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WindShield is a personal budgeting app for iPhone. You log your spending as it happens, and the app builds a clear picture of your finances over time: including trends, forecasts, and savings progress.
Everything stays on your device. There's no account to create, no email sign-up, and no data sent to any server. Your finances stay private.
When you first open WindShield, you'll be guided through a short setup:
You can skip any step and come back to it later from Settings.
If you've used WindShield before, you can import a backup (.json file) at the start of onboarding to restore all your data.
WindShield can import two types of files:
Backup file (.json): A full WindShield backup restores all transactions, categories, income, bills, and settings. Use this if you're migrating from another device or restoring after reinstalling.
Transaction CSV (.csv): Import a CSV spreadsheet of transactions to pre-fill your history. The CSV should have columns for date, amount, vendor, and category at minimum.
To import: go to Settings → Import Transactions and select your file.
The top of the Home screen shows three figures:
Total balance: Your income minus all spending and bills for the current pay period. This tells you how much you theoretically have left.
Income: Your take-home pay for this period.
Spent: What you've logged as outgoing in this period.
The period resets at each payday. Set your income and payday in Settings → Income & Bills.
The home screen shows a countdown to your next payday. If you've set up Partner Sharing and entered your partner's payday, it will count down to whichever payday: yours or your partner's: comes first.
To update your payday, go to Settings → Income & Bills.
Quick Log shows your most frequently logged items from the last 30 days. Tap any item to instantly create a new transaction pre-filled with that item's details.
It appears automatically once you've built up some transaction history. There's nothing to configure - WindShield learns from your habits.
The spending chart at the bottom of the Home screen shows your spending breakdown for the last 30 days, grouped by category. Toggle Include Bills to add or remove recurring bills from the chart.
Any spending limits you've set appear as progress bars on the home screen. The bar fills as you spend toward that limit. A red indicator shows when you're over budget.
To add or manage limits, tap Set limit or go to Analytics → Universe and tap a bubble.
Tap the Log tab at the bottom. Make sure the direction is set to Out, then:
You can type in the Total directly if you don't need to itemise: just leave the items empty and enter the amount at the bottom.
In the Log tab, switch the direction to In. Enter the amount, an optional source (e.g. Employer, Client, Refund), and the date. Tap Save.
Income transactions appear in your History and are included in the balance calculation on the Home screen.
Flags are free-text tags you can attach to any transaction. Examples: Holiday, Work expenses, Birthday. They're useful for filtering in History and grouping transactions that don't fit neatly into a single category.
Type a flag in the Flags field and tap Return to add it. You can add multiple flags per transaction.
To search by flag, go to History and type the flag name in the search bar.
Go to History, find the transaction, and tap it to open the detail view. Tap Edit in the top right to change any field. Tap Delete (usually a red button or swipe-to-delete) to remove it permanently.
In a Joint Budget, you can only edit your own transactions. Your partner's transactions are read-only.
In History, tap Select in the top right. Tap individual transactions to select them. Once you've selected one or more, you can:
This is useful for cleaning up imported data or retroactively tagging a holiday's worth of spending.
The Basket is a running total you can build up while shopping. Add items by scanning barcodes or entering them manually. When you're done, set the vendor and date, then tap Save transaction to log the entire basket as one transaction.
Access the Basket from the Log tab or via the barcode scanner.
Go to Settings → Income & Bills. Tap Set next to Income. Enter your take-home pay amount and select your pay frequency (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, etc.). Then set your next payday date.
WindShield uses this to calculate your available balance and to count down to payday on the Home screen.
In Settings → Income & Bills, tap + in the Bills section. Enter:
Bills appear in the cashflow view on the Income & Bills screen, showing your net income after all bills are deducted.
When a bill is due (or near due), it appears in the Pending section of Income & Bills. Tap it to open the confirmation screen. Verify the amount and date, add an optional note, then tap Confirm & Log. This records the bill as a transaction in your History.
The Income & Bills screen includes a calendar showing all upcoming bill due dates and income dates. Tap any date to see what's scheduled. This gives you a month-level view of your financial obligations.
The History tab shows all transactions grouped by day. Each day shows the total spent that day. Tap any transaction to see its full detail.
Tap Today in the toolbar to jump back to the most recent transactions.
Tap the search bar at the top of History. You can search by:
As you type, WindShield suggests matching vendors, categories, flags, and products. Tap a suggestion to filter by it. The result count shows how many transactions match.
Each month in History shows the total spent for that month (e.g. "£840.50 spent"). This is a quick way to compare spending across months as you scroll back through your history.
The Overview tab gives a summary of your spending for the selected date range. Use the From and To pickers to set any custom date range. Toggle Include bills to include or exclude recurring bills from the totals.
The View by option lets you group spending by category, vendor, product, or flag.
The Universe tab visualises every category (or product) as a bubble. Larger bubbles = more spending. It's the fastest way to see at a glance where most of your money is going.
Toggle the Display option to switch between viewing by Categories or Products.
Setting a limit: Tap any bubble to set a monthly spending limit for that category or product. A limit ring appears around the bubble, filling as you spend toward it.
Limits set in the Universe also appear as progress bars on the Home screen.
The Trends tab shows your spending over time as a line chart. Controls include:
Time granularity: Switch between per day, per week, or per month.
Moving average (SMA): Smooth out spikes to see the underlying trend. Adjust the number of periods with the Smoothing slider.
Forecast: Toggle to show a projected spending line based on your current trend. Tap Show forecast to enable it.
Trend Projection: Below the chart, WindShield uses linear regression to tell you if spending is rising or falling, by how much per month, and what you're projected to spend over the next period.
The Vendors tab ranks your most frequent and highest-spend vendors. Tap any vendor to see a breakdown by category and product, total spent, and transaction count.
This is useful for spotting where your "top vendors" are eating your budget: and whether they match your priorities.
In Analytics → Savings, tap Add goal. Enter a name, choose an icon, set a target amount, and optionally set a target date.
Toggle Simple Goal on if you want WindShield to calculate a weekly savings schedule for you. With a target amount and deadline, it works out exactly how much you need to save each week.
Simple Goals send you a weekly check-in notification. If you're on track, you'll get a congratulatory message. If you've fallen behind, you'll get an updated weekly target to get back on course.
Tap Adjust Goal in the notification to open the goal and update the schedule.
Tap a savings goal and tap Log contribution. Enter the amount and date of the money you've set aside. This updates your progress bar and recalculates the remaining weekly target.
Monthly Forecast: Based on your current spending patterns, WindShield projects your monthly spend, annual spend, and how much you're on track to save this year.
Habit Impact: Shows which spending categories, if reduced by 20%, would free up the most money per month. A practical way to identify where small changes have the biggest effect on your savings.
There are two ways to set a limit:
Enter a monthly amount and save. The limit appears as a progress bar on the Home screen and as a ring around the bubble in Universe.
Go to Home → Spending Limits → Add new limit → Add specific item limit. Enter the item name (e.g. Netflix, Takeaway coffee) and a monthly limit amount. Optionally assign a category for the colour and icon.
WindShield will track all transactions that match this item name and show your progress toward the limit.
On the Home screen, tap the limits section to open the full list. Swipe left on any limit to remove it. Or tap a bubble in Analytics → Universe and tap Remove.
Go to Settings → Abroad to enable the feature. You can also enable it during onboarding. Once on, an Abroad tab appears in the app where you can manage foreign currency transactions.
When logging a transaction, select the Abroad category. A currency picker appears. Select the currency you're spending in (e.g. EUR, USD). WindShield fetches the live exchange rate and converts your amounts to £ automatically.
If there's no live rate available, you can enter the £ amount manually. You can also correct the rate at any time if your bank used a different rate.
1 EUR = £X is shown next to the currency so you always know the rate being used.
In Settings → Abroad, you can add and reorder subcategories (e.g. Food, Transport, Activities) to organise your foreign spending. Swipe to delete a subcategory, drag ≡ to reorder.
Recent abroad spending groups your foreign transactions by trip, so you can see each holiday as its own financial chapter.
When adding items in the Log screen, tap the barcode icon to open the scanner. Point your camera at any product barcode. If the barcode matches a product in your library, it's added instantly with its saved price.
If the barcode is new, you'll be prompted to name the product and set a default price. It's then saved to your Products library for next time.
In the Log screen, tap Attach Receipt. Choose to take a photo or pick one from your library. WindShield reads the receipt and extracts items and prices automatically.
Review the extracted items, make any corrections, then tap Apply to Log. The items are added to your current transaction. The receipt image is attached for your records.
If the scan doesn't pick up all items, you can still add them manually: the receipt image remains attached.
If WindShield can't access your camera, go to iPhone Settings → WindShield → Camera and enable camera access. Without this permission, barcode scanning and receipt capture won't work.
Partner Sharing lets you and one other person share a live view of each other's transactions. Here's how it works:
In Settings → Joint Budget → Partner's Payday, enter your partner's pay schedule. Once set, the home screen countdown will show whichever payday: yours or theirs: is coming first.
In a joint budget, each person's transactions get a coloured left stripe so you can tell them apart at a glance. The colours are set in Settings → Joint Budget → Transaction colours.
If both devices log transactions offline at the same time that look similar (same amount, close date), WindShield may flag them as possible duplicates. These appear in Settings → Sync Conflicts.
For each conflict, you can keep both transactions, keep just one, or discard the other. This prevents accidental double-counting.
Go to Settings → Joint Budget → Remove partner link. This stops syncing. Both devices keep all existing transactions: nothing is deleted. You can invite a new partner at any time.
Go to Settings → Categories and tap +. Give it a name, pick an icon, and choose a colour. Tap Save.
You can also add subcategories to any category: tap a category to expand it, then tap Add subcategory.
Tap any category to edit its name, icon, or colour. Tap Reorder in the top right to drag categories into your preferred order: this affects how they appear when logging.
Open the category and tap Delete category and subcategories. Existing transactions that used this category will retain the category name but it will no longer appear as an active option when logging.
Go to Settings → Products and tap +. Enter a product name and optionally a default price. Save it. You can then tap the product in the list to add a barcode.
You can also create products on the fly: when scanning a barcode that WindShield doesn't recognise, you'll be prompted to name it and it's saved automatically.
Save the product first. Then tap it in your Products list, tap Scan barcode, and point your camera at the barcode. A product can have multiple barcodes (e.g. different sizes of the same item).
You can also enter the barcode number manually if scanning isn't convenient.
When adding items in the Log screen, tap + and search for a product by name, or scan its barcode. Saved products populate with their default price automatically. You can always override the price for a specific transaction.
WindShield offers six types of notifications, each independently toggleable:
Go to Settings → Notifications and toggle each type on or off. If you've blocked notifications at the system level, there will be a prompt to open Settings and re-enable them.
Go to Settings → Export Data. Choose a date range and a format:
Tap Export and use the iOS Share sheet to save or send the file.
Go to Settings → Backup & Restore and tap Back up now. WindShield saves a full snapshot of all your data. The 7 most recent backups are kept; older ones are deleted automatically.
Backups include all transactions, categories, products, income, bills, savings goals, and settings.
Create a backup before reinstalling the app or switching devices.
In Settings → Backup & Restore, tap any listed backup to restore it. A confirmation prompt warns that this will replace all current data. After confirming, WindShield restores to that snapshot. The process is instant.
Go to Settings → Import Transactions and select a CSV file from the Files app. The CSV should have columns for date, amount, vendor, and category. Rows missing required fields are skipped and reported in the import summary.
The Settings tab is your control panel for everything non-transactional: