Questions and answers

Paid is money that actually left somebody’s pocket: the card that was used, the groceries that were bought. It is what the donut on your Home screen is made of, and a transfer never changes it. An expense paid from an account the two of you share is the exception — the household paid it, not either of you, so it is in the month total and in neither of your paid figures.

Contributed is that same amount, plus anything that person transferred to the other one, minus anything they received. A transfer moves money between the two of you without the household spending a cent, so it changes who covered what without changing what was spent.

The balance — who owes whom — follows contributed, because that is the number that says how much of the month each of you really carried. If one of you pays for everything and the other sends their half over, you have both contributed the same and only one of you has paid.

When you record an expense the app asks who paid it and offers the two of you. If you have a bank account you share, there is a third answer: the house paid it. No money left either of your own pockets.

Settings › Money & fair split › We share a bank account

A joint expense counts towards what the household spent this month and towards neither of your figures. It is left out of the fair split entirely, so neither of you ends up owing the other for it — which is the point: there is nothing to settle when the money came out of an account you both put money into.

The row names neither of you: where a payer’s name would be it says Joint account, because nobody paid it. Turning the option on moves no money and changes nothing about the expenses you recorded before it.

It records a transfer for the amount the balance says is owed, from whoever owes it to whoever is owed, dated inside the month you are looking at. No money is sent anywhere: the app is writing down that the two of you have already squared up, however you did it.

Home › Mark as paid

Because it is a transfer, it moves both of your contributed figures and brings the balance to zero. The expenses themselves are untouched — what each of you paid stays exactly as it was.

Undoing it removes that transfer and only that one. A transfer you recorded yourself in the same month is left alone, and the balance goes back to what it was.

Because it has not happened yet. A payment you have scheduled — the rent, a subscription, something bought for a date ahead — is drawn on the day it will land, faded and outlined, so you can see what the month still has coming.

More › Scheduled payments

It is in no total until that day arrives. The month’s figure, the fair split and who owes whom are all worked out from money that has actually moved, which is why creating a scheduled payment changes none of them.

Tapping one of those rows opens the rule behind it rather than a payment, because there is no payment to edit yet. On the day it is due the app writes a real one, and from then on it behaves like anything else you recorded.

It measures every month again from the new day — the months behind you as well as the one you are in. An expense dated the 26th belonged to a month that began on the 1st and now belongs to the one that began on the 25th, so both months’ totals move.

Settings › Money & fair split › When your month starts

Nothing you recorded is changed, moved or deleted. The only thing that moves is the line drawn between one month and the next, and every figure is worked out again from the same records.

That does mean a month you had settled can stop looking settled: the settlement keeps the date it was given, and the month around it is no longer the same month. It is worth choosing this once, early, rather than going back and forth.

Only money follows this day. The calendar, the meal plan and the chore history stay on the calendar month.

Your household has one way of splitting expenses — half and half, by income, or a percentage the two of you chose — and it applies to everything by default.

Settings › Money & fair split › How should expenses be split?

A custom split is an exception for a single expense. Switching it on for that expense lets you say what share of it is yours, and the household’s usual split is ignored for that one row.

Money › Custom split for this expense

Use it for something that is not really shared in the usual proportion: a present one of you is paying for, a bill that is mostly one person’s. Changing the household’s split mode instead would change every expense, including the ones already recorded.

Because the app divides by the incomes it has been told about, and it has been told about one. With a single income recorded, that person’s share of the shared expenses is the whole of it — as far as the data goes, the household has one earner.

With neither income recorded it falls back to an even split, because there is nothing to divide by at all.

Record the other income and the month works itself out again. Every past month too: none of this is stored, the shares are calculated from the transactions that are there, every time you look.

If you would rather not record incomes, change the split to an even one or to a percentage you choose. While it is by income and one of the two is missing, the fair split on your Home screen says so in a line underneath, so the figure above it is never left to be guessed at.

A savings goal is a pot with a name: a holiday, a camera, a deposit. You give it a target, put money into it when you have some to put, and it tells you how you are doing and what to put aside each month to get there in time.

The monthly saving is not a pot. It is a share of the month you are trying not to spend — a percentage or an amount — and the app tells you where you stand against it as the month goes on.

They do not talk to each other. Putting money into a goal does not satisfy the monthly saving, and coming in under the monthly saving does not fill a goal. One is about a thing you want; the other is about a habit.

Either works on its own. A household with three goals and no monthly saving is perfectly normal, and so is the other way round.

It hides the amounts on this phone — on your Home screen, in Money, and everywhere else the app prints a figure. The rows, the categories and the dates all stay, so you can still find what you are looking for on a crowded bus.

Home › Hide amounts

It belongs to you and to this phone alone. Nothing is sent to the server, the other person sees no change at all, and the same account on another device is unaffected.

Tap it again to bring the amounts back. Nothing is hidden permanently and nothing is deleted.

Two ways, and they are different things. A single event can be handed to the phone’s calendar as a file: open the event, choose to add it, and it lands there at once. It is a copy — editing the event here afterwards does not change the one in your calendar. The other way subscribes a phone to all of them, from a link you create here.

Settings › Calendar › Subscribe from your phone’s calendar

A subscription is one way and it is not instant. Your calendar app decides when to look for changes, and Google and Apple usually do it about once a day rather than within a minute — so an event added here appears on the phone later, and anything added in that calendar never comes back here.

Anybody holding that link can read your calendar, so treat it the way you would treat a password. You can replace it or switch it off whenever you like, and either one empties the calendar on every phone already subscribed, including the other person’s.

Every chore carries an effort, and ticking one off scores that many points for whoever did it. A quick job is worth less than a long one, which is what stops the board being a count of who did the easiest things. The box for it only appears once points are on, so chores you made before that all start at the lowest — worth a look down the list the first time you turn them on.

Settings › Lists & chores › Points & prize

You choose whether the period is a week or a month. When it ends the app says who won — once, on both phones — and the scores start again from zero. That message names the winner and not the prize — a lock screen is no place for it — but the board on the Chores screen shows what they have won.

The board is worked out from the ticks inside the period, so undoing one takes its points off. Deleting the chore itself does not: what was done stays done, and its points stay on the board. Switching points off leaves the chores exactly as they are — what goes is the scoreboard, not the list.

The household and everything in it stay. Expenses, transfers, goals, lists, chores, meals and calendar events were recorded by the household and belong to the household, not to whoever typed them in.

The phone that leaves stops seeing any of it. Whoever stays keeps the household and is given a new join code, so the old one cannot be used to walk back in.

Settings › Your household › Leave this household

Coming back means being given that new code. Leaving is not a way of taking your half of the records with you — if you want a copy of what you recorded, take it before you go.

Settings › Your account › Download my data

It takes both of you. One asks, the other agrees, and nothing is deleted until the second agreement arrives — either of you can call it off until then, and asking again starts over.

Settings › Your household › Delete this household

What goes is the household and everything recorded in it: expenses, transfers, goals, lists, chores, meals, events and the photos attached to them. It cannot be undone and no copy is kept, so if you want your records, take them before you agree.

Your accounts are a different thing and they stay. Each keeps its address and its way of signing in, and either of you can create or join another household with it. Deleting an account itself is done somewhere else, and what happens to shared history then is a separate question.

On the servers that run the app — the app’s own, or the storage service it is configured to use — kept with the rest of your household’s records. They are not posted anywhere, no screen in the app shows them to anybody outside your household, and no search engine is handed them.

Each photo does get an address of its own, made of random characters, and that address is how the app fetches the picture. It cannot be guessed, but it is not a password either: anybody you send the link to can open it. Treat a photo here the way you would treat one you sent in a message.

What is kept, for how long, and who holds it on our behalf is written down in the privacy policy rather than repeated here, because that is the document that has to stay true.

Nothing is deleted because you stopped opening it. Your records stay where they are, and signing in again months later shows you the same household. You may have to sign in rather than being remembered, which is the only thing here that expires on its own.

If you want it gone, delete your account. That takes away your address, your name, your password and every way of signing in, and it frees the place you held in the household.

Settings › Your account › Delete my account

The shared money history stays, with your name taken off it. It is as much the other person’s record as yours — every past month’s split is built from it — and if you were the only person in the household, the household closes with the account. The privacy policy says all of this at length, and the support page on the website says it for somebody who has already uninstalled the app.