Frequently Asked Questions
Learn how Money Timeline works, how we protect your on-device banking privacy, and how to get the most out of your household budget.
🔒 Privacy & Bank Security
With your permission, Money Timeline reads transactional bank, card, and UPI alerts directly in your phone's SMS inbox and converts them into categorized entries on your daily timeline.
Everything happens on your phone: Messages that do not describe completed transactions—such as promotional offers, OTPs, and bank marketing—are skipped. The original message text never leaves your device, even if you enable cloud sync.
If you connect your email in Settings, the app connects with strict read-only access and looks exclusively for bank debit/credit alerts, digital receipts, and monthly statements.
Personal and work correspondence are completely ignored. Matching emails are processed locally on your phone, and the emails themselves are never stored on external cloud servers.
Your transactions, custom categories, monthly budgets, upcoming bills, and app settings are stored in an encrypted SQLite database on your device hardware. The app works 100% offline without internet.
Your financial records leave the device only if you voluntarily enable encrypted cloud sync. Even then, raw SMS text is never uploaded.
Cloud sync is part of Money Timeline Plus. When enabled, your financial data is encrypted on your device before upload and remains encrypted in the cloud. Our servers assist with authentication so you can restore your history when upgrading phones.
App Lock requires biometric fingerprint, face unlock, or PIN before the app opens. While active, the app window is masked in Android's recent apps switcher, screenshot capture is blocked, and home-screen widgets hide sensitive balances.
💳 Payments & Automation
Yes. Money Timeline auto-detects debit and credit alerts from Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, CRED, Navi, BHIM, and all major Indian banks including HDFC, SBI, ICICI, Axis, Kotak Mahindra, PNB, Bank of Baroda, and IndusInd.
Safe-to-Spend calculates the exact rupee amount you can safely spend today and still meet your month-end savings goal. It factors in your payday cycle, logged expenses to date, and all upcoming EMIs and recurring bills in your 30-day runway.
Money Timeline includes a dedicated Household Hub. Spouses can create a shared family budget ring to pool joint expenses (rent, groceries, child care, electricity) while keeping personal bank accounts, salaries, and private discretionary spending completely isolated.
💾 Backups, Statements & Exports
Local backup is 100% free and requires no account. In Settings → Security Hub (or Local Backup), create a passphrase-protected backup file and save it to your phone storage, Google Drive, or SD card.
To restore, select the file and enter your passphrase. Without your passphrase, nobody—including the Money Timeline team—can open or read your backup.
Navigate to Settings → Export Transactions. You can generate a presentation-ready PDF statement or a CSV spreadsheet complete with category charts, spending pace, and full ledger entries for your chosen date range. Statements are generated on-device and can be shared with your CA or accountant.
In Settings → Danger Zone → Delete All Local Data, you can permanently erase your profile, ledger, categories, and cached state from your device with one tap. If you have a cloud account, 'Delete Cloud Account' permanently wipes all remote records and backups from our servers.
Have a question not listed here?
Our engineering and support team is always ready to assist you with any questions or feature suggestions.
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