Quick Start Guide
Everything in Bunse, explained in one page. Thorough enough to cover every section, quick enough to actually read before you dive in.
Getting set up
There's nothing to set up, really — that's the point. No account, no sign-in, no bank connection to authorise. Open the app and start entering what you own and owe.
Check Settings for your currency, a Dark/Light appearance toggle, and if you'd like live investment prices, a free Alpha Vantage API key — there's a short walkthrough right there in the app.
Your net worth & the flame
The Overview tab shows your net worth — everything you own, minus everything you owe, across every section of the app — along with a flame that scores three things you actually control:
- Savings rate — how much of your income you're setting aside
- Credit utilisation — how much of your available credit you're using
- Emergency fund — how many months of expenses you've got covered
Market movements deliberately don't count — a bad week for your portfolio isn't something you did, so it shouldn't dent your score.
No data yet — never reads as a failure, just a starting point.
Getting started, or one metric holding the rest back.
Most things where they should be, one still to fix.
Saving 20%+, utilisation under 30%, three months covered.
Budget
Set your income and add expense lines under categories like Rent, Groceries, or Subscriptions. This is your planned spending — what you expect to spend, not a record of what actually happened.
Once you've imported real transactions (see below), each line also shows actual spend alongside the planned figure, so you can see exactly where reality and plan diverge — without the two ever being confused for each other.
Your income is kept as a dated history, not just a single number — so a month you check back on later compares against what you actually earned then, not whatever figure is entered today. Tap Show History next to your income to view or correct any month.
Importing transactions
This is the feature worth spending the most time with, so a proper walkthrough:
- In Budget → Transactions, tap Import transactions.
- Export a statement from your bank as CSV, QIF, or OFX. If it's your first import, ask for 12 months if your bank allows it — more history means Bunse can spot patterns immediately rather than waiting weeks to see them.
- Select the file. It's read entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded anywhere.
- Review the preview. Cash withdrawals and one-off transfers are detected automatically and kept separate from your budget spend, since they're not purchases in the usual sense.
- Confirm the import. Bunse matches transactions to your budget lines automatically wherever it can.
Sorting out what's left unmatched
Anything Bunse can't confidently match shows up in a list, biggest amounts first. A few ways to clear it quickly:
Pick one budget line as a target, then tap through several merchants in a row — useful when a lot of what's left is genuinely miscellaneous.
Switch to Group sort to see repeated merchants — like a dozen visits to the same shop — collapsed into one row you can assign all at once.
Once you assign a merchant to a line, Bunse remembers it — the same merchant in future imports matches automatically.
Savings
Add accounts by type — everyday, Cash ISA, LISA, fixed-term, and so on — with an interest rate if you'd like it tracked. Set a goal on any account and watch its own small flame fill in as you get closer.
You can also import transactions directly into a savings account, the same way as a current account — useful for spotting transfers between your own accounts, which get flagged automatically rather than thrown into your spending.
Investments
Log holdings and top-ups as you actually make them — enter the amount and the number of units from your broker's confirmation, and Bunse works out the price paid rather than the other way round.
For live prices, add a free Alpha Vantage key in Settings. UK-listed holdings need the .LON suffix — VWRP.LON, not VWRP — or you'll silently get the price of an unrelated US-listed company instead.
Alpha Vantage API instructions
Getting a free API key
- Go to
alphavantage.co/support/#api-key - Fill in the short form — an email address is all it needs, no card details.
- Your key appears on screen straight away. Copy it.
- Paste it into the box above and click away from the field — you'll see "Saved".
- Open the Investments tab and press Refresh prices.
Getting your tickers right
London-listed holdings need the .LON suffix. Without it, a bare symbol can match a completely unrelated US-listed company and quietly return the wrong price.
What the free tier gives you
- 25 requests a day, 5 a minute. Each holding uses one request per refresh, so with four holdings that's six refreshes a day.
- End-of-day prices only. Free keys return the last closing price, not live intraday movement — so figures won't match your broker's live view during market hours. Each holding shows the date its price is from.
Your key is stored only on this device and is sent directly to Alpha Vantage — it never passes through our servers.
Pensions
Add each pot you have — workplace DC, SIPP, defined benefit — with its current balance, then log contributions as you make them or see them land.
Logged separately from your own — the one figure that's normally invisible outside a payslip. Watching it accumulate is the point: it's money you'd otherwise never see added up anywhere.
Enter your age and salary and Bunse checks your pension total against a commonly-cited UK rule of thumb for pot size by age. A rough checkpoint against today's numbers, not a projection — and not advice.
There's also a spot for your State Pension forecast and age — self-reported, since there's no way for Bunse to fetch it for you. Check your own free forecast at gov.uk/check-state-pension.
Loans & credit cards
Loans — enter the amount, term, and rate, and Bunse works out the monthly payment and full amortisation schedule, with a payment history you can edit as you go.
Credit cards — track balance transfers, money transfers, and purchases separately, each with its own rate and interest-free deadline. Bunse shows what's still at 0%, what's started accruing, and warns you before a promotional window closes.
Mortgage
Two sides to this tab:
Deposit — set a target purchase price and deposit goal, and see your progress, shortfall, and an estimate of how many months you've got left at your current savings rate.
Repayment — track your actual mortgage products and payment history, and model what an overpayment would do: interest saved, years cleared early, shown as a real comparison rather than a rough guess.
Just want a quick answer before you dive in? Try the free standalone overpayment calculator — same calculation, no app needed.
Insights
A trends dashboard built from your imported transactions, not your Planned figures — needs at least 3 months of data before it shows anything, so it won't appear half-empty before then.
See any budget category, or any individual merchant, plotted over time against its own average — each with its own drill-down into the real transactions behind it. Group any mix of categories and discretionary types into a custom, named trend of your own (e.g. "Kids").
Clothing, eating out, hobbies and other "wants" that would otherwise disappear into a generic Other bucket, tracked separately from your budget. Once one becomes consistent enough to plan for, Bunse suggests turning it into a real budget line — with the monthly amount worked out from your own history.
Your logged income against real spend, side by side as a bar chart for each month — compared against what your income actually was at the time (see Income History above), not today's figure.
Use the date range control (3, 6, 12 months, or All) to change what every chart on the tab is looking at.
Subscriptions
Any budget line typed Subscriptions is automatically enriched from your transaction history — Bunse works out the billing cadence, the next renewal date, and flags it if the price has changed. Set a free trial end date on any subscription and you'll get a heads-up before it converts to a paid charge.
The same price-rise detection also covers ordinary bills — Rent, Council Tax, Utilities, Gym and Insurance — so a broadband or energy renewal landing higher than last time gets flagged the same way, not just a subscription.
Suggestions
Where Bunse surfaces things worth a decision, without making it for you:
Bunse scans your imports for recurring patterns you haven't tagged yet, and offers a neutral choice for each: track it as a Subscription, tag it as BNPL, mark it as a Transfer, or dismiss it if it's none of those.
Klarna, Clearpay, PayPal Pay-in-3 and similar — any provider, no fixed list. This tracks how you paid, separately from what you bought; the purchase itself still counts as normal spend. A trend only appears once it's a real pattern (three purchases within six months), so it won't clutter things for an occasional user.
This is also where merchant merges live — see Importing transactions above.
Ask Bunse
A quick way to ask about your own numbers without digging through tabs. Tap Ask Bunse at the top of the app, pick a question — "How much did I spend on Groceries last month?", "What was my biggest merchant this month?" — fill in any blanks, and get an instant answer.
Keeping your data safe
Because everything lives only on your device, there's no cloud copy to fall back on if you lose your phone, switch devices, or uninstall the app. Export regularly.
Treat this the way you'd treat backing up any other important file. A minute now is worth far more than an afternoon of re-entering everything later.
This is a beta
You're testing early software. Expect the occasional rough edge — a display quirk, a feature that behaves oddly on your specific device. None of it should ever cost you real data; if something looks wrong, exporting a backup before poking further is always a safe first move.
Found something broken, confusing, or just worth mentioning? Tell us — hello@bunse.uk. Beta feedback is genuinely what shapes what gets fixed and built next.
That's everything. Back to actually using it.
Open Bunse