Balancely

iOS Personal Finance App

January 2026 – Present

Personal project, used dailyPrivate repo

Balancely is a personal-finance and budgeting app I designed and built end to end. It’s a native iOS app backed by a custom API, with a watchOS companion and home-screen widgets.

My household runs its budget on it every day. It’s a personal project, not an App Store release (yet).

Screens

All names, accounts and amounts are a fictional demo household.

Swipe to browse.Scroll sideways or use the arrows. Tap a screen to enlarge it.

Balancely home screen. A Needs Attention list flags 7 transactions to review, Shopping at 108% of budget and Food & Dining at 93%. Below it are tiles for this month’s spending, savings, budgets and accounts, followed by recent transactions with merchant logos. — Home dashboard
Everything that needs attention, at a glance

Bank Review card for an $87.42 Trader Joe’s charge on Apple Card, auto-categorized as Groceries with a High confidence badge. Alternative categories are offered below, along with the Food & Dining budget bar and buttons to record, tag, dismiss or review later. — Bank review
Swipe through new bank transactions, auto-categorized with a confidence score

Budget list with a progress bar per category. Entertainment is at 43% in green, Food & Dining is at 93% in amber with a note that it is on pace to exceed, and Gifts, Healthcare and Pets are under budget. — Budget list
Green, amber, red: know where you stand per category

Savings screen showing total savings split into allocated and unallocated money, the savings rate, monthly targets and the watched savings account, above a Japan Trip goal at 67% with an On Track badge. — Savings
Account-backed savings goals with pacing

Transaction detail for a $389.99 IKEA purchase with edit, split, refund and attach actions, the account and descriptor, Home Office and Tax Deductible tags, and a comment thread between the two household members. — Transaction detail
Tags, tax-deductible flags and comments between partners

Bank Review batch card reading “2 look right”, listing Trader Joe’s and Shell charges categorized from history with high confidence, with a prompt to swipe left to record both at once. — Bank review (batch)
Record a whole batch of confident matches in one swipe

Transactions

Every account in one feed, with merchant logos

Budgets overview for October showing budgeted, spent and remaining totals and a bar at 71% of the total budget, a warning that one budget is trending over, an AI Budget Audit card and spending trends by category. — Budgets overview
Budgets that track your pace through the month

Money Inbox card announcing $500 that needs a home from an online savings account, with Follow plan, Even split and Custom options and amounts for the Japan Trip, Next Car, Home Projects and Holiday Gifts goals. — Money Inbox
New money lands in an inbox; assign it to goals in a tap

Subscriptions screen with total monthly spend, the number of active subscriptions, the amount due in the next 7 days and the average cost, a detected possible subscription to review, and active bills such as phone, car insurance and streaming with their next due dates. — Subscriptions
Every recurring bill, with untracked subscriptions detected automatically

Spending Alerts screen with alert counts by priority and two medium-priority New Merchant Detected alerts for first-time purchases, each with View and Dismiss buttons. — Spending alerts
Unusual spending flagged automatically

Notifications feed grouped by day with filters by alert type, showing new bank transactions ready to review, money landing in savings, a bill due soon, and budget warnings. — Notifications
Fewer, actionable alerts

Reports overview with a date range picker and quick range buttons, a net cash flow card with the savings rate, income and expense totals, and links to monthly reports and tax deductions. — Reports
Cash flow and savings rate over any range

Net Worth report with the total above assets and liabilities, a line chart of net worth over time with a projected trend, forecast options for 3, 6 or 12 months, and a list of assets. — Net worth
Assets, liabilities and a projected trend

Year in Review showing a 26% savings rate ring against a 20% target, the total saved for the year, income, spending and transaction counts, and a breakdown of where the money went by category. — Year in review
Your year in one screen

What it does

Automatic bank sync

SimpleFIN and Plaid feeds sync on the server, and Apple Card comes in on the device through Apple’s FinanceKit. New transactions land as drafts in a swipe-to-review deck with suggested categories and confidence levels.

Budgets that track pace

Each budget shows how fast I’m spending through the month, with alerts and an AI budget audit that suggests adjustments and savings opportunities.

Account-backed savings goals

Balance changes on savings accounts land in a Money Inbox, where I assign the money to goals.

Subscriptions and bills

Tracks every recurring bill and automatically detects recurring charges I’m not tracking yet.

Anomaly detection

Flags category spikes, unusually large transactions and new merchants, using adaptive per-category statistics.

Receipts, splits and refunds

Receipt scanning with OCR and AI-extracted line items, plus splits, refunds and duplicate detection.

Reports

Cash flow, year-over-year, net worth with projections, a year in review, and tax-deductible tracking.

Shared households

Two people, one budget, with comments on transactions.

How it’s built

iOS

SwiftUI (iOS 18+), MVVM with @Observable, async/await
CoreData offline queue with replay
Project generated with XcodeGen
watchOS app and WidgetKit widgets sharing data through an App Group

Backend

Next.js 16 route handlers as a REST API, with Prisma and PostgreSQL
BullMQ and Redis workers for bank sync, budget alerts, AI jobs and merchant-logo learning
Firebase push notifications and Sentry
Self-hosted, deployed through a GitHub Actions pipeline

API contract

No generated client
Backend route tests record real JSON responses as contract fixtures
The iOS test suite decodes those fixtures with the app’s own models
A parity check diffs the endpoints the iOS app calls against the backend routes

AI

A self-hosted LLM handles transaction categorization, budget audits and receipt parsing

SwiftUIwatchOSWidgetKitFinanceKitCoreDataNext.js 16TypeScriptPrismaPostgreSQLBullMQRedisFirebaseSentryGitHub Actions

Let's Work Together

I'm always interested in hearing about new projects and opportunities. Whether you have a question or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out!

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