Prefer a printable copy? Download the Help Guide (PDF). The same guide is also built into the app: Planning → Help.
Contents
Home Accounts tracks all your money in one place — bank accounts, credit cards, savings, investments, loans and mortgages — alongside your household insurance, subscriptions, documents and home maintenance. Your data is stored securely on your device, or in your own iCloud and shared with your other devices signed in to the same Apple Account.
Using more than one device? Before you enter your data, switch on iCloud Drive and iCloud Keychain on every device — see section 3.
The first time you open the app it contains a few demo accounts so you can explore. When you're ready to start with your own figures, choose Clear Demo Data at the bottom of the Planning panel. This permanently deletes the demo accounts, transactions, documents, budgets and maintenance tasks, but keeps your categories.
Tap + in the top toolbar of the sidebar. Choose the type, give it a name, select its currency and enter today's balance as the opening balance. You can also record the bank's sort code, account number and IBAN.
The sidebar lists your accounts grouped by type, with your total Net Worth at the top. Scroll to the bottom for the Planning panel: Transfer, Subscriptions, Coverage, Documents, Maintenance, Budgets, Reports, Tools, Security, Help and Clear Demo Data.
Select Home in the sidebar (or tap the house button inside an account) to see:
Home Accounts stores your data as an encrypted file on your device or in your private iCloud storage. Every device signed in to the same Apple Account sees the same data. Nothing is stored on our servers.
Both settings are required on every device. Your data file is encrypted and its key is shared through iCloud Keychain. If Keychain is off, a device can't read your synced data even though the file has arrived.
Install Home Accounts on a device signed in to the same Apple Account and give iCloud a minute or two to download your data before making changes. If you still see sample data after a few minutes, check the settings above and that the device is online.
If you don't use iCloud, your data exists only on that device, so back it up regularly (iCloud Backup or Finder for iPhone/iPad, Time Machine for Mac).
Open Planning → Help and tap the stethoscope icon for Diagnostics. It shows whether the device is signed in to iCloud, whether the iCloud container is reachable, and whether your data file has been found.
Home Accounts has six built-in account types:
Bank and Savings accounts can store a Sort Code, Account Number and IBAN; other types have a single Account / Reference Number. Identifiers appear at the top of the account's Overview tab.
Overview shows balances, the reconciliation panel, spending by category, and any forecasts or holdings. Transactions lists every transaction with a running balance. Bank, Savings and Credit Card accounts open on Transactions; Investment, Loan and Mortgage accounts open on Overview.
Swipe left on an account in the sidebar for Edit and Delete. Deleting removes the account and all its transactions permanently. To change the opening balance later, open the account and tap More (⋯) → Set Opening Balance.
Create your own types for things that don't fit the six built-in ones — Utilities, Council Tax or Pets, for example. Each gets its own section in the sidebar and on the Home page.
If you delete a custom type, accounts that used it revert to the built-in type it was based on.
Edit the account (swipe left → Edit) and, in the Balances section, enter an Overdraft Limit (bank accounts) or Credit Limit (credit cards). For example, for a £1,500 arranged overdraft, enter 1500. Credit cards then show an Available Credit tile on the Overview tab.
With a limit set, a status bar at the top of the Transactions tab shows the amount used and available. It's green below 50%, amber from 50–75% and red above 75%. Tap it to open the Limit Insights panel on the Overview tab, which ranks your top spending categories.
On Apple Intelligence-enabled devices (iPhone 15 Pro or later, or an M-series iPad or Mac, running iOS/macOS 26 or later), Limit Insights adds a personalised 1–2 sentence suggestion on where to focus to reduce the balance. It's generated entirely on your device. On other devices, a rule-based summary is shown instead.
To divide one payment across several categories — a supermarket shop that includes household goods, say — tap Add Split and enter an amount against each category. You can attach files such as a receipt or invoice from the Attachments section.
Cleared and Reconciled transactions both count towards the Cleared balance. Swipe left on a transaction (or use its status control) to change status quickly.
Switch on Recurring Subscription or Coverage / Insurance on a transaction to track it in the Subscriptions or Coverage tracker.
If you spend in a different currency to the account's own, open the transaction form and scroll to Currency. Change the Transaction currency and enter the exchange rate, and Home Accounts calculates the amount posted to your account. Balances and reports always use the account's currency; the original foreign amount shows as a small badge on the transaction. Tip: use the rate on your statement so amounts match when you reconcile.
Reconciliation checks that your records match your real bank statement. Do it each time a statement arrives. The Overview tab has three tiles: Statement (the closing balance on your statement), Cleared (opening balance plus all Cleared and Reconciled transactions) and Difference (Cleared minus Statement).
A non-zero difference usually means a transaction is missing, has the wrong amount, or was marked Cleared before it reached the bank.
Import a CSV file exported from your bank and Home Accounts compares every row with the transactions already in the account. Rows that match an existing transaction mark it Reconciled. Rows that match nothing are added as new transactions, already marked Reconciled, so your records end up complete.
Tiles show how many rows were Imported, Matched, New and Selected, followed by every row from the file:
Use the toggle beside any row to include or exclude it. Importing the same statement twice is safe.
Most UK bank exports work without editing. Headers are matched ignoring case, spaces, underscores and hyphens:
Dates can be dd/MM/yyyy, MM/dd/yyyy, yyyy-MM-dd, dd-MM-yyyy, dd MMM yyyy or d MMM yyyy. Amounts may include £, $, € (or GBP, USD, EUR); negative values or amounts in brackets such as (45.99) are debits. Rows with a zero amount, no payee or an unreadable date are skipped. Files can be UTF-8 or ISO Latin-1. With no header row, columns must be in the order Date, Payee, Amount.
Open an account and tap More (⋯) → Export to CSV…. Choose a date range and the columns to include — Date, Payee, Category, Memo, Debit, Credit, Running Balance, Status and original-currency details — then share the file or open it in a spreadsheet. Your data is always yours to take with you.
Tap Transfer in the Planning panel, choose the From and To accounts, enter the amount and date, and tap Save. A paired debit and credit keep both accounts balanced.
Tap Budgets in the Planning panel, choose a Category, enter a Monthly limit and tap Save Budget. Saving again for the same category updates its limit.
Each budget shows what you've spent this calendar month across all accounts (including split categories), what remains, and a progress bar that turns red when you go over. Use the delete control on a budget row to remove it.
Tap Reports in the Planning panel. Tiles show total Income, Expenses and the Net amount, followed by a ranked breakdown of spending and income by category. Filter chips set the date range (presets such as the last 12 months, or custom dates), the accounts and the categories; tap Reset Filters to return to the defaults. Transfers between your own accounts aren't counted as spending or income.
Live prices: when you're online, Home Accounts fetches current market prices for your holdings, showing each one's value, day change, and gain or loss against cost. Tap refresh to update. Holdings in another currency are converted at the current exchange rate. If prices aren't available, the value stored in the app is shown.
The Holdings header shows the portfolio's total value, overall Investment Return and today's change. Tap a holding to edit it, or swipe left to edit or delete it.
Create a Loan or Mortgage account and set the opening balance to the amount outstanding. In the Loan or Mortgage Details section, enter the APR (%), the Original amount and the Term in years. The Overview tab shows the scheduled monthly payment, total interest remaining and estimated months to payoff. Enter an extra payment per month to see how much interest and time an overpayment would save. Record each repayment as a transaction to keep the forecast accurate.
In a savings account's details, enter the AER / APR and choose whether interest compounds Monthly or Annually. The Overview tab projects your balance forward and shows the estimated monthly interest.
Subscriptions are created from transactions: when adding or editing a payment, switch on Recurring Subscription. It then appears in Subscriptions in the Planning panel, grouped by payee, with the latest charge and when it was last charged. The summary shows your combined Monthly total and its annual equivalent.
When adding a new subscription transaction, switch on Generate transaction series. Choose how often it repeats (every 1–12 months, or yearly) and an end date, and Home Accounts adds a transaction for each payment, with calendar reminders one month after the first payment and one month before the last.
Each subscription has a review date — six months ahead by default — and is flagged when a review is due soon or overdue. Tap Mark Reviewed to push it back six months, or Snooze 1 Year. Add to Calendar creates a reminder. Remove clears the subscription flag and reminder but keeps the transactions.
Policies are created from the transaction you paid them with: switch on Coverage / Insurance and enter the Coverage start and Expiry / renewal date. The policy then appears in Coverage in the Planning panel. The Coverage Tracker counts policies as Active, Expiring Soon (within 30 days) and Expired, with the soonest renewals first. Tap Add to Calendar for a reminder one month before a policy expires.
Search by name, filename or notes, or filter by category. The vault shows how many documents it holds and the storage used, and warns when a document is expiring or has expired. Tap the share button (or swipe left → Share) to AirDrop, email or open a document elsewhere; swipe left → Delete to remove it after confirming. Documents sync through iCloud with the rest of your data.
Maintenance in the Planning panel is a checklist of recurring jobs around the home and car. It starts with common tasks such as boiler service, gutter cleaning, smoke detector batteries and car MOT, each with a repeat interval.
Tap Tools in the Planning panel for two quick calculators:
The receipt scanner uses on-device text recognition to read a paper receipt and fill in the transaction. Nothing is sent to a server.
Printed receipts work best. Thermal receipts fade, so scan them promptly, and make sure the TOTAL line is clearly visible.
Tap Security in the Planning panel, then Set Password. Enter and confirm your password and tap Save. The app locks automatically whenever it moves to the background. Unlock with your password, or tap Use Face ID / Touch ID. Change or remove the password in Planning → Security at any time.
Your data isn't affected: the password only locks the app, and your data is encrypted with a separate key held in iCloud Keychain. Because the reset relies on your device passcode or Mac login password, keep that private — anyone who knows it can reset the app password.
Your app password is stored on the device and doesn't travel with your data, so a new device starts with no password. Set one in Planning → Security. Read more on our Security page.
Subtotals can confuse it. Make sure the TOTAL line is clear, and correct the fields before saving.
The account needs a credit or overdraft limit, and the device needs Apple Intelligence available and switched on — see section 6.
Still stuck? Email support@yourhomeaccounts.co.uk, report a bug to bugs@yourhomeaccounts.co.uk, or browse the FAQs.