Common questions

MyCashDash is a personal finance app built on double-entry accounting. You explain each transaction (who, what type, what category) and the app gives you an accurate view of your money by party, category, project, or asset. You can also share specific accounts or whole financial contexts with other people, with role-based controls.

YNAB is built around a specific budgeting method: envelope budgets, 'every dollar a job', age-of-money tracking. It works well if that approach suits you. MyCashDash isn't a budgeting app at all. Instead of rules, you get counterparty ledgers (every person and company you transact with has its own ledger), project plans (plan-vs-actual tracking), and asset tracking. Different philosophy, different audience.

They overlap on category but they're architecturally different. Monarch is sync-first: it connects to your banks and builds a budgeting overlay on top. MyCashDash doesn't sync to your bank deliberately, and isn't budget-first. The structure is who you spend with, what it's for, what project or asset it relates to. If you want a Monarch-style sync-first dashboard, MyCashDash isn't that. If you want something closer to FreeAgent for personal life, it is.

Copilot is iOS-only and budgeting-focused with a beautifully designed interface. MyCashDash is web-based (works anywhere), accounting-focused rather than budgeting-focused, and gives you tools Copilot doesn't: counterparty ledgers, project plan-vs-actual tracking, asset valuation timelines, shared Spaces for couples and group treasuries.

Yes. With more depth than Mint had. Mint was primarily an aggregator: it pulled all your accounts into one dashboard. MyCashDash is built around explaining each transaction so you get a structured picture rather than just a feed. If you valued Mint's simplicity, MyCashDash will feel more involved at first. If you valued the 'complete financial picture' idea, you'll find something more honest and deeper here.

Yes. That's a fair comparison and it's literally why MyCashDash exists. Jon (the founder) used FreeAgent for his business for years and kept wondering why nothing similar existed for personal finances. MyCashDash uses the same double-entry foundation but is shaped around personal life rather than VAT, invoicing, and payroll.

Yes, for simple sole-trader bookkeeping. Create a separate Space for the business so it stays isolated from your personal finances. The double-entry system suits small business accounting well. MyCashDash doesn't include VAT tracking, invoicing, or payroll. For a limited company, FreeAgent or Xero is a better fit.

Double-entry accounting means every transaction is recorded in two places. When you spend £20 at a shop, your account is debited and the shop's party ledger is credited. This keeps everything balanced, so you can look at your finances from any angle (by account, by party, by project, by asset) and the numbers always agree. You don't need to know any of this to use MyCashDash. It just runs underneath.

A Space is a self-contained financial context, with its own accounts, parties, categories, projects, and assets, completely separate from your other Spaces. Use them to keep personal finances, a business, a shared property, or a club treasury organised and independent. When you sign up, a default Personal Space is created for you.

When you set the type of a transaction (or a portion of a split) to "Loan", the amount is recorded on that party's ledger as money owed. Open any party's page to see their current loan balance alongside regular spending.

Yes. Build an itemised plan with expected amounts and dates, then track actual transactions against it. The timeline view shows planned vs actual side by side, with variance tracking that tells you whether you're on budget.

Yes. Clone a draft project to create a variation, then compare up to three projects side by side with summary metrics, itemised breakdowns, and timeline overlays.

Each asset has three layers: a valuation timeline (purchase price plus manual snapshots over time), a transaction history (all costs and income from your bank accounts), and a net position calculation that tells you whether you're up or down overall.

Property, vehicles, investments, savings, personal loans, or any custom type. Anything with a value that changes over time and has associated costs or income.

When splitting by percentage, if the calculated amounts produce fractional pence that don't sum exactly to the original transaction total, the app shows a rounding dialog with suggested adjusted amounts that sum correctly. You can accept or adjust these before saving.

Yes, with more control than most finance apps offer. Invite someone to a Space as an Admin (full control) or Member (view and explain only). Or add someone as an owner on a specific account with a split percentage, and they'll see only their share docked into their own Space. Both approaches can coexist. Invitations are sent by email and work even if the other person hasn't signed up yet.

No. Account owner access is strictly filtered to that account and that owner's share. They can't see your other accounts, your personal spending, or anything else in your Space.

Most personal finance apps connect directly to your bank. It feels magical for the first week. Then your bank changes its API and the sync silently breaks. Or you realise there's another company sitting between you and your data, with its own commercial interests and its own track record on privacy. MyCashDash takes a different path. You bring your transactions in (PDF, photo, CSV, or by hand) and we never touch your banking credentials. It's a slower start. We think it's a better deal.

MyCashDash doesn't offer automatic bank sync. You bring your transactions in by uploading a CSV, scanning a PDF or image statement with AI, or adding entries manually. That's deliberate. You decide what enters your books and how it's explained.

Yes. MyCashDash uses AI-powered document reading to extract transactions from PDF and image files. The system reads the document, extracts transaction rows, reconciles the running balance, and lets you review everything before importing. It works with virtually any bank statement format.

Each account can be set to one of ten currencies: GBP, EUR, USD, JPY, AUD, CAD, CHF, CNY, SEK, and NZD. Transactions within an account use that account's currency. Cross-currency conversion and aggregation aren't supported yet.

Yes. Data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher, and encrypted at rest using AES-256. The underlying cloud infrastructure is independently audited to SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and ISO 27018 (cloud privacy). Authentication uses signed tokens with short expiry windows. You can also enable optional password-based encryption, where data is re-encrypted server-side with a key derived from your password and recovery codes held only by you. AI statement reading runs in the UK (London region) with zero data retention.

No. We never sell your data. We never use your financial information to train AI models. AI statement reading is processed in the UK (London region) by an enterprise AI provider that contractually does not retain inputs or use them for training.

MyCashDash is paid software with a 30-day free trial (no credit card required). After the trial: Personal is £9.99 a month or £99 a year (saves ~17%). Founding Member is £79 a year, limited to the first 100 customers and honoured for life. Household plans bundle multiple Personal licences (£94.50 per licence at 2 people, dropping to £79.83 at 6+). Extra Seats are £2.99 a month for invited collaborators. Viewers (people invited to view a shared account) are always free.

Founding Member is a limited-time offer for the first 100 customers, at £79 a year (annual only). It includes everything in Personal and the price is honoured for life as long as the subscription stays active. Personal is the standard tier at £9.99 a month or £99 a year. Both get the same features.

Once the 100 Founding Member spots are taken, the offer closes. Existing Founding Members keep £79 a year for life as long as their subscription stays active. If a Founding Member cancels and rejoins later, they pay the standard Personal price.

A Household plan is a volume-discounted bundle of full Personal licences. One person pays and assigns licences to other people by email. Each licence is a complete Personal subscription with its own login, Spaces, and full autonomy. Per-licence pricing starts at £94.50 (2 licences, £189 total) and drops to £79.83 each at 6+ licences. Beyond 6, it's £80 per additional licence.

An Extra Seat is admin access to specific Spaces, granted by a paying subscriber to someone who doesn't have their own subscription. It's £2.99 a month or £29 a year, paid by the inviter. If the invitee already has their own Personal, Household, or Founding Member subscription, the seat is free. If an Extra Seat later signs up for Personal themselves, the inviter is refunded for any remaining prepaid period. Extra Seats are for granting access to a specific Space (for example, your accountant). For adding family members, use Household.

No. Viewer access is always free. A Viewer is someone who has been invited as an Owner on one or more accounts. They can see their share of the transaction data, docked into one of their own Spaces. Viewers can't explain transactions, create Spaces, import data, or perform any write operations. Viewer access is never gated by billing.

Your data is retained for 90 days after cancellation. You can still log in and view your dashboard during that period. If you re-subscribe within 90 days, everything resumes as it was. After 90 days the data is deleted.

MyCashDash is built by Jon, the founder of CloudCoding Limited, a UK software company established in 2010. Jon built MyCashDash because he had three problems no app was solving properly: understanding his own money, helping with his parents' finances, and running club committee treasuries.