SiBalance

SiBalance User Guide

Last updated: 13 August 2026

Covers SiBalance 2.0.0 and later.

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

Contents

SiBalance Free and SiBalance Full

SiBalance is free to download and includes one budget, the Dashboard, income and expense tracking, recurring entries, categories, Safe To Spend, upcoming payments, complete history, search, Siri and App Intents, and support for 159 currencies.

A one-time lifetime purchase of SiBalance Full adds unlimited budgets, Goals, forecasting, Insights and trends, Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, optional iCloud Sync, and encrypted backups. There is no subscription or recurring charge.

Features that require SiBalance Full are identified in the app. Existing customers can use Restore Purchase to verify and restore access.

Getting Started

Create or Restore Your First Budget

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

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

Choose Your Currency

Optional iCloud Sync (SiBalance Full)

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:

Select a Budget Period

Choose how your budget is organised:

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

iPad Dashboard Goals Card

The Goals card on the iPad Dashboard shows:

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.

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.

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 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:

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:

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:

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:

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

Managing Goals and Activity

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:

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:

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.

Use the navigation arrows to move between budget periods.

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

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:

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:

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:

Siri and App Shortcuts

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

Add Expense

Add Income

Safe To Spend

Dashboard

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.

Timeframes

Configure how periods and dates work for the selected budget.

Balance

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

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:

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.

Security & Storage

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.

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.

Accessibility

Help and Support

Data

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Need Help?

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

[email protected]

You can also visit the Support Page.