A Google Sheets spending tracker that is an app

A template, or an app

A template is a sheet you fill in yourself. Its formulas add things up, and what it can show you is whatever those formulas and charts were built to show. That is a fine way to start, and Tobsy has one of its own, the free sheet.

Tobsy is a different thing. It is a cash flow management app with screens of its own: quick entry, analysis, usual ranges, intentions, goals and a six-month forecast. The Google Sheet is where your data lives. You can go months without opening it.

Start with the free sheet, move to the app later

If you track in a spreadsheet today, Tobsy's free sheet is built for you: a row for each thing you buy or get paid, Tobsy's categories to pick from, and a tab that adds up each month, with a chart. It is a plain Google Sheet. Make a copy, and it is yours, with no email and no sign-up with us.

When you want more, the app brings the sheet across in one go:

1. On the free sheet's Spending tab, choose File, then Download, then Comma-separated values (.csv).
2. In Tobsy, open Settings, then Import, and choose the file.
3. Check the rows. You see every row before anything is saved.

What comes across, and what stays behind:

• Categories match by name. Tobsy's starting categories come across as typed. A category you added arrives as one named group, placed with a single tap.
• Shops come across. The names in the Where column come across, and Tobsy learns which category each one goes with.
• Refunds come across as a refund against their category.
• People come across by name. "You" is the person importing, a name that matches someone in your Tobsy is that person, and any other name is kept in the row's note.
• Groups and intentions stay in the sheet. Tobsy has its own, which you set in the app.

Importing again later leaves out the rows already brought across, so you can keep using the free sheet and bring new rows over when you like. A row whose date or amount you change after importing comes across as a new row.

What the app adds

• Entry in seconds. Anything you enter regularly fills itself in from a single word, and Tobsy learns your shops and how you file them.
• Catching up. Drop in a screenshot from your banking app, read on your own phone, or import a CSV statement. Nothing reaches your ledger until you say so.
• Awareness. Each category has a usual range, worked out from your own months, and Tobsy says in a sentence when one drifts.
• Analysis. The same figures as a flow, a donut, bars, columns, a trend line or a plain table, by person, category, group, tag or merchant, over any period.
• Staying ahead. Intentions, goals, pay-over-time plans and a forecast six months ahead, shown as a range rather than one confident number.
• A household. Up to six people on one copy, splits set the way you choose, and who fronted what worked out for you.

Your data stays in your sheet

No Tobsy server stores your entries, your figures or anything about your money. Tobsy asks Google for one permission: to work in the spreadsheet it is attached to. Not your Drive, not your email, not your contacts. More on that in privacy by design.

See it first in the demo, the real app with fourteen months of sample entries, or read the set-up guide: about ten minutes, once, on a computer. If you would rather not link a bank, no bank sync, on purpose explains how that works. In Australia, this page is for you.