Common questions

The questions that are too small for a page of their own and too common to leave out.

Is my data safe?

Your bank credentials are never given to SageFin — you type them into your data provider's own window, and what we get back is permission to read, not the means to sign in as you. Connection tokens are encrypted where they are stored.

Between households, nothing is shared. What SageFin does with what it finds sets out exactly what leaves and what does not, and the privacy policy is the complete version.

Can I add an account SageFin cannot connect to?

Yes, and it is a real account rather than a note. A manual account counts in your net worth, budgets and reports; it just does not update itself. Use it for cash, a car, a house, a crypto wallet, or a bank that refuses to connect.

Why can I not see my partner's spending?

If you can see each other's accounts, you are in the same household. If you cannot, you are not — money in SageFin belongs to a household rather than a person, and everyone in one sees all of it.

Joining is an owner adding you, and it needs you to have signed in to SageFin at least once first. Sharing a household covers the whole of it.

Why is a transaction in the wrong category?

Because something guessed, and guesses are sometimes wrong. Change it on the transaction, and if it is a merchant you will see again, write a rule so it never comes back — the details.

Why is my balance different from my bank's?

Almost always timing: you are looking at two different moments, or a pending charge has not settled. Occasionally something else, and SageFin will tell you which — when a balance disagrees with your bank.

Can I use dark mode?

Yes, and it follows your device until you say otherwise.

On the web it is Settings → Display, under Mode: System, Light or Dark. The menu behind your name at the bottom of the sidebar has a quick Dark mode / Light mode switch too. On the phone it is Settings → Display in the phone app, under Appearance.

Below Mode is Theme, which picks the colors: Green is soft green by day and green-slate by night, and Neutral is warm off-white by day and charcoal by night. Each tile shows both, so you can see what you will get at night without switching. With System, the mode follows your device and the theme decides what each half looks like.

Both choices are per device, on purpose. Picking dark on your phone does not turn your laptop dark, because where you are reading from is a property of the screen you are holding rather than something your household agreed on.

Can I hide pages I don't use?

Yes. If you never look at Investments or Forecasting, take them out of the sidebar and put the rest in the order you use them.

Edit sidebar is in three places: at the foot of the sidebar while your pointer is over it, in Settings → Display under Sidebar, and in search (⌘K). The sidebar itself becomes the editor. Drag a row, or use the arrow keys on its handle, to move it; the eye toggle moves a page into Hidden, and back. Every change saves as you make it, and Reset to default puts everything back.

Hiding takes a page out of the sidebar and nothing else. Nothing is switched off and nothing is deleted: its data keeps updating, search still finds it, and a link to it still opens it. Two rows are fixed — Dashboard always comes first, and If something happens can be moved but not hidden, so anyone who needs it can find it.

Investments starts out hidden if nothing is invested. Until your household has a brokerage or retirement account the page has nothing to show, so it sits under Hidden instead of in the sidebar, and the first investment account brings it back on its own. To keep it there anyway, show it in Edit sidebar: once you have arranged your sidebar, what you chose stays either way.

Your layout follows you. It is saved to your account, so any computer you sign in on shows the same sidebar, while another member of your household keeps their own. The theme is the exception: it belongs to each browser. On a narrow window the sidebar becomes a bar along the bottom, which leaves out the pages you hid; widen the window to edit it.

Favorites add a report to the sidebar. Open a report and choose Add to sidebar in its toolbar, and it appears under Favorites, below the pages. Up to seven fit. This is not the same as Pin, beside it: a pinned report is a tab on the Reports page for everyone in your household, while a favorite is yours alone and sits in your sidebar on every page. Remove one by pointing at it and choosing ×, or in Edit sidebar, where favorites can also be reordered. They come first in search (⌘K) too, and on a narrow window, where the bar along the bottom leaves them out, search is where to find them. Like the layout, favorites are saved to your account and follow you to any computer.

The phone has its own version: Settings → Display → Edit navigation in the phone app chooses which pages sit on the tab bar, and the rest live in the menu. You can hide a page there too: tap the eye on its row, or drag it under Hidden. A hidden page leaves both the tab bar and the menu, and a notification or one of Sage's answers that points at it still opens it. Dashboard stays, and so does at least one other tab. If something happens can be moved up or down the menu and cannot be hidden or made a tab, so it is always where somebody can find it. Below the pages, the same screen lists the menu's Your household rows (Members, Receipts, Institutions, Categories, Preferences, Rules and Merchants), each with an eye of its own: hide the ones you never open and the menu gets shorter. They stay in their fixed order, and all but Receipts are in Settings as well, so hiding one only takes it out of the menu. Reset to default at the bottom of that screen undoes it all. The phone's arrangement is saved on that phone and is separate from the web's: hiding a page in one does not hide it in the other. The one thing they share is the starting point: Investments starts out hidden on the phone too until your household has an investment account, and comes back on its own with the first one, unless you have arranged the phone's navigation yourself, in which case what you chose stays. Your favorites are in that menu too, at the top under Favorites. They are the same list as on the web, so one added in either place shows in both. On the phone, open a report and choose Add to menu from its ··· menu to add it, or Remove from menu to take it out; Edit navigation lists your favorites as well, where you can drag them into order or remove one. Tapping a favorite opens that report.

Does it work on my phone?

There is an iPhone app, and it does most of what the web app does. It is also the only way to connect Apple Card, which is read on the device itself rather than by a provider — Apple Card sync.

Can I get my data out?

All of it, in Settings → Data. Download everything gives you a single zip holding your accounts, transactions, budgets, goals, rules, tags, businesses and receipts — the receipt images included — with a file saying when it was taken.

Your bank and retailer connections are not in it and cannot be: they are held encrypted and tied to one institution's permission, so you reconnect those rather than restoring them.

There are narrower exports on the same screen if a spreadsheet is what you actually want: transactions as CSV, and balances per account.

The iPhone app has all three on the same screen. There the zip is Export everything, and the file goes to the share sheet, from which you can save it to Files or send it wherever you keep things.

In any CSV from SageFin, a name that begins with =, +, - or @ — a merchant, an account, a category — is written with an apostrophe in front, so a spreadsheet shows it as text instead of running it as a formula. Spreadsheets hide the apostrophe; a text editor or another app's importer may show it. SageFin's own import takes it off again, so a file exported here re-imports with every name as it was.

What happens if I delete my account?

You can do it yourself, in Settings → Security, without asking anyone. What happens to shared data depends on whether anybody else is in your household — the three cases, and the privacy policy says what outlives the deletion.

Something is wrong and none of this covers it

Help & Support → Contact Support, from the sidebar. It sends the page you were on and the version you were running, so you do not have to describe either.