Frequently asked questions

An expense tracker for phones. You record what you spend and earn, scan a receipt when you have one, and see where the money goes. It works offline, and your transactions stay on your device.

No. Install it and start tracking. There is no sign-up and no profile to fill in. Cloud backup, if you turn it on, uses your own iCloud or Google Drive account rather than an Expensed one.

Yes, both. Some features depend on what the device and operating system support, so availability differs between the two.

Yes. Adding transactions, scanning receipts, browsing history and reading reports all work offline. A connection is needed only to install the app, download the on-device model, buy premium, or run a cloud backup.

Yes, and transfers between your own accounts as well. Transfers are kept out of spending reports so moving money around does not read as expenditure.

Yes. Each account holds its own currency, so a travel or foreign account stays separate from your everyday spending.

Yes. Add, rename, reorder and remove them to match how you think about your money, rather than fitting a fixed list.

On your device, in the app’s own storage. It stays there until you export it or turn on backup to your own cloud account.

No. Receipt images and the text read from them stay on your device. Cloud backup can include receipt attachments in the file it writes to your own storage account, and the app says so before you enable it.

No. A model on your device reads the receipts. The app sends no receipt content to an external AI service.

No. Expensed connects to no banks and asks for no banking credentials. Transactions come from you, from receipts you scan, or from a CSV file you import.

No. We do not sell personal or financial data, and your transactions are not collected for advertising. See the privacy policy for the full detail.

Anyone holding an unlocked phone can usually open the apps on it, Expensed included. Local storage protects your data from a remote breach, not from an unlocked device. Turn on app lock, and keep your passcode.

Yes. A passcode, Face ID, fingerprint unlock and device encryption are the main protection for anything on a phone, your Expensed data included. Keep them switched on.

Adding and editing transactions, scanning and reviewing receipts, search, filters, categories, accounts and reports. None of them touch the network.

To install the app or an update, to download the on-device model, to buy or restore premium, and to run a cloud backup or restore.

Only if you turned on cloud backup. With backup off, the app has no reason to touch the network.

Photograph a receipt in the app, import a PDF, or share one in from another app. Your device reads the text, then a local model picks out the merchant, amount and date. Clear readings become a transaction and the app says so. Unclear ones wait in a review list.

Only to download the model the first time. After that, scanning and extraction run on the device, aeroplane mode included.

No. Faded printing, odd layouts, handwriting, creases, poor lighting and uncommon languages all cause mistakes. When a reading does not settle - an unreadable total, an unclear merchant, something that is not a purchase - the receipt waits for you instead. Recorded transactions stay editable, so a wrong figure is a correction rather than a problem.

Usually the merchant, total, date and currency, and often a category. Line-by-line detail depends on how the receipt is printed, so expect it sometimes rather than always.

Yes. A receipt held for review opens with the original beside the fields it produced, and you can change the merchant, amount, date, category, account and notes before confirming. Recorded transactions edit the same way: open one and change what is wrong.

The work happens on your phone, so the model has to live there. It downloads once and runs locally after that. Shipping it inside the app would burden everyone who never scans a receipt.

Yes. Expensed sits in the share sheet, so a photo from Photos, a PDF from Files or a receipt in an email goes straight to it, several at a time. With the model installed they become transactions. Without it they attach to a new transaction for you to fill in.

Yes. Ask Emma answers questions like “how much did I spend this week?” by querying your own data and linking to the transactions behind the answer. It reads, never writes, and uses the same on-device model, so question and answer both stay on your phone.

About 3 GB. The app shows the size before the download starts, and settings will delete the model again to reclaim the space.

No. Running a model on-device takes memory and processing power, so older or smaller-memory phones run it slowly or not at all. [Placeholder: minimum supported iOS and Android versions, and device requirements.]

The rest of the app still works. Manual entry, categories, accounts, search, reports, import and export need no model. Unsupported features say so rather than failing quietly.

Speed depends on the device, the image size and what else the phone is doing. The first run after opening the app is slowest, because the model has to load into memory.

Your transactions, categories, accounts, notes, settings, and any receipt images or documents you attach.

App data sits in the app’s private storage, under the operating system’s file encryption, which a locked device ties to your passcode. No storage method resists everything, so a passcode and current system software still matter.

Deleting a transaction removes it from the app’s storage. Earlier backups and exports keep their copies, and those are yours to delete.

Export the data yourself, or turn on backup to your own iCloud or Google Drive account. You start both deliberately; neither happens by default.

No. The app works fully without it. But with no backup your data exists in one place, and a lost, reset or broken phone takes it with it.

In your own iCloud or Google Drive account, under your terms with Apple or Google. Expensed keeps no copy.

Export your transactions to CSV on one device and import them on the other. iCloud and Google Drive are separate services, so a cloud backup made on one platform will not carry you to the other. [Placeholder: what a cross-platform transfer preserves, particularly receipt attachments.]

Yes. Export to CSV and save or share the file wherever you like. It is a plain file, so nothing stays locked inside the app.

Yes. Map the columns to merchant, amount, date, category and account during the import, and files from other apps and spreadsheets go straight in.

A cloud backup can include them. They add a lot of size, so the choice is an option when you set backup up. CSV exports carry transaction data, not images.

Uninstalling removes the app’s local data, transactions and receipt attachments included. Export or back up first if you want to keep it.

No. Your data lives on your device, not on our servers, so we hold no copy to restore. Without a backup or export, data lost with the phone is gone.

Almost all of it. Entry, receipt scanning, automatic logging, categories, accounts, tags, recurring rules, reports, search, CSV import and export, and backup to a file all cost nothing. Cloud backup is the one feature behind a purchase.

Scheduled cloud backup to your own iCloud Drive or Google Drive, a notification saying whether each backup worked, and restoring onto a new device. That is the whole of it today.

A one-time purchase. Buy it once and keep it: no subscription, nothing renews. [Placeholder: final price.] The app shows the price before you buy.

Open settings and choose to restore purchases. That asks the App Store or Google Play what the signed-in account has bought, so sign in with the account you bought with.

No. Apple and Google handle purchases separately, so a purchase on one platform stays there.

The store you bought from handles refunds under its own policy: Apple for the App Store, Google for Google Play. We cannot refund on their behalf, but do get in touch if something works differently than described.

[Placeholder: minimum supported iOS and Android versions.] The store listing always shows the current requirement.

Expensed is a phone app. It runs on tablets where the platform allows, but the layout suits phones. There is no desktop or web version.

Mostly, though rarely at the same moment. On-device processing and backup lean on platform capabilities that differ, so a feature often reaches one platform first.

Email us from the support page. Your device model and app version get us to an answer fastest.