● You're on the beta

Testing Bunse

Thanks for helping. This page lays out a short, structured way to give Bunse a proper run — roughly three short sittings over a week or so, with sample data so the features you might not have (a mortgage, investments, a 0% card) still get tested.

There's no wrong way to do this. If you'd rather just poke around, do that — and either way, the blunt feedback is the useful feedback.

What's changed

22 September 2026
  • Business tracking now remembers a merchant — once you've tracked a recurring cost (via Suggestions) or assigned one during import, the next statement import matches it automatically. Previously the same merchant came back completely unassigned every time.
  • Business statement import, simplified — the import preview is now a plain include/exclude review, matching personal space. Category and item assignment happen afterward, via the same pencil-edit every business transaction already had — so navigating away mid-import no longer loses any assignment work you'd already done.
  • Tax tab won't let a guess into your figures — an unrecognised imported transaction now commits with no category, rather than a plausible-looking default. A clear warning shows while anything's unassigned, that quarter's figures exclude it, and both Export buttons are disabled until everything's assigned — so an incomplete quarter can't be exported without the gap being obvious first.
  • Business Transactions — unassigned transactions now show in their own panel above the rest, and each row shows the linked item's name (matching personal space) instead of just its category.
  • Insights (Business) — All/Trend toggle (new) — Categories, Customers and Suppliers now default to a straight total for the whole scope (or a custom Date Range you can set), each with its own total shown — so a customer or category whose only activity falls outside the old current-month-vs-average window no longer disappears entirely. Trend keeps today's existing behaviour, unchanged.
21 September 2026
  • VAT rates for Business tracking (new) — assign a VAT rate to each income and expense category, defaulted from HMRC's guidance for that category, so a VAT-registered business gets accurate net figures on the Tax tab and PDF export. A “VAT: 20%” pill now shows under each category, and the PDF export gained an Appendix listing every category's rate.
  • Export, tidied up — Export CSV and Export PDF are now two separate buttons, each opening its own picker with its own description, instead of one combined list.
  • Business tracking has a real way in now — an “Ignite” entry point in Settings, on the Mortgage tab's Advanced Projections, and on Insights' category filter, replacing the old settings-only toggle for anyone not yet unlocked.
  • Fixed — Reset all data could leave imported transactions showing on screen until you restarted the app (the underlying data was actually cleared, the screen just didn't know it yet).
  • Fixed — Mortgage Payment History no longer shows before you've actually logged a Mortgage Product; it could previously appear from just a start date and debt figure.
  • Fixed — a few empty screens (Investments, and Loans/Credit Cards with nothing added yet) were missing their “Add” button, and a “+ Add” button inside an empty screen briefly showed its icon the wrong colour and slightly out of line. Both fixed.
  • Subscriptions — a Remove option (new) — un-track a subscription properly: it goes back to being a Suggestion rather than just vanishing.
  • Two new bell reminders (Settings → Alerts & reminders to toggle) — imported transactions still waiting to be assigned, and no monthly income set yet.
  • Overview — Budget Health, Savings and Investments each show a clear “Add” button instead of a blank £0 when that section genuinely has nothing in it yet.
Show all updates
17–20 September 2026
  • Business tracking (new, Ignite) — a separate Personal/Business switcher with its own Income/Expense tracking, built around how a business actually works rather than the personal budget model: variable income, categories aligned to HMRC's self-employment expense boxes, its own statement import, subscription detection and Insights.
  • Tax tab (new, Ignite) — a Making Tax Digital-ready quarterly summary, exportable to Bunse, QuickBooks, Xero or FreeAgent CSV formats, or as a clean PDF for an accountant.
  • Two new reminders — a fixed-term savings account maturing, and an MTD quarterly deadline approaching.
  • Investments — multi-currency holdings (GBP/GBX/EUR/USD), and a Sell function with realised gains tracked separately from unrealised.
  • Mortgage — Advanced Projections (Ignite) — compare up to two extra overpayment scenarios against your baseline, each with its own rate once the current deal ends.
  • Insights — category filters (Ignite), and your 3/6/12/All months preference is now remembered between visits instead of resetting.
16 September 2026
  • Pensions (new) — track workplace pensions and SIPPs as pots, with employer contributions logged separately from your own so that figure — normally invisible outside a payslip — actually accumulates somewhere you can see it. Includes a Retirement Readiness checkpoint against your age and salary (a rough checkpoint against today's numbers, not advice), and a spot for your State Pension forecast.
  • Net worth — customisable composition (new) — a settings icon next to "Your net worth" lets you choose whether Savings, Investments and Pensions each count toward the headline figure (Debt is always deducted). A category you exclude still shows its real number everywhere else — just with a note that it's not counted in net worth, rather than looking like missing data.
  • Light Mode (new) — Settings → Appearance now offers a light theme alongside the original dark one, switchable any time.
  • Income History (new) — income is now kept as a dated monthly log instead of a single flat figure, backfilled automatically as you use the app. Edit your income and Bunse prompts you to review recent months too, in case the change actually took effect earlier than today.
  • Income vs Expense (new) — a new chart on Insights > Overview shows logged income against real spend, month by month.
  • Bill price-rise alerts, widened — the price-change alert that used to catch only Subscriptions now also covers Rent, Council Tax, Utilities, Gym and Insurance, so a broadband or energy renewal landing higher than last time gets flagged the same way.
  • Polish — panel titles are now consistently lavender across every tab (previously only Insights), and "Where it's held" on Overview gained the same £/% toggle already on "Where it's going".
15 September 2026
  • Ask Bunse (new) — a quick way to ask about your own numbers without digging through tabs. Tap Ask Bunse, pick a question like “How much did I spend on Groceries last month?”, fill in the blanks, and get an instant answer worked out from your own data — no chat, no AI service, no network call, entirely on-device like everything else in Bunse. Pin the questions you ask often for one-tap access next time.
  • Insights — date range filters — the Insights tab (added 13 September) now lets you switch between 3, 6 or 12 months, or All time, instead of always showing everything.
  • Possible merchant merges (new) — Suggestions now proactively spots merchants that got fragmented into several oddly-named entries during import (a long order reference, a masked card number) and offers to merge them into one, with every underlying description and transaction shown so you can check before confirming. A Strict/Loose toggle controls how aggressively similar descriptions get grouped.
  • Import accuracy fixes — a bank export that appends the transaction amount straight onto the description (e.g. )))-6.95) no longer fragments one merchant into dozens of “different” ones. Merging a merchant — via the new feature above, or via Group sort’s “Assign All” — is now correctly remembered for future imports, closing a gap where only the single-merchant Assign button did this. Also fixed: a cash withdrawal whose description happens to mention a shop name (common on high-street ATMs) could be silently matched as a purchase from that shop instead of classified as cash; and a related timing bug meant a Group “Assign All” could show as successful without actually saving. Both confirmed fixed against real examples.
  • Nudge before you assign — after an import, if any of the new transactions look like a merchant split across several near-duplicate names, Bunse now points you at Suggestions to merge them first, before you start assigning the fragments one by one.
14 September 2026
  • Discretionary spend tracking (new) — clothing, eating out, hobbies, hotels and six other "wants" categories that used to disappear into a generic Other bucket now get tracked separately from your budget, with their own Insights tab. Once a category's spend becomes consistent enough to plan for, Bunse now proactively suggests turning it into a real budget line, with a suggested monthly amount worked out from your own history.
  • Custom category groups (new) — on Insights > Categories, combine any mix of budgeted categories and discretionary types into one named, trended group (e.g. "Kids" = Child Maintenance + Days Out). Insights-only — your budget and "Where it's going" are unaffected.
  • Suggestions (new) — replaces the old "looks like a subscription" list on the Subscriptions tab. Every regular payment Bunse spots in your imports now gets a neutral choice: track it as a Subscription, tag it as BNPL, mark it as a Transfer, or Dismiss it. This also fixes a real bug where a recurring standing order to your own savings could get wrongly suggested as a subscription with no way to correct it.
  • BNPL tracking (new) — Klarna, Clearpay, PayPal Pay-in-3 and similar repayments (any provider, no fixed list) can now be tagged as BNPL from Suggestions. This tracks how you paid, separately from what you bought — the purchase itself still counts as normal budget/discretionary spend. A trend only appears on Overview and Insights once BNPL has become a real pattern (three separate purchases within six months), so it won't clutter Insights for an occasional user.
  • Budget > Transactions — batch assign now keeps a Pinned section (Groceries and Transport pinned by default) alongside your 6 most recently used categories, so you're not stuck re-opening the full dropdown for every transaction. The unmatched list now shows 20 merchants by default instead of 8, and a few mobile display issues (a dropdown overflowing its card, the assign panel sitting under the status bar) are fixed.
  • Accuracy fix — regular-payment detection (used by both Subscriptions and the new Suggestions tab) now checks that payments land on a consistent date, not just a consistent interval. Previously, a same-amount purchase on scattered dates — a recurring meal deal at the same grocery store, say — could get mistaken for a subscription just because the gaps between purchases happened to average out close to a month.
13 September 2026
  • Insights (new) — a trends dashboard under a new Insights tab. See spend over time, how each budget category compares to its own average, and the same for individual merchants — each with its own drill-down chart. Needs at least 3 months of imported data to show anything, so it won't appear as "empty" noise before then.
  • Merchant mapping (new) — if a merchant like Amazon or Google shows up as several different, oddly-named entries (because each transaction embeds its own order reference), you can now merge them into one proper name. This also fixes category auto-suggestion for the same merchant going forward.
  • Mortgage — fixed a date-calculation bug that could shift mortgage term-end dates and repayment figures by up to a month for anyone testing during British Summer Time. Also fixed the "Rate Change" slider showing a false change at 0%, and the debt-over-time chart now labels real calendar years instead of an ambiguous "0, 1, 2..." and correctly respects a future Mortgage Start Date when forecasting a purchase you haven't made yet.
  • Mortgage Payment History — restructured to show one period per rate deal (like your cards and savings accounts already do), with Regular Payment and Overpayment shown separately per month, a combined total per row, and a new Monthly Payment figure on each product so you're not stuck waiting for a product to become "active" to see what it costs.
  • Budget — the Planned and Transactions tabs now both show your Actual spend for the selected month, not just the fixed Planned figure.
12 September 2026
  • Budget Import — improvements to matching credit card payments and savings top-ups.
  • Budget Items — a spend drill-down.

Before you start

  • Open bunse.app in the browser you'll keep using — on a phone or a computer, whichever suits. Bunse has no account; your data lives in that one browser.
  • Don't clear your site data for bunse.app mid-test, or you'll lose what you've entered. If you'd be sad to lose it, use Settings → Export now and then.
  • Ronnie has sent you a free Alpha Vantage key — paste it into Settings if you want live investment prices. Skip it otherwise; the sample data has a holding with prices already in.
On iPhone or iPad? Read this one — it's already cost one tester their data. Safari can quietly clear a website's stored data after it's gone unused for a while, and because Bunse keeps everything only on your device, that data doesn't exist anywhere else to recover it from. Two things that genuinely help: add Bunse to your Home Screen instead of using it from a browser tab or bookmark (Share → Add to Home Screen — Apple treats that as longer-lived storage), and get in the habit of Settings → Export every session or two regardless of which device you're on. If it happens anyway, it isn't something we can bring back from our end.
It really is all on your device. No server, no sign-in. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to — fetching a share price, or the feedback button, which opens your own email app.

Get the sample data

These are made-up but realistic. They let you test import, subscription tracking, the mortgage tools and the 0% alerts without needing any of that yourself.

.json sample-ledger.json Settings → Import. A part-built household: a mortgage, a car loan, a 0% credit card, an investment, and six months of tidy spending. Your income, expense amounts, savings accounts and cards are left blank for you to add. .csv sample-statement-01.csv Budget → Transactions → Import. A pretend current-account statement. Import this one in session 1. .csv sample-statement-02.csv The following month. Import this one in session 2 — it's how Bunse sees time passing.

The dates in the samples are from earlier in 2026. In Budget → Transactions, use the month picker to see them. Run a business or do self-employed work? There's a separate set of sample data for that further down.

A rough plan

Three sittings, a few days apart. Adjust to suit — the point is to come back to it more than once, since that's how Bunse is meant to be used.

Session 1 — Set up

~25 min
  • Import sample-ledger.json (Settings → Import).
  • Add your own monthly income on the Budget tab — the flame and Budget Health only work once it's in (you'll see a prompt on Overview until you do).
  • Fill in amounts for a few of the expense lines (Rent or Mortgage, Groceries, Utilities…). Add any that are missing.
  • Import sample-statement-01.csv and sort the transactions it couldn't match — try Batch assign and the Group view.
  • Go to Savings, add one real account, and tag one as "Emergency Fund".
  • Go to Loans/Credit → Credit Cards and add one (real, or make one up).
  • Look at the flame and your net worth on the Overview. Tap the flame's ⓘ to see how it's scored.

Session 2 — Come back

~20 min, a few days later
  • Import sample-statement-02.csv.
  • Open Budget → Subscriptions. Netflix should already be tracked; something else should be suggested — add it. Worth also trying Remove on a tracked subscription afterwards, to see it land back in Suggestions.
  • Set a goal on one of your savings accounts and watch its little flame.
  • Open Mortgage → Repayment, enter an overpayment amount, and see the interest saved and years cleared.
  • Open Loans/Credit — the sample card's 0% window is about to end. Check the warning.
  • Tap the bell (top of the screen) to see everything Bunse is flagging.

Session 3 — Wrap up

~15 min
  • Settings → Export, then Import the file you just saved — check nothing changed.
  • Poke at anything you haven't touched — Ask Bunse (top bar) and Insights are worth a look if you haven't opened them yet.
  • Fill in the feedback form — about 5 minutes.
Open the feedback form →

Testing Ignite Business

If you run a business, freelance, or do any self-employed or side-income work, this part is worth doing too — it's a newer, separate part of Bunse (Business Space, part of the paid Ignite tier) for keeping that money apart from your personal budget entirely. If none of that applies to you, skip this section — everything above stands on its own.

Early preview, passcode-gated. Business Space hasn't fully launched yet, so it's locked behind a testing passcode: Settings → Ignite Preview → Enter passcode. Message Ronnie if you weren't sent one.

Get the business sample data

Three sets, each a different trade — pick whichever is closest to what you actually do (or the one you find funniest). The .json file is the whole test on its own — three months of income and expenses already logged, so a recurring cost should show up under Suggestions the moment you import it. The .csv is optional, for anyone who also wants to try the statement-import flow — it's a bonus month, not a required step.

🍳 Window cleaning

.json sample-business-ledger-window-cleaning.json Settings → Import. A sole-trader window cleaning round — three months of income and expenses already logged. .csv sample-business-statement-window-cleaning.csv Optional. Business space → Transactions → Import. A further month's statement, to try the import flow.

✂️ Mobile hairdressing

.json sample-business-ledger-hairdresser.json Settings → Import. A mobile hairdresser's client round — three months of income and expenses already logged. .csv sample-business-statement-hairdresser.csv Optional. Business space → Transactions → Import. A further month's statement, to try the import flow.

✨ Beauty & aesthetics studio

.json sample-business-ledger-beauty-studio.json Settings → Import. A home-studio beauty/aesthetics sole trader — facials, treatments and injectables — three months already logged. .csv sample-business-statement-beauty-studio.csv Optional. Business space → Transactions → Import. A further month's statement, to try the import flow.

What to do

~15 min, one sitting
  • Settings → Ignite Preview → enter the passcode to unlock Ignite.
  • Settings → Business tracking → turn it on and pick Sole trader.
  • Import whichever sample-business-ledger-….json you picked above (Settings → Import).
  • Switch to Business space (the icon next to the bell) and look at Income/Expense — deliberately a different layout from the personal Budget tab, built for variable income rather than a fixed monthly plan.
  • Check Suggestions straight away — a recurring cost (a booking-software subscription, and for the beauty studio set, the studio rent too) should already be flagged, worked out from the three months of history the ledger just brought in. Track whichever ones look right.
  • Optional: from the Transactions tab, import the matching sample-business-statement-….csv to try the statement-import flow itself — it's a further month for the same recurring items, so Suggestions should keep recognising them rather than anything changing.
  • Open the Tax tab, look at the quarterly summary, and try a couple of the export formats — including the PDF.
  • Switch back to Personal space and check nothing there changed — the two are meant to stay completely separate.

This is newer and rougher than the rest of Bunse — if something looks unfinished, unclear, or just plain wrong, that's exactly the kind of thing worth reporting.

Telling us things

Two ways, use whichever fits:

  • Hit a bug or something odd? Settings → Send feedback in the app. It opens an email to hello@bunse.uk pre-filled with what you write plus your app version and browser — never your figures. Add a screenshot if you can.
  • General thoughts, and the wrap-up: the feedback form. Fill it in once mid-way if you like, and once at the end.
Open the feedback form →

Every "this confused me" is worth reporting. If ten testers hit the same wall, that's the wall to fix first.

Known limitations

  • Web only, and tied to one browser — no cloud sync yet, so no picking it up on another device.
  • iPhone/iPad storage isn't guaranteed to stick around — see the warning near the top. Add to Home Screen and export often.
  • Bunse tracks what you own and owe, not your home's value — so with a mortgage, "net worth" can read negative. That's expected.
  • Business Space (Ignite) is an early, passcode-gated preview — expect it to be the roughest part of the app right now.
  • Live investment prices need that free key. End-of-day only on the free tier.
  • It's a beta. Expect the odd rough edge. Exporting a backup before you go poking is always safe.

That's it. Thanks again.

Open Bunse