Basil Help

Getting started

Basil shows where your money comes in and where it goes. You sign in with your email (we send a 6-digit code) or Google, connect your accounts, and Basil does the rest: it sorts every transaction, builds your reports, finds your bills and drafts a budget.

Sign in at the Basil web app or the iPhone app.
Open Accounts and tap Connect a bank.
Give Basil a minute to bring in your history, then open Home.

Basil is in early access. Write to hello@basilmoney.app to join.

Connect a bank

Basil connects through Plaid, which works with thousands of US banks, card issuers, brokerages and retirement plans. Plaid opens its own secure page: you sign in to your bank there, and your bank login goes to Plaid, never to Basil.

Basil asks for up to six months of transaction history, plus investment holdings when your institution offers them.
New transactions arrive on their own: your bank tells Plaid, Plaid tells Basil, and Basil syncs within seconds. Refresh on the Accounts tab syncs on demand.
Access is read-only. Basil cannot move money, pay bills or change anything at your bank.

Ledger & categories

The ledger lists every transaction across your accounts, newest first, grouped by day. Search by merchant, name or category.

Basil puts each transaction in one of these categories: Housing, Utilities, Groceries, Dining, Transport, Shopping, Entertainment, Health, Travel, Services, Fees, Debt payments, Taxes & giving, Other, plus Income and Transfer.

Fixing a category

Change the category on any transaction and Basil moves every transaction from that merchant, and files future ones the same way.

Splitting a transaction

One receipt, several kinds of spending: split a $200 Costco run into $120 Groceries and $80 Shopping. The parts must add up to the transaction, and each can have a note. Your summary, budget, Trends and Ask Basil all count the parts; the ledger still shows the one charge, with its parts underneath. On the web choose Tag · split; on iPhone long-press and choose Split…. Either way you can use up to 8 parts, each with its own category and note, and Basil shows how much is left to assign. Choose Unsplit to undo.

What counts as spending

Transfers between your own accounts and credit-card payments don't count as spending or income, so nothing is counted twice.
Refunds reduce spending in their own category. A $40 refund at a restaurant lowers Dining by $40.
Income counts money that came in, such as paychecks and interest.

Budgets

Once Basil has three full months of your history, it drafts a budget for you. It starts from your median month for each category over the last six months, may tighten one category that has crept up, and leaves the rest of your income as savings.

The draft waits for you: tap Use this budget or Not now. Nothing changes until you choose.
Every number in Basil's note comes from your own history. If the AI's draft breaks Basil's rules, you get the median-month budget instead.
Bars turn yellow at 90% of a budget and red when you go over. Tap a category to change its amount, or set it to 0 to remove it.
Want a fresh draft? Ask Basil to draft one.

Bills & subscriptions

Basil finds charges that repeat every week, two weeks, month or quarter, from at least three charges at the same merchant. It sorts them into bills, subscriptions and regular income.

Due in the next 30 days shows what's coming, soonest first.
Basil reminds you 3 days before each bill.
When a subscription's price goes up, Basil flags it with the old and new price.
Everyday habits like coffee, groceries, gas and travel aren't counted as subscriptions.

Savings finds

At the top of Bills & savings (on iPhone, the Budget tab), Basil lists money you could stop spending, each with what it costs you a year:

Fees: overdraft, ATM and other bank fees from the last 3 months.
Price went up: a subscription that now charges more than it did.
Overlap: two or more subscriptions of the same kind, like several streaming services.
Review: any other subscription over $5 a month, so you can decide whether it's still worth it.

Basil never cancels anything. You cancel with the company, then tap I cut it; tap Keep and Basil stops asking. Basil saved you adds up each full month a cut charge has stayed gone. If the charge comes back, Basil marks it Still charging and doesn't count it. Ask Basil "What could I cut?" for the same list in a conversation.

Tap Where should I start? and Basil picks one cut to tackle first (bank fees first, since they buy you nothing, then price increases) and writes a short note about it. For fees and price increases it also gives you what to say when you call, ready to read out. Every dollar figure in the note is checked against your numbers.

Goals

Set a goal on the Goals tab (on iPhone, Home): a name, an amount, an optional month, and the savings or investment accounts that hold the money. Progress is the current balance of those accounts, so there's nothing to update by hand.

With a date, Basil works out what to set aside each month to get there.
After a few weeks of balance history, Basil compares that with how fast the accounts actually grew over the last 90 days and says On track or Behind pace.
Without a date, Basil estimates when you'll reach it at your recent pace.
Ask Basil "How am I doing on my emergency fund?" for the same numbers in a conversation.
Basil noticed tells you when a goal falls behind pace (once a month), when you reach one, and two days before a regular paycheck how much to move to each goal to stay on track. Basil never moves money; you do.
Your monthly letter mentions how your main goal is doing.

Debt-free plan

When you connect a credit card or loan, Basil reads its APR, minimum payment and due date and builds a plan on the Debt-free tab (on iPhone, Budget). Tell it how much you can add on top of the minimums each month and it shows three plans side by side:

Avalanche pays the highest interest rate first. It costs the least, so it's Basil's pick.
Snowball pays the smallest balance first, for quicker wins.
Minimums only, for comparison. If a minimum doesn't even cover the interest, Basil says so plainly.

Each plan shows how long until you're debt-free, the total interest, and the order debts get paid off. Mortgages are listed but left out of the plan. Three days before a minimum is due, Basil reminds you in Basil noticed. Basil never makes a payment; you do. Ask Basil "When am I debt-free if I add $500 a month?" for the same plan in a conversation.

Trends

Trends has 17 reports. Pick a time range (this month to all time), an account, or search a merchant. Most reports show a chart and a table you can export to CSV from the web app.

Report	What it answers
Spending by category	Where your money went. Click a slice to see its subcategories, then the transactions.
Spending by merchant	Who you pay the most.
Spending over time	Monthly spending, with your average.
Categories over time	How each category's share of spending moves month to month.
This month vs last	Running total this month against last month and the same month last year.
This year vs last	Monthly spending this year against last year.
Purchases by weekday	Which days you spend most.
Budget vs actual	Spending in budgeted categories against your budget, month by month.
Income by type / by source / over time	Where your income comes from and how it changes.
Net income	Income minus spending, by month.
Savings rate	The share of income you kept, by month and overall.
Cash flow	A diagram from income to categories and savings, for any range.
Net worth, Assets, Debts	What you own minus what you owe, over time.

Net worth history starts the day you connect: Basil records every balance daily from then on.

Investments

For brokerage, IRA and 401(k) accounts that share holdings, Basil shows portfolio value, unrealized gain against cost basis, allocation by asset class (stocks, funds and ETFs, bonds, cash, crypto, options), each holding's weight and gain, and the last 12 months of dividends, interest, contributions and fees. A fund you hold in two accounts appears once, combined.

Basil is not a licensed advisor and never recommends buying or selling a specific security.

Receipts

Add a photo of a receipt (JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, up to 8 MB) on the Receipts tab of the web app. Basil reads the store, date, total, tax, tip and each item, and checks that the items add up to the total.

Basil finds the matching charge by amount, store name and date (within 6 days). A restaurant charge that includes a tip added after the receipt still matches.
If the charge hasn't arrived yet, the receipt waits as "No matching charge yet".
Ask Basil can answer questions about what you bought, item by item.
Check a price tag: photograph a shelf tag and Basil tells you whether it fits what's left of that category's budget this month, and what you paid for the same item on past receipts. Price-tag photos aren't stored.
Your photos are stored with your other Basil data and are only shown to you. Taking photos in the iPhone app comes with the next app update; the app already shows your receipts.

Ask Basil

Ask questions in plain language, like "Where did my money go this month?", "Can I afford a $2,400 trip in December?" or "What are my biggest recurring charges?". Before answering, Basil reads your own data: monthly summaries, any Trends report, your transactions, accounts, budget, bills, investments and receipts. Each answer shows what it looked at.

Basil only states numbers it read from your accounts. If something is missing, it says so.
It can't move money, pay bills, change settings or contact anyone.
It can ask for a budget draft, which you still approve on the Budget tab.
Ask "Can I afford a $2,400 trip in December?" and Basil plans it: your recent monthly savings, your cash, bills due before then, and how much to set aside each month. Every figure in the plan is checked against your numbers.
For investment, tax or legal questions it explains your numbers and the general trade-offs, and says it isn't a licensed advisor.

Monthly money letter

On Home, tap Write my letter and Basil writes a short note about last month: what you kept, the one change worth making, one next step, and what bills are due. Every dollar figure in the letter is checked against your numbers; if the AI's draft cites a number that isn't one of your month's facts, Basil asks it to fix that once and otherwise writes a plain letter from the facts itself.

Letters are written by Basil's private worker, which runs only for the moment it's needed, has no internet access and keeps nothing afterwards.

Basil noticed

After every sync and each morning, Basil checks for things worth your attention and shows them on the Budget tab:

a category at 90% of its budget, or over it, with the days left in the month;
a charge about three times a merchant's usual amount;
a checking or savings balance under $100;
a bill due within 3 days, or a subscription that just went up.

iPhone app

The iPhone app has Home, Ledger, Budget (with bills and subscriptions), Trends and Ask Basil. Accounts and investments open from the top bar. It reads the same data as the web app, so a change on one shows on the other. The app is in TestFlight for early-access members and comes to the App Store soon.

Privacy & security

Read-only. Basil cannot move money.
Your bank login goes to Plaid, never to Basil. Basil keeps an access token per bank, encrypted and bound to that bank connection.
Separate per member. Each member's data lives in its own store in Basil's own environment, and every request is checked against your sign-in.
AI with care. Questions and budget drafts go to Google's Gemini model through Basil's own gateway, which keeps no logs of them. Basil sends the model summaries and the transactions an answer needs, never account numbers or bank credentials.
No ads, no selling data. Basil makes money from subscriptions.
Your data, any time. On Accounts → Your data, download your ledger as a spreadsheet (CSV) or everything Basil keeps as JSON. Bank tokens are never included.
Delete your account. Also under Your data: Basil disconnects every bank from Plaid, deletes your receipt photos, and erases your ledger, budgets, goals, notes and Basil's notes about you, right away. If Plaid can't confirm a bank was disconnected, nothing is deleted and you can try again.
Something wrong in an answer? Tap Report this answer under any Basil reply or letter. Reports are stored without your name.

Read the draft privacy policy.

FAQ

Why doesn't my net worth chart go back further?

Banks only share today's balances, so Basil builds history from the day you connect, one day at a time.

A transaction is in the wrong category.

Change it in the Ledger. Basil moves every transaction from that merchant and remembers the choice.

Why is a payment to my credit card missing from spending?

It's a transfer. The purchases on the card already count, so counting the payment too would double it.

Basil hasn't drafted a budget.

It needs three full months of history. You can also ask Basil to draft one.

How do I get help?

Write to hello@basilmoney.app.