Guide
How JayCK Flow works
Every screen and every button — what it's called, where it lives, and what it does. The app is a forecast, not a ledger: you tell it what's coming, and it shows you the balance you'll actually have on any future day.
One account, and what happens to everything else
JayCK Flow tracks a single balance: the money you can actually spend right now — your cash and debit as one pool. It never asks what's on your credit card or in your savings account, and there's nowhere to add them. That's deliberate: the forecast only works if there's one number to forecast.
Everything else is a direction money flows to, recorded on the day it leaves:
- Credit card. Don't record the purchase — record the payment. If you buy something on the 5th and the card is paid on the 28th, add an expense on the 28th. That's the day your balance actually drops, and it's the day the forecast needs to know about.
- Savings. A transfer to savings is an ordinary expense on the day you move it. Savings goals live in the menu and track what you've set aside — they're an earmark against this balance, not a second account with its own total.
- Debts. Same idea: you track the payments that leave, and the payoff plan shows how the balance falls over time.
- Paid by someone else. If money never touches your account — a partner covered it, or it went on a different card you don't manage here — add it and switch on Paid from another account. It stays in your history and your stats, and stays out of the forecast.
The short version: if it changes the money in your pocket, put it on the day it changes. If it doesn't, mark it so it can't move the forecast.
The main screen
Three bands, top to bottom: a toolbar, your balance card, and the calendar itself.
Toolbar
‹ 2026 top left
Zooms out. From the month view it opens the year; from a day it goes back to that day's month. In the year view it just shows the year.
Cloud with a line top centre
Appears only when sync is paused — your session ended or the subscription lapsed. Tap-free indicator; the banner underneath explains what to do.
☰ Menu far top right
Transactions, Finances, Analytics, Settings, and Account & sync all live here.
Balance card
Balance now
Your balance today: the anchor balance plus everything that has happened since.
Pencil icon
Opens Anchor — the starting balance and the date it applies from. The forecast is built forward from that point, so to include older transactions, set the anchor date earlier than them.
Reconcile icon
Opens Reconcile balance: type what's really in the account right now and the forecast restarts from today. Use it when real life has drifted from the plan.
Reserved · Available
Shows only when savings goals hold a reserve. Reserved money stays in your balance but is treated as spoken for, so Available is what you can actually spend.
Lowest point
The lowest your balance is projected to fall, and the date it happens. This is the number the whole app exists for — a green dot means it stays safe, red means you dip below your buffer.
The calendar grid
A day cell
The date, any transactions on it, and the projected balance after that day. Tap it to open that day.
Day colour
A red date means the projected balance is below zero (or below your buffer) that day. Black is fine.
2/4 badge
Expenses ticked off vs. planned for that day. Amber = upcoming and still pending. Red = a past day with expenses you never marked done.
✓ badge
Everything planned for that day is marked done.
Small number, left gutter
The ISO week number. It turns red when that week contains a risk day.
Today
Today's date is circled. The bottom-right Today pill jumps you back to it from anywhere.
+ bottom right
Adds a transaction on the selected day.
The three views
Month
The default. Scrolls continuously through months, so next month is one swipe away rather than a separate screen.
Day
Tap any date. Shows everything on that day, each with a done tick and an edit tap; also scrolls day by day.
Year
Tap ‹ from the month view. Twelve mini-months at a glance for spotting rough patches; tap a month to open it.
On iPad and Mac the app uses a two-column layout instead: the calendar on the right, and your balance, transactions and category totals in a permanent sidebar on the left.
Adding and editing money
Tap +, or tap any existing transaction. The same editor handles both.
Name
What it is — "Rent", "Spotify", "Salary".
Type
Expense, Income, or Transfer (money moving between your own accounts).
Amount · Date
How much, and the day it lands.
Repeat
Once, daily, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, yearly, or every N days. A repeating entry fills the calendar forward on its own — this is what turns one payday into a visible future.
End date
Optional. Stops a series on a date — a loan that finishes, a subscription you're cancelling.
Category
Feeds the category totals and Analytics. You can add your own in Settings.
Duplicate · Delete · Save
Duplicate copies the entry for quick variations. Save applies; Delete removes.
Marking things off
Done tick
In the day view. Marks the transaction as actually completed, which keeps "how many still pending" honest and drives the day badges.
Paid from another account
Marks it as settled elsewhere, so it does not affect this balance — useful for anything a partner or a second account covers.
Editing a repeating transaction
Change or delete one and the app asks what you meant — This event only, This and following, or All events in the series. Nothing is guessed for you.
What if?
The sandbox. Tap What if? and the app enters Safe mode: add, change or delete anything and watch every future day re-colour — nothing is written to your data and nothing syncs until you decide.
Apply
Keeps the changes for real.
Discard
Throws the whole experiment away and restores exactly what you had.
Outlook
A forward summary over 3 or 6 months: end-of-month balance, the lowest point, and a list of upcoming risk days.
Variable spending forecast in Outlook
Estimates your irregular day-to-day spending from your own history and places predicted expenses on future dates. It's an estimate, it sharpens as history builds, and it's dropped when you leave the sandbox.
Count transfers in Outlook
Includes recurring outgoing transfers (like credit-card repayments) as their own streams. Needs a few transfers sharing a name.
Transactions
Every entry in one list, with search, a period filter (this month / 3 months / this year), status filters (all / done / planned) and a by-category grouping.
Finances
Three things:
Savings,
Debts, and an in-app "How it works" explainer.
Analytics
Income vs. expense and spending by category, over 1, 3, 6 or 12 months.
Settings
Preferences, categories, notifications, backup. See
below.
Account & sync
Sign-in, subscription and encrypted sync. See
below.
Savings
A savings goal is an earmark, not a second account. The money stays in your balance, but reserving it lowers your Available figure so you don't spend it twice. Each goal has a rule that decides what the app suggests setting aside:
Fixed amount
The same amount every month.
% of income
A share of what you actually earn. Prompts you right after you record income.
Target by date
Name a sum and a deadline; the app works out the monthly share needed to get there.
Emergency fund
Target = N months of your average expenses, built up by a monthly contribution.
Round-up
Rounds each completed expense up to your chosen base and reserves the change — automatically, as you tick things done.
52-week
The classic challenge: week 1 saves one unit, week 2 saves two, and so on.
Save the raise
Reserves only what you earn above a baseline income, so a good month builds the goal instead of the lifestyle.
Reserve sets money aside (you can type your own amount), Withdraw releases it when you actually use the goal, and Skip dismisses a suggestion until the next period. Reserving never creates a transaction — no money "leaves", your safe-to-spend simply drops.
Debts
Each debt is a balance, an APR, and a minimum monthly payment. From those the app builds a payoff plan.
Strategy: Avalanche
Highest interest rate first — mathematically cheapest.
Strategy: Snowball
Smallest balance first — quick wins, better momentum.
Extra / month
Anything you can put in above the minimums. Use surplus fills in a figure your forecast can actually support.
Debt-free in · Total interest · Payoff order
The plan's output: when you finish, what it costs you, and which debt to attack first.
Show payments in calendar
Overlays the planned monthly payments onto the forecast, so the lowest point reflects what debt repayment really does to your cash flow. These are projections, not real transactions.
Record payment
When you actually pay: lowers the debt balance and writes a real completed expense on today. The plan recalculates from there.
Settings
Preferences
- Currency, Language (English / Ukrainian), Appearance (system, light, dark), First day of the week.
- Income shown as — median or average, used wherever the app reasons about your typical income.
- Savings goal (% of income) — the default share behind the savings nudge; 0 turns it off.
- Reconcile reminder — how often to be nudged to check the forecast against your real balance.
Anchor & categories
Anchor is the same starting-balance editor the pencil on the balance card opens. Categories lets you add your own, rename them, and hide built-in ones you don't use; deleting a category moves its transactions to "Other".
Notifications
Upcoming transactions, the reconcile reminder and the savings nudge, each switchable. You can set the lead time (morning of, 1 day, 3 days), the time of day, which transactions count (all, expenses only, unpaid only), and a minimum amount so small stuff stays quiet. Reminders are scheduled on your device and fire offline.
Data & backup
Export to file (.json)
Writes a readable copy of everything to your device. No subscription needed — it's your data.
Import from file
Restores a backup. It replaces the current data on this device (and, if sync is on, propagates).
Reset & start over
Deletes all your data and restarts the setup flow. If sync is on, the wipe reaches your synced storage too — the confirmation says so and suggests exporting first.
Account & sync
The app works completely without an account. An account exists only to keep several devices in step.
Sign in / create account
By email, or with Apple or Google.
Passphrase
Your data is encrypted on the device with this passphrase before it ever leaves, so the server only holds an unreadable blob. Use the same passphrase on every device. It is never sent to us and cannot be recovered — a wrong one shows a clear error and never overwrites anything.
Sync now
Forces a round. Sync otherwise runs by itself after edits and when the app reopens.
Status line
Synced · Offline (changes are saved locally and go up when you're back) · Download-only (the subscription ended: your data still downloads, uploading resumes when you renew) · Sync failed with the reason.
Restore purchases
Re-applies a subscription bought with the same Apple ID.
Delete account
Asks you to type your email, then permanently removes the account and the encrypted vault from the servers. Data already on your device stays.
Editing always works offline. Sync is a convenience layer on top of an offline-first app, never a requirement for using it.
First run & starting over
On a fresh install the app walks you through building your own calendar: your balance today, your last income and whether it repeats, one regular bill — and then it shows you your own month with your own numbers. There is no sample data anywhere; everything you see is yours. You can take the quick path instead ("Skip for now"), answer the single balance question, and start from an empty calendar.
Want to run through it again? Settings → Reset & start over clears your data and restarts the flow. Export a backup first if there's any chance you'll want the old data back.
Still stuck? The app has a short "How it works" explainer under Finances, and a real person answers support@jayck.dev — see the support page for common questions.