A clearer view of where your money goes — and where you'd rather it went.
Most people don't enjoy tracking what they spend, which is exactly why most tracking apps stop getting opened after a week. Ledger makes the recording easy, quick when you're rushing and quick to catch up when you've fallen behind. Every entry also sharpens a longer view: what a fund for surprise bills, a year of hard times, or never needing to work again would take for the way you actually live.
The goal isn't a perfectly kept spreadsheet.
It's steadier ground, at your own pace.
Ledger exists to give you a clear, honest view of your own spending — not to make you feel bad about it, and not to tell you what to do with it. A clearer view now is what makes it possible to work toward whatever "enough" looks like for you later, on your own terms and your own timeline.
Recording, made to fit the moment you're in
Behind on a few weeks? Catch up in one sitting. Standing in line for coffee? Two taps. Neither one asks for more than you have time for right then.
What you bought — and why, without the guilt
Categories cover what: groceries, dining, transport. Purpose covers why: Essential, Lifestyle, or Future Self — three questions, not a scoreboard. Essential also doubles as your bare-minimum number: it's what Cushions uses to show what a hard stretch would take. Future Self is for anything building forward — an ETF top-up, cash savings, a course — versus Lifestyle, which is for now.
Jot it down now, or catch up all at once
On the Dashboard, Quick add asks for just what, how much and when. Things you buy often can be your own shortcuts, one tap to fill them in, set up by you and never suggested. Fallen behind for a few weeks? Bulk add takes a whole catch-up session at once, sorted by Essential, Lifestyle or Future Self as you go.
Sort the details out later, not while you're rushing
A quick jot doesn't need a category or purpose picked on the spot. Anything left unsorted waits in Quick Sort, where you can tick a few and sort them in one tap. Entries has the full list, a month-by-month review, and Undo if you delete something by mistake.
The cash coffee doesn't get forgotten
Card spending shows up on a statement whether you log it or not. Cash doesn't — which is exactly why it's the spend people lose track of. Log a withdrawal with the day you took it out, mark cash spends as cash, and Ledger works out roughly what's left. Count what's in your wallet now and then to set it straight.
See where it went, and what's coming
Once a few weeks are logged, the patterns show up on their own. No spreadsheet to build.
See it, then actually plan around it
Trends shows the pattern: each category month by month, a category creeping up, or how your Essential, Lifestyle and Future Self split is shifting. Journal is where that turns into action: noticing house insurance renews next month and setting a reminder to compare providers now, instead of running out of time and renewing without comparing again.
The big months, seen coming
Rent, phone, car rego, insurance. Add each bill once and Ledger shows two numbers side by side: the smoothed monthly cost, and what actually falls due each month. When a month ahead is heavier than usual, you'll know months before it lands.
Every entry sharpens the numbers that matter later
Cushions works out three bigger numbers from what you've logged: a fund for surprise costs, a cushion for hard times, and financial independence. They come from your own spending, not a national average, so they get closer to your real life the longer you keep a record.
Example figures. Every number shows where it comes from and links to its sources, including Moneysmart and Australian research on the 4% rule. They're scenarios to think with, not advice, and super isn't included.
🧾 Your spending history is yours. Actually yours.
Print a clean statement for any date range, save it as a PDF, or download everything as a spreadsheet or backup file, whenever you want — not just as a promise for the day you decide to leave. It's the same principle everything else here runs on: the numbers are yours, so the record of them should be too.
What Ledger is — and isn't
Organisational, not advice
Ledger shows you facts about your own history — what you spent, on what, and why. Cushions shows scenarios worked out from those facts. Neither tells you what to do about it. No auto-generated suggestions, ever.
No bank linking, ever
There's no account to connect and nothing to hand over. Every entry exists because you put it there yourself — that's the whole mechanism, not a missing feature.
Your data stays yours
Never sold, never shared with advertisers, not even in aggregate. Print it, download it, or delete your account and everything in it, whenever you like.
Guidelines, clearly labelled as ones
The 20% Future Self guideline in Trends and the 4% rule in Cushions are common guidelines, shown with their sources and their limits, not rules Ledger enforces. You can set your own Future Self target any time.
Start with today's spending
Free while it's finding its feet. No credit card, no bank connection, no pressure.
Start trackingWorks in any browser. On a phone, add it to your home screen and it opens like an app.