HELP & DOCUMENTATION

SpendSeer Help

SpendSeer helps you track spending, stay on budget, and build better money habits. Use it on your own or share it with a partner. This guide walks through everything from first setup to optional advanced features.

Getting Started

• Create your account at app.spendseer.com.
• Check your email and confirm your address before signing in for the first time.
• Set up your workspace. You can invite a partner later from workspace settings if you want to share.
• If you don't have an active subscription yet, you'll be directed to Billing after sign in.

Sharing with a Partner (Optional)

Most people use SpendSeer on their own. If you want to share a workspace with a partner or housemate, you can invite one other person by default (two users total).

Roles

Every workspace member has a role that controls what they can see and do:

• Owner: full control over everything — including billing, data export/import, and all workspace settings. There is always at least one owner per workspace.
• Admin: can manage day-to-day setup, members, imports, rules, and most workspace features. Cannot access billing or data portability by default.
• Member: read-only access to transactions, loans, goals, budgets, and categories by default. The owner or admin can expand their access.

Capabilities

Beyond roles, each member's access can be tuned with individual capabilities. When you invite someone or edit their membership, you can enable or disable access to specific areas — for example, letting a Member create transactions without giving them access to loans or goals.

Changing a member's role resets their capabilities to that role's defaults. You can then adjust individual capabilities from there.

Inviting Someone

Go to Members in your workspace settings and click Add / Invite Member. Enter their email and choose a starting role (Admin or Member). You can also adjust their capabilities before sending.

• If the email belongs to an existing SpendSeer user, they are added directly.
• If the email is new, an account is created automatically and they receive a password-setup email.

Editing a Member

Owners and admins can edit members they are permitted to manage (admins cannot manage other owners or admins). Click the edit icon next to any member on the Members page to update their role or capabilities.

Transferring Ownership

Ownership can be transferred to any existing member who is not already an owner. This requires verification to prevent accidental transfers.

1. Open the edit panel for the member you want to promote.
2. Change their role to Owner.
3. Enter your current password and type your workspace slug exactly to confirm.
4. Save. The previous owner becomes an Admin and both parties receive a notification email.

Dashboard and Analytics

SpendSeer starts with a dashboard home that surfaces recurring payment reminders, operational items that still need attention, and direct links into deeper monthly and yearly analysis pages.

• Dashboard home with Upcoming Payments, Needs Attention, and quick access to goals and loans
• Yearly Overview for full-year rollups, category breakdowns, goals, loans, and trend charts
• Monthly Overview for month-vs-prior-year comparisons and budget vs actual variance views

Budgets

Budgets define planned allocation by category and time horizon. Use yearly budgets for the default plan and apply specific month overrides only where needed.

• Create/edit budgets by category
• Use Specific Months to apply targeted overrides without replacing the whole year
• Copy yearly budgets forward for next-year planning
• Track variance against actual transaction data

Transactions

Transactions are the core ledger for spending and income. You can add manually or import from CSV, OFX/QFX, and text-based PDF statements.

• Filter/search by date, amount, category, source
• Bulk import review helps prevent accidental saves
• Categorization rules can auto-assign during import workflows

Loans and Goals

Track liabilities and savings objectives in the same system as day-to-day spend tracking.

• Loans with payments and progress timeline
• Goals with current balance, target amount, and completion status
• Visibility into payoff and savings momentum

Rules (Categorization and Skip)

Rule sets help automate repetitive cleanup and categorization so imports become progressively cleaner over time.

• Categorization rules assign categories based on match criteria.
• Skip rules ignore known noise records during import.
• Rules support ordering and simulation before saving changes.

Imports and Templates

Import templates help map your bank/export columns to SpendSeer fields for repeatable imports. Transaction imports also support OFX/QFX and text-based PDF statement uploads without a template. Budget imports are currently CSV template-based.

1. For transaction CSV, select a template before previewing, or let SpendSeer detect an existing matching template automatically.
2. For transaction OFX/QFX or PDF, upload and preview directly.
3. For budget imports, use a CSV template and preview before save.
4. Review and edit staged rows.
5. Save only approved rows.

• Import review can suggest categories, normalize merchants, and help create categorization or skip rules from repeated fixes.
• OFX/QFX and PDF imports can resolve to stable account-aware source labels instead of generic file types when account metadata is available.
• You can manage discovered and renamed source labels later from Settings → Import Sources.

Category Import

Bulk-create categories and subcategories from a CSV file. Navigate to Categories → Actions → Import from CSV.

The CSV must include Type and Category columns. The SubCategory column is optional.

Type, Category, SubCategory
income, Salary,
income, Freelance,
expense, Housing,
expense, Housing, Rent
expense, Housing, Utilities
savings, Emergency Fund,

• Type: income, expense, or savings.
• Category: Parent category name.
• SubCategory: Leave blank for top-level categories. When present, creates a child under the parent.
• Duplicate categories (same name, type, and parent) are automatically skipped.

Template Export and Import

Individual import templates can be exported as JSON files and re-imported into any workspace. Use the download button on each template row to export, and the Import From File button on the Import Templates page to import a template JSON file.

Community Imports

Browse ready-made templates in the community catalog and install into your workspace.

• Catalog: templates.spendseer.com
• Install templates in a few clicks to speed up setup.
• Great for common bank or export formats when you are getting started.
• Keep your template list clean and easy to manage over time.

Billing

SpendSeer uses Stripe for secure checkout and subscription management. Your plan status controls access to paid features.

• Monthly and annual plans are available.
• A limited-time launch offer discount may apply to your first billing cycle. Future billing cycles use the current plan rate.
• If your subscription is inactive, you are guided to Billing before making changes.
• Data export remains available for portability workflows.
• Refund review is available within a 30-day guarantee window.

The Billing page also lets workspace owners update the workspace name and billing email. These values are shared with Stripe billing, and webhook updates from Stripe are synced back into SpendSeer.

Advanced Automation (Optional)

Most people use SpendSeer directly in the app and don't need this. If you want to connect external tools or build custom routines around your spending data, you can create personal access tokens.

• Create and revoke tokens anytime from API Tokens in settings.
• Start with read-only access and expand only if you need to.
• Use a separate token for each tool to keep things easy to manage.

For full technical reference, visit the API docs (interactive reference + schema explorer). The raw OpenAPI spec is available at https://app.spendseer.com/api/openapi.json.

AI Assistant (Optional)

You can connect your own AI assistant to help summarize trends and answer spending questions.

1. Create a key with read-only access first.
2. Connect your assistant to your SpendSeer account.
3. Ask plain-language questions about recent spending and budget drift.

Helpful question ideas

• "Where did most of my money go this month?"
• "What changed versus last month?"
• "Which categories are over budget right now?"

Audit Log

Important account and workspace actions are recorded automatically. You can review this log if you ever need to check what changed or when.

• Membership and role changes
• Ownership transfer requests and outcomes
• Billing history and refund requests
• Data import and export runs

Data Portability (Import and Export)

Export and import workspace data from Tools > Data Import/Export. This helps you keep control of your history and move data when needed.

• Exports include budgets, transactions, categories, goals, loans, templates, and rules.
• Imports can restore a full workspace from a selected backup package.
• Runs process in the background and status is visible in the app.

FAQ and Troubleshooting

I can't add or edit anything after signing in.

Your subscription may be inactive. Go to Billing in your workspace settings to check your plan status. Once billing is active, everything will work normally again.

My connected tool stopped working.

Your access token may have expired, been revoked, or not have the right permissions. Head to API Tokens in settings to create a new one.

My import isn't matching up correctly.

For CSV files, try letting SpendSeer detect the template automatically, then check the column preview before saving. For OFX, QFX, or PDF imports, use the preview step to confirm the rows look right before you save.

How do I keep my AI connection safe?

Set it to read-only access when you first connect it, and review any suggested changes yourself before approving them.