Household budget app

Where we started

The most polished budgeting apps are American, in English and built for American banks. Italian ones often ask you to type everything in by hand, or show dozens of charts without telling you what actually matters: how much you can still spend until the end of the month.

There is also a well-known fact in personal finance: most people abandon a budgeting app within the first week, because it takes too much work at the start. We wanted an app that is useful from day one.

What we did

The home screen shows one big number, what is left to spend this month, and the daily amount until the end. Below are income, spending, the share saved and the categories that went over budget.

The budget follows the envelope method: every euro of income is assigned to a category. Yearly expenses, such as insurance or building fees, can be split into twelfths: whatever is left over rolls into the next month, and so does any overspending. The month can also start on payday, not necessarily on the 1st.

To avoid starting from scratch, sign-up already creates categories and accounts. Bank statements are imported from CSV or Excel: the app recognises the columns, suggests a category for each transaction and skips those already there. When you correct a category, the app creates a rule and fixes similar transactions too. The budget fills itself with one tap, using the real averages of previous months.

The app finds bills and subscriptions in the history and shows their yearly cost, which weighs more than a few euros a month. With the recurring items it also forecasts the balance for the next 60 days.

It is built for families: several people share the same budget, and each can have personal accounts that only they can see.

How it’s built

• React app with Vite, installable from the browser; Capacitor for the Android and iOS versions
• Node.js and Express server with a PostgreSQL database
• Amounts stored as whole cents and dates without time zones, so totals are never off by a cent or a day
• Every request is filtered by family, and tests check that an outsider can neither see nor change anything
• Direct bank connection through Open Banking, receipt photos, savings goals
• Monday summary and budget alerts by email, due dates in the phone calendar
• Data export and account deletion from the app, recorded privacy consent
• Automatic Android and iOS builds with Codemagic, encrypted nightly backup

Outcome

The app is complete and we are testing it on Android and iPhone. We are preparing it for Google Play and the App Store, and it will be free.