The mismatch
Almost every budgeting app funds a month. You are paid every two weeks. Those two facts do not line up, and the gap between them is where the effort goes.
You end up doing a conversion in your head, every month, forever: which paycheck covers the rent, whether the car payment lands before or after the 19th this time, what to do with the month that has three paydays. The app shows you a monthly total that is arithmetically true and does not describe any fortnight you will actually live through.
What Cashrou does differently
It works out your real paydays. You give it one actual payday and the rhythm, and it counts in fourteens from there. It does not approximate fortnightly pay as twice a month, which is a different thing that drifts apart within weeks.
Every figure belongs to a pay period. Not “$2,000 left this month” but “$650 left until the 19th, with these four bills still to come out of it.”
Three-paycheck months show up as what they are. An extra paycheck with nothing already claiming it, rather than a vaguely good month.
Bills sit in the pay period they land in. So the fortnight with rent in it looks as tight as it actually is, instead of being averaged against the easier one.
Ticking moves money. Paycheck lands, tick it, and it goes into the account you said it lands in. Rent goes out, tick it, and the balance drops. The number at the bottom is what is left right now, not a forecast.
How long does setting it up take?
Three questions, once:
- How often you are paid and one real payday to count from
- Your accounts, bills and cards, typed or imported from a spreadsheet or bank export
- A buffer: what you want left in the account no matter what
Then a few minutes each payday. Confirm your balances, tick things off as they clear, read the figure at the bottom.
What do I give up by not connecting a bank?
Cashrou never asks for your bank login and holds no read access to your accounts. You confirm your balances yourself, which takes about a minute and means there is no credential of yours for anyone to lose.
The trade is real and worth stating: no automatic transaction feed, and no automatic categorising of what you spent. If that is what you are looking for, you want an app that connects to your bank, and Cashrou is not one.
Can I try something before I pay?
The full method, on paper and free to read, is in how to budget on a biweekly paycheck: how to lay your paydays out for the year, which two months carry a third one, and what to do with it.
What does it cost?
$4.99 a month or $49.99 a year, with seven days free. Seven days is about one payday, which is the smallest useful test of something you run every payday. Full pricing.