What is Balanced?
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Balanced helps you decide what your money is for before you spend it, and shows you where it really went. Three ideas make it work.
Balanced is a budgeting app for iPhone and iPad. Everything lives in a journal: your accounts, your transactions and your monthly budget, in one place. A single journal for your household is a good start.
Plan ahead
Section titled “Plan ahead”Balanced uses zero-based budgeting. When money comes in, you decide what it’s for before you spend it: rent, groceries, the car, the holiday you’re saving for. You keep going until nothing is left over and the budget shows To assign 0.
From then on, every category shows how much is still Available. You know whether there’s room for that dinner out while you’re still deciding, not at the end of the month when the money is already gone.
How zero-based budgeting works →
Real accounting, made simple
Section titled “Real accounting, made simple”Under the surface, Balanced uses double-entry accounting, the method accountants use to keep books. You don’t need to know anything about it. The whole idea fits in one sentence: money always moves from one account to another.
Your salary moves from an income account into your checking account. When you buy groceries, part of it moves on from checking into an expense account. Every transaction adds up to zero: what leaves one account arrives in another, so nothing gets lost.
Because everything is a move between accounts, the tricky cases are ordinary transactions. A credit card is an account you owe money on, so paying with it and paying it off are two simple moves. The same goes for a loan, or for moving money from checking to savings. Your balances always add up, and you can see exactly how much you owe.
Money moves: the idea in pictures →
Private by design
Section titled “Private by design”- No bank login. Balanced never connects to your bank. You enter transactions yourself, let regular ones repeat on their own, or scan a receipt.
- Your data stays with you. Your journals are stored on your device. If you turn on iCloud Sync, they sync through your own iCloud account. There are no Balanced servers that could see your money.
- Receipts stay on your device. Receipt scanning reads the photo on the device. Nothing is uploaded.
What you can do
Section titled “What you can do”- Keep separate journals, for example one for the household and one for a side business.
- Set up accounts for your bank accounts, cash, income and spending.
- Record transactions in a few taps. Balanced fills in the second amount for you.
- Let rent, salary and subscriptions repeat on their own.
- Plan your budget each month and see what’s still available.
- Keep track of credit cards and loans.
- Scan receipts to fill in a transaction from a photo.
- See where your money goes in charts.
- Keep your iPhone and iPad in step with iCloud sync.
- Share a journal with your partner or family.
Where it runs
Section titled “Where it runs”Balanced runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 17.2 or later. The app speaks English, German and Spanish.
Ready? Your first ten minutes →