Frequently Asked Questions

Bankwiser is a personal finance manager for Europe. It connects to your bank accounts, imports transactions automatically, helps you categorize spending, and supports envelope-style budgeting so you always know how much you can spend in each category.

Yes. You can register and use Bankwiser for free with generous limits on transactions, merchants, and budget categories. Paid plans with higher limits and additional features are planned for the future.

Click Sign Up on the home page and register with your email address and a password, or use Google or Facebook sign-in. You will receive a confirmation email — open it and click the link to activate your account.

Email confirmation verifies that you own the address and helps us send important notifications — such as bank sync alerts, budget reminders, and account security messages — to the right inbox.

Follow these steps to get the most out of Bankwiser:

1. Confirm your email — click the link in the message we send you.
2. Connect a bank — go to Accounts and link your European bank via secure open banking.
3. Wait for the first sync — transactions and balances import automatically in the background.
4. Review transactions — check categories and fix any that need attention.
5. Set up your budget — enable categories for budgeting and assign amounts on the Budget page.
6. Explore your dashboard — visit Overview for an overview and Reports for deeper analysis.

Bankwiser is available in English, Estonian (eesti), and Russian (русский). Use the language selector in the navigation bar to switch at any time.

Go to Accounts and click to add a bank. You will be redirected to your bank's secure login page through GoCardless open banking — Bankwiser never sees or stores your bank credentials. After you authorize access, your accounts appear and the first sync starts automatically.

Bankwiser supports more than 2,000 European banks through GoCardless Bank Account Data. Coverage includes most banks in the EU and EEA. When you add an account, you can search for your institution by name or country.

Linked accounts sync automatically about every six hours when the connection is healthy. You can also trigger a manual sync at any time from the Accounts page. After a successful import, new transactions and updated balances appear in your transaction list.

Bank connections expire periodically for security — typically every 90 days, depending on your bank. When reconnection is needed, Bankwiser shows a badge on the affected account and sends you an email reminder. Go to Accounts, click Reconnect, and complete the authorization flow at your bank to resume automatic syncing.

When you assign a category to a transaction, Bankwiser learns from the merchant name, description, and amount. Future matching transactions are categorized automatically in the background. You can also define keywords on categories to improve matching for specific payees.

Yes. Create categories with your own names and colors, organized in a hierarchy of parent and subcategories. For expense categories, turn on Include in budget to add them to your envelope budget on the Budget page. Income categories are tracked separately and do not count toward expense envelopes.

Open the Transactions page, click a row to edit it inline, or use bulk actions to update several at once. You can change the category, add or remove tags, and assign or correct the merchant (payee). Changes you make also improve future automatic categorization.

Merchants (payees) are the businesses or people you pay. Bankwiser groups transactions by merchant for reports and budgeting insights. If the same payee appears under different names — for example, "AMZN" and "Amazon" — you can merge them into one merchant so all related transactions stay together. You can unmerge later if needed.

Envelope budgeting is a method where you allocate money into virtual envelopes — one per spending category. You only spend from what is in each envelope. Bankwiser maps envelopes to your budget categories, so you always see how much is left for groceries, rent, entertainment, and everything else.

In zero-sum budgeting, every euro of income is assigned a purpose before you spend it. At the start of each month, distribute your expected income across categories until Available to Budget reaches zero — meaning every euro has a job. This prevents accidental overspending and makes trade-offs visible.

Each budget category row shows three key numbers:

• Assigned (Budgeted) — how much you planned to spend in this category this month.
• Activity — how much you have actually spent (or received, for income categories).
• Available — what is left: Assigned minus Activity, plus any rollover from last month.

When Available goes negative, you have overspent that category.

1. Go to Categories and enable Include in budget for the expense categories you want to track.
2. Open Budget and select the current month.
3. Enter an Assigned amount for each category based on your expected spending.
4. Check Available to Budget at the top — adjust assignments until it reaches zero.
5. As transactions sync, Activity fills in automatically and Available updates in real time.

If Activity exceeds Assigned in a category, Available becomes negative — you have overspent. To fix it, move money from another category (reduce its Assigned amount and increase the overspent category), or accept the deficit and carry it forward. The monthly summary highlights overspent and overfunded categories.

Rollover carries unused funds from one month to the next. If you budgeted €200 for groceries but only spent €150, the remaining €50 rolls into next month's Available for that category. Enable rollover per category when you want savings to accumulate — for example, for annual subscriptions or irregular bills.

Create dedicated categories for annual or occasional costs — insurance, car maintenance, holidays — and divide the yearly amount by twelve. Assign that monthly portion each month so the money builds up in the envelope. When the bill arrives, the funds are already waiting.

Month-ahead budgeting: Once you are comfortable, try budgeting with last month's income instead of this month's. Hold current income until next month — this creates a buffer and removes paycheck-timing stress.

Pay yourself first: Assign savings, investments, and debt payments before discretionary categories. Fund your priorities first, then allocate what remains to wants.

The Overview gives you a quick financial snapshot: total income and expenses for the selected period, net worth, cashflow chart, spending by category, top expenses, and top merchants. It also highlights uncategorized transactions that need your attention.

On the Reports page you can generate:

• Category Breakdown — pie chart of spending by category with drill-down.
• Category Summary — tabular view with totals and percentages.
• Merchant Summary — spending grouped by payee.
• Monthly Turnover — income vs expenses over time, with savings trend.
• Balance Dynamics — account balance changes across a date range.

All reports support filters by date range, account, category, merchant, and tags.

Yes. Both the Budget page and Reports page include an Export as PDF button. PDF exports include your selected filters, charts (where available), and tabular data — useful for printing or sharing with a partner or accountant.

The free plan includes:

• 1 bank connection (one linked institution via open banking)
• Unlimited categories
• Up to 200 visible transactions in your account
• Up to 20 merchants
• Up to 20 budget categories with assigned amounts
• Up to 15 coach messages per month

Keyword-based categorization, tagging, calendar view, and PDF export are included. Check your current usage under Settings → Membership.

Pro unlocks everything in Free, plus:

• Unlimited bank connections
• Unlimited visible transactions
• Unlimited merchants and budget categories
• AI-powered categorization (up to 50 AI rules)
• Unlimited AI financial coach messages

Pricing is 3.99€/month or 39€/year. Upgrade or cancel anytime under Membership.

Go to Email to control which emails you receive. You can add a secondary email address and toggle advice emails — including financial tips, onboarding guidance, monthly spending summaries, and important alerts such as sync failures and budget warnings.

Use the contact form on the Contact section of our home page, or email us directly at info@bankwiser.eu. We aim to respond as quickly as possible.

Go to Settings → Profile, scroll to the account deletion section, and follow the confirmation steps. This permanently removes your account and all associated data. This action cannot be undone.