PennyBook is still being finished and is not on the App Store yet. Questions or ideas? Email hello@papermint.studio and a human reads every message, usually within a day.
Adding an entry
The app opens on the keypad. Type the amount, tap a category, tap Save. That is the whole thing.
The switch at the top chooses Expense, Income or Transfer. The pills under it set the date and the wallet.
Add a few words if you like (“swiggy dinner”) and the category picks itself. It learns from what you filed before; a category you choose by hand is never overridden.
You can type it all as words: “chai 20”, “uber 340 yesterday”, or “+50000 salary” for income.
The cross at the top left closes the keypad without saving.
Wallets and balances
A wallet is a place your money lives: cash, a bank account, a credit card, an e-wallet. PennyBook asks for your first one when you start, and you add the rest in Settings → Wallets. Every entry belongs to a wallet.
A balance is what you said was in the wallet, plus everything dated since that day. Entries you fill in from before that day are history and don't change it.
If the number drifts from what your bank says, open the wallet and use Adjust to match. PennyBook writes one visible entry for the difference; nothing already in the book is changed.
In the Book, the chips under the month show one wallet or all of them. Open the keypad while looking at a wallet and it starts on that wallet.
Transfers and credit cards
A transfer moves money between two of your wallets: an ATM withdrawal is Bank → Cash. It is never counted as spending or income. Transfer appears once you have a second wallet.
A credit card wallet shows what you owe. Paying the bill is a transfer from your bank into the card, not a second expense.
Bank messages
In the Inbox, tap Paste a message and paste the alert your bank sent. PennyBook reads the amount, the shop, the date and whether money left or arrived, and keeps it as a draft until you tap Add to book.
Give a wallet the last four digits of its account or card (Settings → Wallets) and messages that mention them land in that wallet by themselves.
To have it happen automatically: open the Shortcuts app → Automation → + → Message → under Message Contains type the word your bank uses (such as debited) → Run Immediately → add the action Log from bank message from PennyBook → set its Message to Shortcut Input → Content.
iPhone apps cannot read your messages, and PennyBook doesn't try to. One-time passwords and payment reminders are always skipped.
Budget and repeating entries
Set a monthly budget in Settings. It is about spending only: income never refills it. If your month really starts on salary day, set Month starts on.
Rent, subscriptions, EMIs and salary can repeat. Add them in Settings → Repeating entries; they write themselves into the book on their day, and the Inbox shows what is coming up.
Fixing and deleting
Tap any entry to change it. Swipe it left to delete it.
A deleted entry can be brought back with Undo straight away, or from Settings → Recently deleted for 30 days.
Your data
Everything lives on your iPhone. There is no sync yet, so the book is on this iPhone and in your iPhone backups, and nowhere else.
Settings → Export everything as CSV saves the whole book to a place you choose. Export and erase are free, always.
Lock with Face ID in Settings locks the book each time you leave the app, and hides it in the app switcher.
Exchange rates: PennyBook never goes online, so it does not fetch them. For now every wallet is in your home currency.
Privacy
PennyBook has no account, no servers and no networking code. The full policy is short: read it here.