SiBalance User Guide

Last updated: 23 September 2026

Covers SiBalance 5.0.0 and later.

Welcome to SiBalance. This guide explains how to set up your budget, manage income and expenses, import transactions, use Goals, understand Safe To Spend, use insights, generate reports, and manage privacy and backup settings.

For planning context before setup, read Budget Planning with SiBalance or the practical monthly budget guide.

SiBalance Free and SiBalance Full

SiBalance is free to download from the App Store. Start with one complete budget for free, then unlock SiBalance Full with a one-time in-app purchase for lifetime access. There is no subscription or recurring charge.

SiBalance Free includes one complete budget, income and expense tracking, manual and recurring transactions, categories, Safe to Spend, upcoming payments and quick views, complete transaction history, transaction and category search, and support for 159 currencies. No account or bank connection is required.

SiBalance Full includes everything in Free, plus unlimited budgets, Goals, forecasting, Insights and trends, Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, Themes and customisation, screenshot import, CSV import and export, iCloud Sync, encrypted backups, Apple Pay additions via Shortcuts, Siri and App Intents support, and iPhone and iPad support. One-time unlock. No subscription. Lifetime access.

What’s New in SiBalance 5.0

• Import transactions from screenshots with private, on-device text recognition.
• Review and edit every detected transaction before adding it.
• Import and export CSV files, with downloadable templates and category guidance.
• See possible duplicate warnings during screenshot and CSV review.
• Choose categories, dates, amounts, recurrence, and expense treatment while reviewing imports.
• Use refreshed light and dark SiBalance app icons.
• Benefit from improved sorting, import reliability, accessibility, and localisation.

Getting Started

Create or Restore Your First Budget

When you first open SiBalance, choose how you want to begin.

• New Budget: start again with a new budget
• Check iCloud Backup: look for existing SiBalance data in iCloud
• Restore Encrypted Backup: restore from a manual .sibackup file

On smaller phones, the setup screen can scroll so all setup options remain reachable.

Choose Your Currency

• Browse the supported currencies
• Search by currency code or name
• Tap Continue to confirm your selection

Optional iCloud Sync

You can choose whether to enable iCloud Sync.

When enabled, budgets, transactions, categories, and settings are synchronised across your Apple devices using your personal iCloud account.

If you reinstall SiBalance or move to a new device, the app can automatically search for existing SiBalance data in iCloud and restore it during setup.

During setup, SiBalance shows clearer iCloud restore states such as checking, found, not found, unavailable, and restoring.

If you tap New Budget and SiBalance finds existing iCloud data, it will ask whether you want to restore that iCloud backup, start a new budget anyway, or cancel. If no iCloud data is found, New Budget continues normally.

If you deliberately start a new budget despite existing iCloud data, SiBalance will not immediately prompt you to turn on iCloud Sync. This helps avoid accidentally replacing an older iCloud backup.

Restoring an encrypted backup during first launch restores data locally on the device. It does not automatically enable iCloud Sync.

Name Your Budget

Give your budget a descriptive name such as:

• Monthly Budget
• Family Budget
• Personal Budget
• Household Budget

Select a Budget Period

Choose how your budget is organised:

• Weekly: useful for close tracking and shorter planning cycles
• Fortnightly: groups your budget every two weeks
• Monthly: the most common budgeting period
• Yearly: provides an annual budgeting view
• Custom: set a budget period that matches your own planning cycle

You can also choose the day your budget period starts.

Using SiBalance on iPhone and iPad

SiBalance is a universal app for iPhone and iPad. Your budgets and features work across both devices, while the layout adapts to the available screen space.

On iPhone

SiBalance remains portrait-only on iPhone. It uses the compact Dashboard layout and phone-sized calendar pickers and editor sheets.

On iPad

• Use the sidebar to move between Dashboard, Budget, Goals, Insights, and Settings.
• The sidebar and surrounding background follow your selected app theme.
• Use SiBalance in portrait, upside-down portrait, landscape left, or landscape right.
• Calendar pickers open in a window sized appropriately for iPad.
• Goal editors use a larger page-style presentation.
• Dashboard spacing and card sizes are optimised for the larger display without changing the compact iPhone layout.

iPad Dashboard Goals Card

The Goals card on the iPad Dashboard shows:

• Total saved across active goals
• The combined target amount and overall percentage funded
• Up to four goals in a two-column layout
• Each goal's progress and saved-versus-target amount
• An indication when more active goals exist

If you have no goals, tap Create a Goal to go directly to Goals.

Safe To Spend and Goals cards use improved alignment and sizing on iPad, with less unused space and padding tailored separately from iPhone.

Income

Income entries represent money coming into your budget.

1. Select a category
2. Enter an amount
3. Add an optional source name
4. Choose a date
5. Enable Repeat for recurring income

Examples include salary, pensions, benefits, freelance income, and other payments.

Repeating income can use standard repeat options or a custom repeat schedule when your income does not follow a simple weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or yearly pattern.

List and Calendar Views

Use the List / Calendar switch to choose how income is shown. List is the default view and is best for searching, sorting, and managing entries. Calendar shows when income falls within the active budget period. You can choose a different default view for Income in Settings.

In Calendar view, use the period controls to move backwards or forwards, or return to the current period. Coloured markers identify dates with scheduled income. Select a date to see its total and all income due that day; a date without income shows an empty state. Tap the full-screen control for a more detailed calendar overview.

Adding income from Calendar view uses the selected date. After you save it, the calendar moves to the saved entry's date. Rows keep their category colour, repeating status, and editing options, and long names truncate to preserve the layout.

Carry Over

When Carry Unused Balance is enabled and money is available to carry forward, Carry Over appears in Income Calendar view. It contributes to the period total and the total for its date, and that date receives an income marker.

Carry Over uses the same dedicated card as List view and is always the first entry for that date, ahead of Salary or other income. Tap its information button to learn how it is calculated from the previous period. Because it is calculated automatically, it cannot be edited or deleted as an income entry.

Expenses

Expense entries represent money leaving your budget.

1. Select a category
2. Enter an amount
3. Add an optional merchant or description
4. Choose a date
5. Enable Repeat for recurring expenses

Examples include rent, utilities, insurance, transport, and other bills.

Repeating expenses can use standard repeat options or a custom repeat schedule for bills and costs that follow their own timing.

List and Calendar Views

Use the List / Calendar switch to choose how expenses are shown. List is the default view and is best for searching, sorting, and managing entries. Calendar shows when expenses fall within the active budget period. You can choose a different default view for Expenses in Settings, independently of the Income default.

In Calendar view, use the period controls to move backwards or forwards, or return to the current period. Coloured markers identify dates with scheduled expenses. Select a date to see its total and every expense due that day; a date without expenses shows an empty state. Tap the full-screen control for a more detailed calendar overview.

Adding an expense from Calendar view uses the selected date. After you save it, the calendar moves to the saved entry's date. Rows keep their category colour, repeating status, and editing options, and long transaction and category names truncate to preserve the layout.

The recurring expenses guide explains how to organise monthly, annual and irregular-but-predictable commitments.

How the Calendar Adapts

Income and Expenses calendars follow the active budget period and its actual boundaries:

• Daily: a focused summary of one day
• Weekly: seven days
• Fortnightly: two weeks
• Monthly: a traditional month grid
• Yearly: a twelve-month overview
• Custom or Match Period: the dates defined by that period

Calendar alignment respects your first-day-of-week preference, month and year boundaries, leap years, and custom period boundaries. Blank cells appear where needed for alignment without showing dates outside the active period.

Category Colours

Built-in and custom categories use consistent colours across lists, calendars, and related transaction displays. Custom names such as Amazon, Lunch, Coffee, Tesco, and Gas & Electric receive stable colours rather than a generic grey.

Import from Screenshot

Import from Screenshot uses private, on-device text recognition to turn a screenshot into one or more draft income or expense entries. Nothing is added until you review and confirm it.

1. Open Income or Expenses.
2. Tap the + button.
3. Select Import from Screenshot.
4. Choose a screenshot from the system photo picker.
5. Wait while SiBalance reads it on your device.
6. Review and correct the detected transaction information.
7. Tap Import Selected, Add Income, or Add Expense.

The entry type is determined by where you start: importing from Income creates income drafts, while importing from Expenses creates expense drafts.

Reviewing Detected Transactions

When one transaction is detected, SiBalance opens the normal entry screen with the recognised information filled in. Check or change its category, amount, description or merchant, date, and repeat settings. Expenses also let you choose Safe to Spend or Planned.

When several transactions are detected, a review list lets you include or exclude each transaction and edit its details. You can select categories with the normal category browser, configure repeat intervals, and use either an end date or a number of payments. Repeating expenses are automatically treated as Planned, matching manual expense entry.

Possible Duplicates

SiBalance highlights a Possible duplicate when an existing entry has a closely matching type, amount, date, and description. It never deletes or merges possible duplicates automatically; you decide whether to include them.

Privacy and Unfinished Reviews

• Recognition happens entirely on your device.
• Screenshots and recognised text are not uploaded.
• No bank connection, external AI service, or analytics service is used.
• The screenshot is not retained after the import.

After recognition creates a review draft, the review cannot be accidentally swiped away. Briefly backgrounding the app preserves the in-memory review, and Cancel offers Keep Reviewing or Discard Import. If iOS terminates SiBalance completely, an unfinished screenshot review is not retained so that OCR data is not stored unnecessarily.

Goals

Use the Goals tab to create targets, track progress, and move money between your available budget and a goal.

Creating a Goal

Tap + in the Goals tab, then enter:

• A goal name
• A target amount
• An optional target date
• An icon and colour
• Any money you have already saved as a starting balance

A starting balance records savings you already have. It does not reduce the available balance in your current budget period.

Tracking Progress

Each goal card shows the information you need to follow your progress:

• The amount currently saved
• The target amount
• The completion percentage and progress bar
• The target date, when one has been set
• The amount still needed each month, where applicable

Tap a goal to see its full progress, target information, enhanced progress ring, and Activity history. Goal colours and progress information adapt to both light and dark appearance modes.

Adding and Withdrawing Money

Open a goal to move money in or out:

• Add Money: moves money from the available budget into the goal
• Withdraw: returns money from the goal to the available budget

Contributions and withdrawals appear in the goal's Activity section. Goal transfers are included when SiBalance calculates the available balance for the relevant budget period.

Repeating Contributions

When adding money to a goal, you can make the contribution repeat:

• Every budget period
• Daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly
• At a custom interval

Scheduled contributions appear in Activity before they occur. Their repeat descriptions use natural wording such as Every month, Every week, or Every quarter.

When editing a repeating contribution, choose how much of the series to change:

• Edit This Entry: changes only the selected contribution
• Edit This and Future Entries: changes the selected contribution and upcoming contributions
• Edit All Entries: changes the full repeating series

When deleting a repeating contribution, the equivalent choices are available:

• Delete This Entry
• Delete This and Future Entries
• Delete All Entries

Managing Goals and Activity

• Tap a goal to open its details and Activity history
• Swipe a goal left to reveal Edit, Archive, and Delete
• View archived goals to restore them when needed
• Swipe an Activity entry left to edit or delete it

Deleting a goal also removes its contribution history after you confirm the deletion. Goals are stored separately for each budget and are included in SiBalance's existing save and optional iCloud Sync system.

Deduct from Safe to Spend

When adding a one-off expense, use Deduct from Safe to Spend to decide whether it should reduce your Safe To Spend allowance.

Leave it switched on for everyday spending, such as groceries, shopping, meals out, fuel, or other costs you want to deduct from Safe To Spend.

Switch it off for planned one-off bills or committed costs, such as an annual insurance payment, car repair, school fee, or a bill that only happens once. The expense will still reduce your balance, but it will not use up your Safe To Spend ring.

If you turn on Repeat for an expense, SiBalance automatically treats it as committed spending. Repeating expenses still reduce your balance and daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly allowance, but they do not count as spending against the Safe To Spend ring.

Safe To Spend uses your selected window, such as daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, yearly, or the full budget period. Expenses with Deduct from Safe to Spend switched on only reduce the ring inside that selected window.

Searching, Editing and Deleting Entries

Searching Entries

Use the search button on the Income or Expenses screen to find entries by name, category, note, amount, date, or frequency.

Search starts within the period shown in the period bar. To look beyond the current period, tap Search all periods. This expands the results to matching entries across other periods too.

When searching all periods, recurring entries are shown as individual occurrences so you can find the exact payment or bill you need.

One-off entries appear only on their actual entry date. Recurring entries can appear from their original start date, so older matches are included for as far back as you have data for that item.

If a recurring entry has an end date, search includes occurrences from the start date through to that end date. If a recurring entry has no end date, Search all periods includes upcoming occurrences for up to one year ahead from your current budget period or today, whichever is later.

Use the sort control while searching to reorder results by newest, oldest, amount, or name. Changing the search scope does not change your selected sort order.

Editing Entries

Income and expense rows use swipe actions for editing. Swipe left on an income or expense row, then tap Edit.

For one-time entries, the edit screen opens directly.

For repeating entries, choose how much of the series to change:

• Edit This Entry: changes only the selected occurrence; earlier and later entries remain unchanged
• Edit This and Future Entries: changes the selected occurrence and every later entry; earlier entries keep their existing details
• Edit All Entries: changes the entire repeating series, including earlier entries

Choosing Edit This and Future Entries starts a new repeating schedule from the selected date. If the series has a payment limit, SiBalance adjusts it automatically to preserve the remaining number of entries.

These editing options are available from the Income and Expenses tabs and when reviewing entries through Insights.

If one occurrence from a repeating series has been edited separately, the row shows an Edited pill next to Repeating. This shows that the entry is still connected to a repeating series, but has been individually changed.

Deleting Entries

Swipe left on an income or expense row, then tap Delete.

For one-time entries, confirm the delete action to remove that entry.

For recurring entries, choose how much of the series to remove:

• Delete This Entry: removes only that single occurrence and leaves the rest of the recurring series in place
• Delete This and Future Entries: removes the selected occurrence and all later occurrences, while keeping earlier entries
• Delete All Entries: removes the entire recurring series

Deleting an item updates the current period totals, dashboard totals, insights, and widgets.

These choices help prevent accidentally changing or deleting an entire repeating income or bill when you only meant to update one occurrence.

Undoing a Deletion

After deleting income, an expense, a goal, or a goal contribution, a floating banner appears above the navigation bar. Tap Undo in the banner to restore the deleted item.

A progress bar shows how much time remains. The undo option is available for 7 seconds, then the deletion is completed.

Dashboard

The Dashboard provides a summary of your current budget.

• Balance
• Current budget period
• Total income
• Total expenses
• Safe To Spend amount

Use the navigation arrows to move between budget periods.

Tap the Income or Expenses card for a quick look at what is coming up in the current budget period.

On iPad, the Dashboard also uses a larger adaptive layout with an expanded Goals card. See Using SiBalance on iPhone and iPad for details.

Hide or Reveal Balances

Tap the eye icon to hide or reveal balances.

Safe To Spend

For a problem-led explanation of available spending after bills and buffers, read How Safe to Spend works.

Safe To Spend helps you understand how much money is available after your budget commitments are considered.

It is designed to answer a practical question: how much can you safely spend without putting this budget period under pressure?

Safe To Spend starts with your remaining budget balance, subtracts any active safety buffer, then spreads the available amount across the remaining time in the budget period.

Depending on your budget, the calculation may include:

• Available balance
• Future income
• Future expenses
• Recurring transactions
• Safety buffer
• Available to spend

Safe To Spend Period

You can choose how Safe To Spend is shown from Settings > Balance > Safe to spend. The setting is shown as Frequency because it controls how Safe To Spend is split over time.

Options include:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Fortnightly
• Monthly
• Yearly
• Match Period

For example, if Safe To Spend is set to Weekly, the Dashboard and widgets show the amount available for the current week. If it is set to Match Period, SiBalance shows the amount available for the rest of the current budget period.

Weekly and fortnightly Safe To Spend windows use the chosen week start when the budget itself is weekly or fortnightly. For other budget intervals, those windows use Monday starts.

Safe To Spend settings are saved per budget. One budget can use Weekly while another uses Daily, and SiBalance will remember the correct choice when you switch between budgets.

Safety Buffer

The safety buffer lets you reserve part of your money before Safe To Spend is calculated. This can help keep money aside for unexpected costs or simply give your budget more breathing room.

If a safety buffer is active, Safe To Spend is calculated after that amount has been reserved.

Widgets

Safe To Spend widgets reflect the Safe To Spend period chosen for each budget. If your budget is set to Weekly, the widget shows the weekly amount. If it is set to Monthly, the widget shows the monthly amount.

Smaller Lock Screen widgets may show a compact amount only, while larger widgets can show more context such as the selected period and budget status.

Insights

Insights help you understand what is happening within your budget. Use the period selector to review different budget periods.

Briefing

A summary of key changes and activity in the selected period.

Forecast

Projects where the current period may finish and highlights unusual movement.

Patterns

Highlights recurring and one-off activity so patterns are easier to see.

Breakdown

Provides category-level analysis of income and expenses.

Reports

Generate detailed reports for any date range.

1. Select a start date
2. Select an end date
3. Choose which income to include
4. Choose which expense categories to include
5. Select the report sections you want
6. Tap Generate Report

Report sections can include:

• Summary
• Changes
• Recurring & One-offs
• Smart Notes

Siri and App Shortcuts

SiBalance supports Siri and App Shortcuts for quick access to common budgeting actions.

Add Expense

• “Add expense in SiBalance”
• “Log expense in SiBalance”
• “Add spending to SiBalance”

Add Income

• “Add income in SiBalance”
• “Log income in SiBalance”
• “Add money to SiBalance”

Safe To Spend

• “What’s my Safe To Spend today in SiBalance”
• “Check Safe To Spend in SiBalance”
• “How much can I spend today in SiBalance”

Dashboard

• “Open SiBalance”
• “Open dashboard in SiBalance”
• “Show my budget in SiBalance”

Automatically Add Apple Pay Purchases to SiBalance

Apple Pay additions via Shortcuts are included with SiBalance Full.

Set up a Shortcuts automation to add eligible Apple Pay purchases as ordinary SiBalance expenses. Choose the instructions for your iOS version.

How it works

Once set up, eligible Apple Pay purchases can be passed to SiBalance automatically through Apple Shortcuts.

The purchase amount and merchant come from the Wallet transaction. You choose the SiBalance budget and category during setup.

SiBalance does not connect to your bank and does not access your Apple Pay account directly. The transaction information is passed to SiBalance by Apple Shortcuts.

After the next eligible card tap, check that SiBalance has added one Purchases expense with the correct amount and merchant, and that Safe to Spend has decreased.

This automation responds to eligible card taps. It does not import past Wallet transactions.

Important

Automatically recorded Apple Pay purchases are treated as everyday spending and count against Safe to Spend.

Avoid creating a separate planned expense for spending you expect the Apple Pay automation to record, otherwise the same purchase may be counted twice.

Apple Pay imports are not automatically matched to, or converted into, Planned expenses.

If the same purchase is accidentally tracked both ways, you can delete either entry manually.

Settings

Open Settings from the button in the top-right of the Dashboard. Settings marked For [budget name] affect only the selected budget; settings marked For all active budgets apply across every budget that has not been archived.

Budgets

Create, switch between, and manage separate money plans. Each budget keeps its own income, expenses, goals, currency, timeframe, and balance settings.

• Selected Budget: chooses the budget currently shown in the app. It also decides which budget the Timeframes and Balance sections below will change. This selector appears when you have more than one active budget.
• Budget menu (•••): use Edit to change that budget's name, currency, interval, starting point, and date format. Archive hides it from the budget selector without deleting its data. Restore makes an archived budget active again. Delete removes the budget and its saved entries; use the Undo prompt immediately if you deleted it by mistake. Your last active budget cannot be archived or deleted.
• Add Budget: starts a separate money plan with its own income, expenses, and goals. Adding a budget does not change or merge your existing budgets.

Timeframes

Configure how periods and dates work for the selected budget.

• Budget Interval: sets how long each budget period lasts. Choose Daily, Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Yearly, or Custom. The Dashboard, Insights, reports, and period-ending reminders use these period boundaries.
• Unit: appears when Budget Interval is Custom. Choose whether the custom period is measured in days, weeks, months, or years.
• Length: appears for a Custom interval. Use the minus and plus buttons to choose how many of the selected units make one period, from 1 to 999.
• Week Starts: sets the first day of weekly, fortnightly, or custom week-based periods. For example, a Monday start makes each weekly period run from Monday to Sunday.
• Budget Starts: sets the anchor used to line up repeating periods. For monthly periods, choose a day of the month. For custom day-based periods, choose the date from which the repeating periods begin. If a chosen day does not exist in a shorter month, SiBalance uses the valid period boundary for that month.
• Date Format: chooses how dates are displayed for this budget, including formats such as 18 Jul 2026, 18/07/2026, 07-18-2026, 07/18/2026, and 2026-07-18. It changes presentation, not the dates stored with your entries.

Balance

Adjust how balances are calculated and displayed for the selected budget.

• Carry Unused Balance: includes the net balance from before the current period in the current period. Turn it off to calculate each period from only that period's income, expenses, and goal activity.
• Always Hide Balance: starts money totals hidden whenever you view the app. You can still reveal them with the eye control for the current view, but SiBalance hides them again later for privacy.
• Safe to Spend: chooses the window used for the Safe To Spend allowance: Daily, Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Yearly, or Match Period. Match Period shows the allowance for the remainder of the selected budget's current period. A change applies to the calculation from today.
• Safety Buffer: reserves part of the current balance before Safe To Spend is calculated. Choose None, a suggested amount of 50, 100, or 250 in the budget's currency, or Custom. The buffer lowers Safe To Spend but does not record an expense or change the displayed balance.
• Custom Buffer: appears when Safety Buffer is set to Custom. Enter the exact amount you want SiBalance to keep out of Safe To Spend.

Notifications

SiBalance can send local reminders for upcoming budget events. Notifications are optional and can be changed at any time from Settings > Notifications.

These choices apply to all active budgets:

• Expense Due: sends a reminder for upcoming dates attached to saved one-off and repeating expenses.
• Income Due: sends a reminder for upcoming expected dates attached to saved one-off and repeating income.
• Period Ending: reminds you that each active budget's current period is about to end so you can review it.
• Reminder Time: chooses the time of day at which enabled reminders appear.
• Due Reminder: chooses when every enabled reminder is sent: on the day, 1 day before, 2 days before, or a custom number of days before.
• Custom Reminder: appears when Due Reminder is set to Custom. Use minus or plus to choose from 3 to 60 days before the relevant date.

Notifications are created locally on your device. SiBalance does not send your budget data to a server to create reminders. The first reminder you turn on asks for iOS notification permission. If reminders do not appear, check that notifications are allowed for SiBalance in iOS Settings.

Import/Export

Settings includes Import CSV, Export CSV, and Download CSV Template. CSV import and export are included with SiBalance. The template and starter pack can help you prepare compatible files.

Import CSV

1. Open Settings and find Import/Export.
2. Tap Import CSV and choose a CSV file.
3. Select the destination budget.
4. Review the rows and correct invalid information or missing categories.
5. Include or exclude individual rows.
6. Import the valid selected transactions.

Choosing a file never imports it immediately. The review shows the date, type, description, amount, category, validation warnings, and possible duplicate warnings. Valid selected rows can still be imported when other rows contain errors.

CSV Format

The public column order is:

Date,Type,Description,Amount,Category,Recurring,Frequency,Recurring End Date,Payment Limit,Expense Treatment,Currency

Date, Type, Description, and Amount are required. The remaining columns are optional. Follow these rules:

• Dates use yyyy-MM-dd.
• Type is Income or Expense.
• Amounts are positive decimals without currency symbols or thousands separators.
• Recurring is Yes or No; Frequency is required for repeating entries.
• Standard frequencies are Daily, Weekly, Fortnightly, Every 4 Weeks, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly.
• A repeating transaction can use a Recurring End Date or Payment Limit, but not both.
• Expense Treatment is Safe to Spend or Planned, and remains blank for income.
• Currency is an optional three-letter ISO code such as GBP, USD, or EUR. If present, it must match the destination budget because SiBalance does not convert currencies.

Copy an exact category from the category-reference file, or leave Category blank and choose one during review. Unknown categories are flagged and are not created automatically.

The importer supports UTF-8, an optional UTF-8 byte-order mark, Windows and Unix line endings, quoted commas, escaped quotation marks, Unicode text, and properly quoted line breaks.

Export CSV

Export CSV uses the same public schema, so an export can be reviewed and imported again. It includes stored income and expense transactions, but not internal IDs, sync metadata, deleted records, generated carry-over entries, or internal recurrence-series identifiers.

Download the CSV Starter Pack

Download the complete starter pack, or get the CSV template, category reference, and plain-text CSV guide separately.

Security & Storage

The Private Budgeting page explains how local data, manual entry and optional iCloud Sync fit together.

Protect the app, manage sync, and create or restore encrypted backups.

Device Passcode / Face ID

Device Passcode / Face ID requires device-owner authentication whenever SiBalance is opened. Depending on your device, iOS can use Face ID, Touch ID, or the device passcode. SiBalance asks you to authenticate once when you turn the setting on.

iCloud Sync

iCloud Sync keeps budgets, income, expenses, goals, categories, and settings available on your Apple devices signed into the same Apple ID. The status panel underneath shows whether sync is off, working, or when it last completed.

When iCloud Sync is off, your data remains stored locally on your device.

Encrypted Backups

Create Encrypted Backup creates a password-protected snapshot of your SiBalance data in the .sibackup format. You choose where to save or share the file, so it can be kept outside iCloud or alongside another backup system.

Backup creation asks you to enter and confirm a password, and to acknowledge that the password cannot be recovered if forgotten. You can show or hide the password while creating the backup.

The default filename is SiBalance Backup YYYY-MM-DD.sibackup. Backups include budgets, income, expenses, transactions, categories, recurring items, and settings.

Backups are encrypted using AES-GCM with PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256.

Restoring an Encrypted Backup

Restore Encrypted Backup lets you choose a .sibackup file and unlock it with its password.

1. Choose a .sibackup file
2. Enter the backup password
3. Confirm the restore

Restoring a backup replaces the current local SiBalance data on this device.

If iCloud Sync is enabled, SiBalance can offer Restore and Update iCloud. This restores the backup locally and pushes the restored data to iCloud so your other devices can receive it.

If the iCloud update fails, SiBalance keeps the local restore and queues sync for later.

Restoring Data After Reinstalling SiBalance

If iCloud Sync was enabled before you removed SiBalance, the app will automatically check for existing SiBalance data in your iCloud account when you reinstall it.

If matching data is found, SiBalance can restore your budgets, transactions, categories, and settings from iCloud during setup.

This can help you move to a new device or reinstall the app without losing previously synced data.

Managing iCloud Data

Additional iCloud management options may be available when iCloud Sync has been used.

• Stop Using iCloud: stops syncing and keeps this device's data stored locally in SiBalance.

Delete iCloud Data is available from the Data section. Use it carefully, as deleting iCloud data may affect other devices connected to the same iCloud account.

Appearance

Change how SiBalance looks without changing any budget data.

• Light: always uses the app's light appearance.
• Dark: always uses the app's dark appearance.
• System: follows your device's current Light or Dark Mode setting and changes with it automatically.
• Theme: chooses the app's colour palette. The available themes are Horizon, Grove, Lunar, and Mistberry; this is separate from the Light, Dark, or System appearance choice.
• App Icon: chooses the Light or Dark SiBalance icon shown on the Home Screen and in the App Library.

Default Views

Choose whether Income and Expenses open in List or Calendar view. List is the initial default, and each screen has its own setting, so Income can open as a calendar while Expenses opens as a list, or vice versa.

Accessibility

• Reduce Motion: stops SiBalance's animated Dashboard weather, moving background, and animated icons. The app also respects the Reduce Motion preference in iOS.
• iOS Settings: reminds you that text size, VoiceOver, contrast, and other system-wide accessibility choices are managed in the device's Settings app. SiBalance supports those iOS features where available.

Help and Support

• Reset App Tips: makes the in-app walkthrough tips appear again. Choose all tips or only the Dashboard, Income, Expense, Goals, or Insights guide. The Income and Expense tips explain when to use List or Calendar, while the Dashboard tip points out that its Income and Expenses cards open a quick look at upcoming entries. This does not reset any budget data.
• User Guide: opens this guide in your web browser.
• Feedback & Bug Reports: opens a new email addressed to SiBalance support so you can send feedback or describe a problem.

Data

These are destructive actions. Read the confirmation message before continuing.

• Delete iCloud Data: turns off iCloud Sync, removes SiBalance's stored data from iCloud, and keeps the current data on this device available locally. Other devices will no longer be able to retrieve the deleted cloud copy.
• Delete All Data: clears budgets, entries, goals, settings, insights, and reports, then returns SiBalance to its first-time setup screen. You must type the confirmation word and approve a final warning. If iCloud Sync is on, this also deletes the SiBalance data in iCloud; if sync is off, it deletes only the local data on this device. This action cannot be undone.

Settings Footer

• Privacy Policy: opens SiBalance's privacy policy in your browser.
• Terms of Service: opens SiBalance's terms in your browser.
• App Version and Build: identifies the exact installed version, which is useful when contacting support.

Need Help?

For support, bug reports, or feature requests, contact:

[email protected]

You can also visit the Support Page.