Help Center › Troubleshooting
Something not behaving? 36 fixes.
Reopen it. Nothing is lost — every change is written as you make it, not when you leave the screen, so you come back to exactly what you had.
If it happens more than once, the useful thing is not a log, it is a sentence: WHICH screen you were on and WHAT you had just clicked. That one line is usually enough to find it.
Send it with Report a Problem and leave “Attach device info” on. That sends versions, settings and how many records you have — never transactions, names or amounts.
Two things that are NOT a fault:
• Turning Demo Mode on or off writes or clears hundreds of rows. It can sit still for a few seconds; clicking again during that starts it over.
• iOS closes apps in the background all the time to free memory. Reopening after a few hours and finding it back at the start is normal, not a crash.
Force-quit and reopen first. It clears a stuck screen and touches none of your data.
Where slowness is real and expected:
• A tab that shows balances recomputes them from your transactions when it opens. With years of history that is a beat, not a hang.
• The Transactions CALENDAR does more work than the list for a heavy month — the list is the faster way to scan.
• The first iCloud sync after switching it on is the slow one; later changes land in seconds.
• Prices refresh when you open Investments, so that screen has a moment of work on arrival.
If ONE screen is always slow and the rest are fine, that is worth reporting — name the screen and roughly how many transactions you have. “The app is slow” is very hard to act on; “Budget takes 4 seconds with 12,000 transactions” is a bug report.
Check the scope first. The pill at the top of Home and Transactions switches between Personal, Business and Everything, and it is remembered across tabs — a business with no activity this month renders honest zeroes that look exactly like data loss.
Then check the period. Most figures name theirs (“this month”, “2026 year to date”); if a number surprises you, read the label under it before assuming it is wrong.
Still wrong? Send us the screen name, the figure you see and the figure you expected. Two numbers and a screen name is the fastest bug report there is.
Two switches, and the app looks reasonable without either.
1. On the import screen, “Import into” must name the account. It starts on your default account now; on “No account” the transactions import but belong to nothing, so no balance can follow them.
2. On the account, “Track balance from transactions” must be on. New checking, savings and cash accounts set this for you; older accounts kept the balance you typed.
Already imported without an account? Select the rows in Transactions and set the account — the balance recomputes from your starting figure, so nothing double-counts.
Not a fault: an opening balance never shows in Year in Review. It is a starting position, not income.
Work through these in order.
1. Both devices signed into the SAME Apple ID, and iCloud Sync switched on in Settings on each one — it is off until you turn it on, and turning it on takes effect after the app restarts.
2. Both online. Sync is not a background magic trick; the app has to be open at least once on each side.
3. Give it a minute. The first mirror after turning sync on is the slow one — later changes usually land within seconds.
4. Still nothing? Settings → iCloud Sync shows the sync status and the last error, if there was one. That message is the fastest thing to send us.
One thing that is NOT a fault: a device you haven't opened in a while shows old numbers until you open it. Nothing syncs to an app that isn't running.
Prices refresh when you open Net Worth → Investments, and you can force it with Refresh Prices there.
Some things that look wrong are not:
• A mutual fund has NO intraday price. It is valued once after the close, so it legitimately sits still while stocks move.
• Before the market opens, a day change refers to the previous session — not the one that hasn't started.
• Weekends and holidays hold Friday's close.
If a real stock is genuinely stale, check your connection and refresh the screen. Manual accounts never auto-update; they hold whatever balance you typed.
Imports are review-first — double-click any transaction to edit the amount, category, or type. Set up a Rule (Transactions → Rules) to auto-fix similar ones going forward.
App Lock is on — Settings → Privacy & Security. You can turn it off there, or change when it asks.
If it asks EVERY time you switch apps for a second, that is the lock doing its job on returning from the background. If it fails repeatedly, the system falls back to your Mac login password; the app never sees either one, it only gets a yes or no from the system.
The switch needs an iCloud account signed in on the device and iCloud Drive enabled for the app in System Settings. If it turns itself back off, the app couldn't start the sync engine — Settings → iCloud Sync shows the reason underneath, and that sentence is the useful thing to send us.
Your data is never at risk while this is happening: the app falls back to a local database and keeps working.
That happens when you each created a category with the same name before you started sharing — they are two different categories that happen to read alike. Open the sidebar → Family & Sharing → Review what you share, and choose which budget to keep for each duplicated name. Merging keeps the transactions from both.
Recurring items post when the app is opened on or after the due day, and only when Auto-Post Recurring is on (Settings → Transactions). If it is off, nothing posts until you log the bill yourself.
Also check the bill isn't paused, and that its next due date is what you expect — a bill edited mid-month keeps its own schedule.
This should not happen — postings are matched to the bill and its period specifically to prevent it. If you have two, the usual cause is two copies of the same BILL, which can happen after restoring a backup. Delete the duplicate bill (not the transactions) and the doubling stops.
If you find a genuine double from a single bill, that is a defect and worth reporting — it's the kind we fix quickly.
Export the file again as CSV if you can — an Excel file saved as "Unicode Text" or an unusual encoding is the most common cause. The app tries the common encodings in order and should cope with accented characters.
If the columns landed in the wrong place, the preview is there to catch it before anything saves. And if a file simply won't read, send it to us through Report a Problem — a real file is worth more than a description of one.
Check the preview before saving — every row is shown first for exactly this reason. Amounts wrapped in parentheses, with currency symbols, or using a comma as the decimal mark are all handled, but an unusual export can still confuse a column.
A row that shows as zero when it shouldn't is worth reporting with the file attached; an amount the app couldn't read should never be saved as a number.
The most common cause is the period: Home shows this month, and a budget category may be on a yearly limit.
After that, check for split transactions — a split counts only its share toward each category, which is correct but can look short if you were expecting the whole amount. If business mode is on, personal totals deliberately exclude business spending.
A goal moves when money is recorded against it. Link the goal to the account or the recurring transfer that funds it, and contributions count automatically; otherwise it only changes when you add to it by hand.
If a linked goal still isn't moving, check that the funding transactions are dated in the past — future-dated rows are scheduled, not banked.
Two switches have to agree: System Settings → Notifications → Simple Finance must be allowed, and the specific reminders have to be on in Settings → Notifications inside the app.
Everything is scheduled on your device, so nothing about your money is sent anywhere to make a reminder happen — which also means a device that is off or has the app deleted simply won't fire them.
Widgets are refreshed by iOS on its own schedule, not on demand, so a short lag is normal. Opening the app updates the data the widget reads from.
If a widget seems stuck for a long time, remove it and add it back — a placed widget keeps its own configuration, and re-adding is the only way to reset it.
The app couldn't start iCloud sync, so it fell back to a local database to avoid losing anything — everything still works, it just isn't mirroring.
Settings → iCloud Sync shows the exact reason underneath. The most common one is an Apple Account that needs re-verifying in System Settings. Nothing is lost while this is happening, and sync resumes on its own once the account is healthy.
Almost every figure is derived from your transactions and balances for the period on screen, so start with the period selector at the top — a month view and a year view of the same category are supposed to differ.
Then check the usual three:
• A SPLIT transaction only counts its share toward each category.
• A TRANSFER between your own accounts is deliberately not income or spending.
• If business mode is on, personal figures exclude business money, and the other way round.
If it still doesn't add up, send it through Report a Problem with the screen and the number you expected — attach the device info and we can usually see it from here.
A placed widget keeps its OWN configuration. Changing the default inside the app does not reach a widget already sitting on your desktop or in Notification Center.
Right-click the widget → Edit Widget, and set it there. If the option you want isn't offered, remove the widget and add it again — a re-added widget picks up the current set of choices.
Prices come from a public market source with rate limits, and a burst of refreshes can get you held off for a few minutes. Waiting is the fix; hammering refresh is not.
Things that look like a stale price and aren't:
• A MUTUAL FUND has no intraday price at all — one NAV after the close, and it legitimately sits still all day.
• BEFORE THE OPENING BELL there is no session yet, so the day change belongs to the previous one. The row says “at close” when that is what you are looking at.
• Weekends and market holidays hold Friday's close.
A manual account never updates on its own; it holds whatever balance you typed.
That is what restoring on top of existing data does, and it is fixable in one screen.
Settings → Data & Backup → Repair Duplicated Records. It looks for the same RECORD present as several rows — which only a re-import or a restore can produce — and shows you what it found before it removes anything. Duplicate accounts, categories, subcategories and businesses are all on that screen too.
Run it once and rescan; nothing is lost and no money is double-counted afterwards.
Demo Mode is a switch: Settings → Privacy & Security → Demo Mode. While it is on your real data is not loaded — it is not gone, it simply isn't shown — and it comes straight back when you exit.
If the demo is OFF and you still see sample figures, that is different: sample data was actually written to your database at some point. Settings → Data & Backup → Remove Sample Data takes it out without touching anything you entered yourself.
The Watch is a thin client — it shows what the phone last sent it. If the phone hasn't been opened since the numbers moved, the Watch is showing the last thing it was told, correctly.
Open the app on the phone with the Watch nearby and give it a few seconds. If a complication is still behind, the watch face refreshes on its own schedule — opening the Watch app forces it.
Two things gate that button, and both say so on screen now:
If it says you are not signed into iCloud, the app opens Mail instead and nothing leaves until you hit send there. If sending fails outright, the exact reason is printed under the button — that message is the most useful thing you can pass on.
A file with tens of thousands of rows genuinely takes a while, and the review step is deliberately not skipped — an import that writes first and asks later is how a ledger gets ruined.
Leave the app in the foreground while it works; iOS suspends background work and a suspended import looks exactly like a stuck one.
If it truly stops, close and reopen the app: nothing is written until you confirm the review, so you lose the parse and not your data. Then try a smaller date range — most exports let you pick one.
This was a real bug in dark mode on the Report a Problem and Help search boxes, and it is fixed — update to the current version.
If you see it anywhere else, that is worth telling us about, with the screen name and whether you are in light or dark mode. It is the kind of fault that is invisible to whoever built the screen and obvious to whoever is using it.
Record it as a TRANSFER rather than as an expense with a matching income — then it moves the balances and stays out of income and spending, which is what you want. Otherwise the same money is counted twice, once each way.
An imported file often can't tell the difference. Edit the row and set it to a transfer; if the same pair comes in every month, a Rule will handle it from then on.
A wedding, a ring, a car or a new roof is not a monthly category, and forcing it into one makes twelve months look wrong to describe one purchase.
Add it as a one-time expense instead. It sits in the annual plan and deliberately stays out of every monthly budget, so the month it lands in still reads honestly.
On a Mac a single click SELECTS a row and a double-click OPENS it. That is the platform's rule rather than this app's, and it is the opposite of the phone, where one tap does both.
So: double-click a transaction to edit it, an account to open it, a merchant to see what is behind its total. Right-click gives you the same actions as a menu — and on the Mac that menu is also where the swipe actions from the iPhone live, because there is nothing to swipe.
If a double-click still does nothing on a row you expect to open, that is worth telling us about; say which screen.
