Curl Budget Documentation
Curl Budget is a personal finance app that combines intuitive design with powerful automation. Whether you're tracking spending solo or managing finances with others, Curl Budget adapts to how you work.
What Makes Curl Budget Different
- Meets you where you are - Helps you quickly to understand your spending starting with the highest priorities (biggest spending areas) and then incrementally to add guardrails and awareness to your habits to meet your goals. Does NOT enforce every-dollar envelope-style budgeting on you.
- Built for Sharing - Organize finances into multiple workspaces with role-based permissions (Owner, Member, Viewer). Perfect for partners, families, roommates, or anyone who needs shared financial visibility with appropriate controls.
- Mobile-First - A native app for iOS and Android. Every feature works beautifully on your phone, because that's where you actually manage your money.
- Smart Detection - Automatically identifies transfers between accounts, duplicate transactions, and potential double charges. No manual matching required.
- Customizable and Automatable - Create custom categories, flexible tags, and auto-rules with boolean logic. AI-powered categorization handles the rest with confidence scores so you know when to review.
- Affordable - Full-featured finance tracking for much less than a streaming subscription. Early subscribers lock in their price forever.
Getting Started
New to Curl Budget? Start here:
- Creating Your Account - Set up your Curl Budget account with passwordless login
- Connecting Your Bank - Link your bank accounts securely via Plaid
- First Steps - Navigate the app and understand your finances
Core Features
Transactions
View, search, and manage all your transactions in one place. Curl Budget automatically syncs with your connected accounts, categorizes your spending with AI, and lets you add manual transactions for cash purchases.
Smart Detection
Curl Budget automatically analyzes your transactions to identify important patterns:
- Transfer Detection - Recognizes money moving between your own accounts
- Duplicate Detection - Finds exact duplicate transactions across accounts
- Double Charge Detection - Alerts you to potential fraudulent duplicate charges
- Funding Detection - Identifies P2P wallet funding to avoid double-counting
Organization
Keep your finances organized with flexible tools:
- Categories - Categories with AI-powered auto-categorization
- Tags - Add multiple tags to track projects, goals, or people
- Auto-Rules - Create rules to automatically categorize and organize transactions
Financial Planning
Budgeting
Take control of your spending with flexible budgets:
- Creating Budgets - Set up category and tag-based budgets
- Budget Periods - Monthly, quarterly, or yearly tracking
- Implied Budgets - Understand how filters affect your budget calculations
- Budget Alerts - Get notified when you're approaching limits
Goals
Track progress toward your savings targets:
- Set target amounts and dates for emergency funds, vacations, retirement, and more
- Choose between account-based tracking or net worth percentage allocation
- View projected completion dates based on your savings rate
- Monitor investment account contributions vs. market gains
Reports
Visualize and understand your financial picture:
- Cash Flow - See income vs. expenses over time
- Explorer - Drill down into spending by category, merchant, or time period
Account Management
Accounts
Connect and manage all your financial accounts:
- Plaid Integration - Connect banks securely with automatic sync
- Apple Accounts - Connect Apple Financial accounts
- Manual Accounts - Add accounts that can't be connected
- Account Health - Monitor and troubleshoot connections
Collaboration
Workspaces
Share finances others:
- Workspaces - Create separate spaces for different financial contexts
- Roles & Permissions - Control who can view or edit
- Invitations - Invite others to your workspace
- Activity Log - See who made changes and when
Notifications
Staying Informed
Never miss important financial events:
- Push Notifications - Get alerts for new transactions, account issues, and more
- Notification Settings - Customize what you're notified about
- Balance Alerts - Set thresholds for account balances
Account & Billing
Subscription
Manage your Curl Budget subscription:
- Trial Period - 30-day free trial details
- Managing Subscription - Subscription management via App Store
- Family Sharing - Share with family members
Privacy & Security
Your financial data is sensitive. Learn how we protect it:
- Data Protection - Encryption and security measures
- Bank Connection Security - How Plaid keeps your credentials safe
- Deleting Your Data - Account deletion and data removal
Need Help?
If you can't find what you're looking for, contact us at hello@curlbudget.com.