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.
• Your 90-day free trial starts the first time you sign in to your workspace. It includes everything, and no credit card is needed.

Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication adds a second step when you sign in: after your password, you enter a 6-digit code from an authenticator app on your phone. Anyone who learns your password still can't get in without your phone. It's optional, and we recommend it.

Turning It On

1. Click your email at the bottom of the sidebar to open Account.
2. Choose Set up two-factor authentication.
3. Scan the QR code with an authenticator app such as 1Password, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or Authy. If you can't scan it, type the key shown below the code instead.
4. Enter the 6-digit code the app shows and choose Turn on two-factor.
5. Save your backup codes. You can copy them, download them as a text file, or print them.

From then on, signing in asks for a code after your password. Type the six digits into the boxes and SpendSeer checks the code as soon as it's complete. To use a backup code instead, choose the Backup code tab. You'll get an email whenever two-factor is turned on or off or new backup codes are created.

Backup Codes

You get 10 backup codes when you turn two-factor on. Each one works once, anywhere SpendSeer asks for a code, so keep them somewhere safe away from your phone, such as a password manager or a printed copy. They're only shown once. If you run low or lose them, create a new set from Account using a current code; your old codes stop working.

When You'll Be Asked for a Code

• Each time you sign in.
• When you transfer workspace ownership.
• When you give a connected app, such as an AI assistant, permission to make changes.
• When you create new backup codes or turn two-factor off.

Turning It Off

On the Account page, enter your password and a current code, then choose Turn off two-factor. Signing in will need only your password again.

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. If you use two-factor authentication, also enter a code from your authenticator app or a backup code.
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 this month's income, expenses, and savings, where your money went, a Budget Check, goal progress, Needs Attention, and Upcoming Payments. On an Upcoming Payments total, choose By source to see which accounts those payments come from.
• 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

Sticker Book

SpendSeer hands out stickers as you reach milestones, such as importing your first statement, staying under your expense budget several months in a row, reaching a savings goal, or paying down a loan. There are 13 to collect.

• Open Sticker Book in the sidebar to see the stickers you've earned and hints for the rest.
• A new sticker shows up on the dashboard for a week, with a little confetti the first time you see it.
• Not your thing? Choose Turn off stickers on the Sticker Book page. It only affects your own account, and you can turn them back on any time.

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.

• New workspaces start with a 90-day free trial with full access and no credit card. The trial begins the first time you sign in to your workspace and ends exactly 90 days later.
• The sidebar shows how many trial days are left. Two weeks before the end you'll see a reminder, and Billing always shows the exact end date.
• Subscribing during the trial starts your paid plan right away. Your data carries over.
• When the trial ends, nothing is deleted. Your data and settings stay in your workspace, you can still export it, and subscribing restores full access straight away.
• Each person gets one free trial; creating another workspace doesn't start a new one.
• Monthly and annual plans are available.
• 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.

To connect an AI assistant with the same tokens, use the MCP server described in AI Assistant.

AI Assistant (Optional)

You can connect your own AI assistant to SpendSeer to answer spending questions, tidy up categories, and prepare imports for you to review. SpendSeer includes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, the standard way AI assistants connect to apps.

Connecting Claude

1. In Claude, open Settings → Connectors and choose Add custom connector.
2. Name it SpendSeer and enter https://app.spendseer.com/mcp as the URL, then choose Connect.
3. Sign in to SpendSeer if asked, choose the workspace and permissions to share, and approve.

Read permissions start selected. Write permissions stay off unless you turn them on, even if the app asks for them. If you use two-factor authentication, turning on any write permission also asks for a code. Connecting an app needs the same permission as creating an API token, so a workspace owner may need to grant it to you.

In Claude Code, run claude mcp add --transport http spendseer https://app.spendseer.com/mcp, then use /mcp to sign in.

Connecting other assistants

Assistants that support MCP sign-in (OAuth) connect the same way: add the address and approve in SpendSeer. For assistants that only accept a fixed token, create one under API Tokens (start with read access only) and send it as an Authorization: Bearer <your token> header. The exact field names vary by app, so check your assistant's MCP settings.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "spendseer": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://app.spendseer.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

The assistant only sees the workspace you connected and can only do what you allowed. Every action goes through the same checks as the app and appears in the audit log. Connected apps are listed under Connected Apps on the API Tokens page, where you can disconnect them anytime.

What your assistant can do

• A financial snapshot: this month's income and spending compared with recent months, budget status, debts, goals, upcoming payments, and how current your data is, all at once.
• Summaries and trends: spending by period, month, category, and merchant, plus budget versus actual.
• Loan payoff scenarios: payoff date, total interest, and a payment schedule, including what extra or one-time payments would change.
• Look up transactions, budgets, loans, goals, and upcoming recurring payments.
• With write access: add or recategorize transactions, and manage budgets, categories, goals, loans, and rules.
• Imports: turn a statement you share into an import draft for you to review before anything is saved.

Helpful question ideas

• "Where did most of my money go this month?"
• "What changed versus last month?"
• "Which categories are over budget right now?"
• "What recurring payments are coming up in the next two weeks?"
• "Give me a quick overview of where I stand financially."
• "If I pay an extra $200 a month on my car loan, when will it be paid off and how much interest will I save?"
• "Which of my loans is costing me the most in interest?"

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 free trial may have ended, or 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, with all of your data still in place.

What happens when my free trial ends?

You'll be asked to subscribe before using SpendSeer again. Nothing is deleted: your imported transactions, budgets, and settings stay in your workspace, and you can still export your data from Data Import/Export. Subscribing brings everything back immediately. The API and connected AI tools also pause until you subscribe.

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. If your AI assistant says an action is forbidden, the token is missing the permission that action needs.

I lost my phone or can't get two-factor codes.

Sign in with one of your backup codes instead (choose Backup code on the code page), then set up two-factor again on your new phone from Account (turn it off, then back on). If your authenticator codes keep being rejected, check that your phone's clock is set automatically. If you've lost your backup codes too, contact SpendSeer support; once we've confirmed it's you, we can turn two-factor off so you can sign in and set it up again.

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. With two-factor authentication on, approving write access for a connected app also needs a code from your phone.