Day one: about two minutes
Setting up the household and inviting people is the slow part, and it is still measured in minutes. There is no bank login, no waiting on a feed to sync, no account verification.
How it works · free while in beta
Clear in two minutes, and it stays private.
There is no bank connection to set up, which means there is nothing to authorise and nothing to wait for. You pick your household type, add your people, and start adding what matters. That last part is the honest tradeoff, and it is also the bit that makes you notice your spending.
2 minutes to set up · no card · no bank login
Setting up
Five steps, and none of them involve a bank.
This is the whole onboarding flow. Step four is optional, and the rest is mostly typing your household name.
- 1
Pick your household type
Couple, family, flatmates or just me. Your choice tailors the copy, the default roles and which numbers lead, so the app arrives already shaped like your household.
- 2
Name the household
Whatever you actually call it. Set the currency and the day your month starts, so the numbers line up with your pay cycle rather than the calendar.
- 3
Add your people
Invite the household by email and give each person a role. Everyone joins with their own login and sees the same shared data in real time.
- 4
Set a shared savings goal
Optional, and worth it. A goal turns the savings ring into progress you are chasing together instead of a number you glance at.
- 5
Start adding what matters
Amount, merchant, category, who paid, and a receipt photo if you want one. It takes seconds, and the dashboard updates for everyone the moment you save.
What it actually feels like
The first month, honestly.
No app deserves a leap of faith with your household money, so here is the real shape of it.
The first week: seconds a day
Add the things that matter as they happen, or catch up once every couple of days. The whole household shares the load, and recent activity shows who added what.
End of month one: the honest picture
The allocation bar shows where the money actually went, the savings ring shows how you tracked against your goal, and the subscription list shows what nobody used.
Why manual entry, when everything else syncs
Two reasons, and neither is technical. The first is privacy: with no bank connection, CASHO never asks for your banking credentials and never holds an imported feed, so it only ever knows what your household typed in. The second is attention: the act of adding a transaction is the moment you notice it, which is exactly the habit a shared budget needs.
The tradeoff is real, and we would rather say so than pretend it away. If you specifically want automatic bank-feed import, CASHO is not the tool for you. If you want a household that can see the same honest picture without handing its bank logins to an app, that is the whole point of this one.More on the no-bank-connection choice.
Is adding transactions manually a lot of work?
Less than people expect. Adding one takes seconds, the whole household shares it, and you are only logging what matters rather than reconciling a full bank feed. It’s also the moment you notice the spending you would otherwise scroll past.
What if someone in the household forgets?
The shared view tends to fix it, because recent activity shows which member added what. Roles let you decide who can log and who can only view, and nothing is lost if you catch up a few days later.
Does CASHO connect to our bank?
No, and that’s on purpose. CASHO has no bank connection. You add transactions yourself, which keeps your banking details private and helps you actually notice your spending.
How long until it is useful?
The dashboard is useful from the first few entries, and it gets sharper over the first month as budgets, subscriptions and the six-month trend fill in.
Two minutes, and your household can see it too.
Free while we’re in beta, no card, no bank login, no catch. Pick your household type and go.
A Premium plan (~$7/household/mo) arrives after beta. Everyone in beta keeps the core free.