How can we help?
Everything you need to get comfortable with Carlo.
These articles describe the Carlo app. Get Carlo if you don't have it yet.
Fundamentals
New to Carlo? Start with these.
- How Carlo works Log what you spend. Everything else in Carlo is built on top of that one habit.
- Get around Carlo Where everything lives, and how to move between the screens you'll use every day.
- Understand your coins How to read a coin at a glance, and what each one is telling you.
- Understand your daily allowance What your daily allowance means, and how the bar at the top of the peek card shows the whole picture at once.
- Add a transaction by voice The fastest way to log spending — tap ＋, choose Speak, and say what you spent.
- Add a transaction by hand The everyday way to log spending — tap ＋, choose Enter manually, and type it in.
- Navigate the date Moving the date lets you see what you'll have to spend on a day that hasn't arrived yet.
- The Budget screen Your month coins and year coins on one screen, with everything you've spent underneath them.
Transactions
- Edit or delete a transaction Open any transaction and change anything about it. There is no Save button, because every field saves itself.
- Attach a photo to a transaction Add pictures when you log something, or any time after, and choose which one represents it.
- Add a project to transactions A project groups spending that cuts across categories, like a trip or a renovation.
- See a project's total What a trip or a renovation actually cost, with the photos and writing that went with it.
- Log a business expense Business spending is logged like anything else but kept out of your personal budget.
- The Business screen Where you manage your expense types and export a tax year.
- Log a charitable gift How to record a donation so it counts toward your giving totals.
- Search your transaction history Find any transaction you have ever logged, by who you paid or what you wrote.
- Record money back When some or all of a purchase comes back to you, record it so your budget reflects what you actually spent.
Bills
- How bills work Bills are tracked apart from your everyday spending, so paying rent never moves a coin.
- Add a bill Set up a recurring payment so Carlo tracks it every month or every year.
- Archive a bill Stop tracking a bill while keeping everything you have already paid.
- Delete a bill permanently Remove a bill and everything filed under it. This cannot be undone, and archiving is almost always the better choice.
- Update a bill amount A bill changed price. You can change it going forward, or change just one month.
- Auto-pay vs manual bills The difference between a bill that charges itself and one you pay by hand, and how to tell them apart.
Budget
- Update your income Set what you take home, and record extra pay in a month that had some.
- Set a category budget Change what a category is allowed to spend, and see what that does to the rest of your budget first.
- The four kinds of spending Why Carlo sorts money into rent, bills, month categories and year categories, and the 30/25/30/15 starting point.
- Edit a category Everything about a category lives on its own screen: its history, its patterns, and its settings.
- Add a category Create a new coin and give it a budget. There are five steps, and the last one is required.
- Archive or restore a category Retire a category you no longer use, and bring it back when you want it.
Sunday Review
Monthly Review
Goals
- How goals work What a goal is, how Carlo tracks your progress, and what happens when you reach one.
- Set up an emergency fund Pick how many months you want covered and a pace to build it. Carlo sizes the target from your real expenses.
- Set up a savings goal Create a goal with a target and a timeline, and see what happens when you reach it.
- Set up a debt paydown goal Track a debt you are paying down, with a payoff date and a monthly payment.
Journal
- Browse the Journal One card per day, newest first, with earlier months folded below.
- Weekly reflections in Journal Each week you close out becomes its own card in the Journal, sitting above the days it covers.
- Write a daily journal entry Writing about a day happens on the day itself. There is no separate editor and no Save button.
- Read all your journal entries in one place Reflections is your writing at three sizes — a day, a week, a month — and it is where search lives.
- Your photo gallery Every picture you have ever attached, gathered by month and year.
Analytics
- Track your charitable giving Mark what counts as giving, then see it as a percentage of your take-home pay.
- How much should I give? Every major religious tradition has an answer. The secular world mostly does not. Here is what the traditions say.
- Read your spending report A twelve-month bar chart of your everyday spending, and the transactions behind any month of it.
- Read your annual spending report The same chart for your big, slow-moving categories, plus a full-year view against each annual budget.
Business
Bank Reminders
- How Bank Reminders work Connect a bank and Carlo reminds you to record what left your account. You still decide what each one was.
- Where your bank reminders live All your reminders in one place, under More — with a count when something new arrives.
- Answer a bank reminder Match it to something you already recorded, log it as new, set it up as a bill, or say it needs nothing.
- Connect or disconnect a bank Connecting, reconnecting when a bank asks you to sign in again, and what disconnecting does.
- Your bank data and Carlo Two ways to connect, and where the credential that can reach your bank actually lives.
- Bank Reminders in a shared space Everyone sees the reminders; the person who connected the bank keeps it running.
CoCarlo
- What is CoCarlo? A shared space where you and the people you share money with keep one budget and journal together, while your personal Carlo stays privately yours.
- Create a shared space Start a space you can share with a partner or family member. It takes about a minute.
- Invite someone to a shared space Bring someone in with a one-time code. Any member can invite, any member can approve, one person at a time.
- Recover a locked shared space On a new phone a shared space can show as Locked. Unlock it with your own recovery code, with nobody else needed, or have a member approve your device.
- Leave a shared space You can step out anytime. Your access ends; the entries you added stay so the history stays accurate.
Settings
- Customize your look Change your theme, pick how your budget is laid out, and add a profile photo.
- Set a daily reminder A once-a-day nudge to log, at a time you pick, and what to check if it stops arriving.
- Customize sounds and animations Choose the sound a coin makes and the shape of its sparkle.
- Restore an archived item Bring back a coin, bill, goal, or payment method you archived earlier.
- Manage payment methods Payment methods are labels for the card or cash you used. Add, rename, recolor, and archive them.
- Export your data A portable copy of the space you are in, as a spreadsheet or a zip. A restorable System Backup is separate.
- Restore from a backup Bring everything back from a System Backup: transactions, categories, goals, photos and weekly reviews.
- Send feedback Tell Alex what is broken, what is confusing, or what you love, from inside Carlo.
- Ask Carlo (the assistant) A built-in assistant that answers questions about using Carlo, grounded in these help articles.
- Your Carlo membership How the free trial works, what a membership costs, how one subscription covers a shared space, and how to manage or cancel.
- Delete your account What deleting your account removes, what stays behind in shared spaces, and why it can't be undone.
- Your data and privacy Carlo encrypts your financial data before it leaves your device. Here's exactly what is and isn't protected.
- Move Carlo to a new device Sign in on the new phone and your key usually loads by itself. Your recovery code is the fallback.
- View your recovery code Every account gets a 12-word recovery code. How to view it, save it, and why it cannot be changed.
- Set up a backup way to sign in Add a second sign-in method so you can still reach your account if you switch phones.
- Lock Carlo with Face ID Ask for Face ID, your fingerprint, or your passcode before Carlo opens.