SiBalance User Guide

Last updated: June 2026

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

Getting Started

Create Your First Budget

When you first open SiBalance, tap New Budget.

You can begin a free trial of SiBalance Premium or restore an existing purchase.

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.

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

You can also choose the day your budget period starts.

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.

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, subscriptions, insurance, transport, and other bills.

Counts Towards Safe To Spend

When adding a one-off expense, use Counts towards Safe To Spend to decide whether it should count against 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 count against 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 that count towards Safe To Spend only count against the ring inside that selected window.

Searching 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. Open-ended recurring entries are shown for a practical future window, rather than indefinitely.

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.

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.

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.

Hide or Reveal Balances

Tap the eye icon to hide or reveal balances.

Safe To Spend

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.

Options include:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Fortnightly
• Monthly
• Yearly
• Match budget 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 budget period, SiBalance shows the amount available for the rest of the current budget period.

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”

Settings

Budgets

Create, switch between, and manage separate money plans.

• View the current budget
• Add another budget
• Manage separate income and expenses for each budget

Timeframes

Configure how your budget periods work.

• Week starts
• Budget interval
• Budget starts
• Date format

Balance

Adjust how balances behave and appear.

• Carry unused balance: add remaining balance to the next period
• Always hide balance: keep totals hidden until you reveal them
• Safe to spend: choose whether Safe To Spend is shown daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, yearly, or for the matching budget period
• Safety buffer: set money aside from Safe To Spend without changing your balance

Notifications

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

Available reminders include:

• Expense due: reminds you before saved expenses are due
• Income due: reminds you before expected income dates
• Period ending: reminds you before the current budget period ends

You can choose how far in advance due reminders appear. This applies to expense, income, and period ending reminders.

Notifications are created locally on your device. SiBalance does not send your budget data to a server to create reminders.

If notifications do not appear, check that notifications are enabled for SiBalance in iOS Settings.

Appearance

Change the app's look and theme.

• Light mode
• Dark mode
• System mode
• Theme
• App icon

Accessibility

SiBalance includes accessibility support across key budgeting flows.

• VoiceOver support: key dashboard cards, Safe To Spend, income and expense actions, settings rows, purchase options, and controls include accessibility labels, values, and hints.
• Reduced Motion support: SiBalance respects iOS Reduce Motion and includes an in-app Reduce Dashboard Motion setting.
• Dynamic Type support: many screens support larger text sizes, wrapping, and layout adjustments.
• High contrast and legibility support: backgrounds and decorative visuals adapt for increased contrast, and decorative imagery is hidden from assistive technologies.
• Large touch targets: important controls use accessible hit areas and clear labels.
• Balance privacy controls: balances can be hidden or revealed to reduce visual exposure.

Reduce Motion

If you prefer fewer animations and motion effects, enable Reduce Motion in iOS Settings. SiBalance automatically respects this setting.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone
2. Tap Accessibility
3. Tap Motion
4. Turn on Reduce Motion

Security & Backup

Protect the app and keep data in sync.

Device Passcode / Face ID

Enable Device Passcode or Face ID to require device authentication when opening SiBalance.

iCloud Sync

iCloud Sync keeps your budgets, transactions, categories, and settings available across your Apple devices.

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

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: removes SiBalance data from iCloud while keeping this device local.

Use these options carefully. Deleting iCloud data may affect other devices connected to the same iCloud account.

Help and Support

Use Help and Support for guides and assistance.

• Reset App Tips: show Dashboard, Income, and Expenses tips again
• User Guide: open the SiBalance help guide in your browser
• Feedback & Bug Reports: send feedback or report a problem by email

Subscription

Manage your SiBalance Premium plan through Apple's subscription settings.

• View your subscription
• Change your plan
• Cancel Premium

Data

Use Data settings for permanent actions.

Delete Data removes all saved budget data from this app. This action cannot be undone.

Need Help?

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

[email protected]

You can also visit the Support Page.