdown card showing exactly how it was calculated.
• Net worth, bills reserved and reimbursements owed to you.
• Your accounts, with spending accounts first and everything else (mortgage, retirement) below.
• Unpaid bills for the month, with overdue ones in red.
• Envelopes and their balances.
• Budget this month: spent vs. budget, with a marker showing how far through the month you are.

On a phone, the round button in the corner adds a transaction from any page.

Accounts

Accounts come in two kinds, and picking an account type fills in sensible defaults:

Each account has two switches:

• Include in available balance - money you can spend: checking, savings and credit cards.
• Include in net worth - nearly everything, including loans and retirement.

Money you owe shows as a negative balance (a credit card at -$1,200), so every total is a simple sum. Accounts you close can be archived; their history is kept and they can be restored.

Transactions

Adding one

• Enter the amount as a positive number and pick Money out or Money in. No need to remember sign rules.
• The description autocompletes from things you've entered before.
• Save & add another keeps the account and date, for entering a batch quickly.
• Pays bill links the transaction to a month's bill and marks it paid with the actual amount. As you type, the likely bill is pre-selected for you, but nothing is marked paid until you save.
• I'll be reimbursed for this opens a reimbursement claim (see Reimbursements).
• Envelope tags a purchase as spending from an envelope (see Envelopes).

Finding them

• Filter by account, category, date range and text. Typing a number also finds amounts, which is handy when checking a statement.
• Totals in and out are shown for everything that matches.
• Filter to a single account to get a running balance column.
• Badges show which transactions pay a bill or are waiting to be reimbursed.
• Deleting a transaction that paid a bill puts the bill back to unpaid.

Import

Pick an account, then paste or upload. myfainance recognizes what you pasted and opens the right review screen. Nothing is saved until you click Import, and any import can be undone from the Import page.

Pasting card activity (the payday routine)

Copy the activity list from your credit card's website and paste it as-is. Start a few days before the last transaction you already have; the overlap is handled. Each row gets a status:

• Categories are suggested from your own history: the last category used for that description, then a close match, then what you chose last time for the bank's category. Rows with no suggestion are highlighted.
• Bills are suggested the same way as on the transaction form.
• In myfainance but not in this paste lists entries in the pasted date range that nothing matched, like a pending charge that dropped off. Tick any you want removed; nothing is removed automatically.
• Same-day transactions are added in the order they happened.

Pasting from a spreadsheet or uploading a file

• Paste rows copied from Excel or Google Sheets (with the header row), or upload a .csv, .tsv or .txt file up to 5 MB.
• Columns are detected from the header. Choose whether positive amounts are money out or money in.
• Map each category name in the file to one of yours, or create it as a new category.
• Likely duplicates are skipped, unreadable rows are listed with the reason, and the account's balance after import is shown so you can compare.
• The next import into the same account remembers these settings. Uploaded files are never stored, and pasted text is deleted once you import or cancel.

Bills

Add each monthly bill with its amount, due day, category and the account it's usually paid from. Each month gets its own copy, so you can adjust one month without changing the rest.

The paycheck split

Bills are reserved from your paychecks, not all at once. On the first payday of the month, half of that month's unpaid bills are set aside. On the second payday, the rest. In the two months a year with a third paycheck, that one is free and clear.

Marking a bill paid

Open the month's bill and choose Mark paid. There are three ways to record it:

• It's already in the ledger - link a transaction you entered or imported. Likely matches are listed first, and you can search all dates by text or amount.
• Add the payment to the ledger - creates the transaction for you, from the bill's usual account.
• Just mark it paid - records it without a transaction.

Other options on a bill's month: Different amount this month (variable bills like electric), Skip, and Mark unpaid.

• Paid in installments: for a bill you pay in parts (say $500 after each paycheck), tick this and link each payment. The month is paid once they add up to the amount due.
• Overdue means the month has ended unpaid. A bill isn't overdue just because the due day has passed, since many people pay on the second payday.
• Autopay bills are never marked paid automatically. Confirm each one so a failed autopay can't hide.

Budget

The Budget page shows each month's spending against your budgets, grouped by category group. Use the arrows to move between months; each row links to that category's transactions.

• Green means on pace, yellow means spending is more than 10 points ahead of the month, red means over budget.
• Spending outside a budget totals categories with spending but no budget, so nothing hides.
• Edit budgets shows every expense category with last month's spending and your 3-month average beside it. Each amount applies to every month or just this month (handy for the holidays).

Only Expense categories are budgeted. Refunds reduce spending, transfers never count, and an expense you'll be reimbursed for only counts the part you won't get back. Moving money into an envelope isn't spending; the purchase is.

Envelopes

Envelopes earmark money for something specific: a child's allowance, holiday gifts, the year's donations. The money stays in your accounts (nothing is transferred) but is left out of your available balance so you don't spend it by accident.

• Payday amount: an envelope can fill itself by a set amount every payday. Missed paydays are caught up the next time you open the app.
• Add money or take money out by hand ("mowed the lawn, +$20").
• Spend from an envelope by tagging the real transaction with it. A refund tagged the same way goes back in.
• Move money between envelopes.
• An overspent envelope doesn't reduce your available balance further - the extra already came out of your accounts.
• Envelopes are archived rather than deleted; archived ones stop getting payday deposits.

Reimbursements

For money you've spent that someone will pay back: HSA, dental or medical insurance, your employer, a friend. While a claim is open, the amount still owed counts toward your available balance and net worth.

• Start a claim by ticking I'll be reimbursed for this on an expense. It defaults to the full amount; lower it if only part will come back. You can also add a claim with no transaction.
• Record a payment from any source, just by typing its name. A claim can be paid by several sources over time (HSA pays $200, insurance pays $100).
• The deposit can be linked to one already in your ledger, added to the ledger for you, or not recorded.
• Close a claim when the rest isn't coming (insurance denied part of it). The unpaid part then counts as real spending in your budget. You can reopen it.

The Reimbursements page shows the total owed to you, what you've received this year, and each open claim with a progress bar. Deleting a claim or payment never deletes the transactions behind it.

Reports

• Category trends - spending in the categories you pick, month by month.
• Income vs. spending - money in, money out, and how much your cash changed each month.
• Net worth - your net worth at the end of each month, including accounts you've since archived.

Charts show complete months only, so a few days into a month doesn't look like a collapse; the current month appears in the tables as "so far". Every chart has a table underneath with the exact numbers.

Settings and security

• Pay schedule: any real payday and the interval in days. Upcoming paydays are previewed so you can check it.
• Categories: each has a group (for the budget page), a kind and an optional monthly budget. The kind matters:
  • Expense counts as spending and can be budgeted.
  • Income counts as income.
  • Transfer is money moving between your own accounts (card payments, savings) and never counts as either.
• Two-factor authentication is required. You can view recovery codes or reset your authenticator from the user menu.
• Passkeys (user menu → Passkeys) let you sign in with your device's fingerprint, face or PIN, skipping both the password and the code. Add one per device.
• Remember me keeps a device signed in for 7 days, and remember this machine skips the code for 7 days. Use these only on your own devices.

myfainance never asks for bank passwords and doesn't store full account numbers. Your data is visible only to your household.

Questions