Local-first · Philippine pesos
A budget app for a Philippine household. Every peso in and out, on your phone, working with the radio off. Type an expense the way you would say it and check the draft before it saves.
- Money in
- +₱48,000.00
- Money out
- −₱31,284.60
- Moved
- ₱5,000.00
Net worth
₱19,183.25In
+₱48,000.00Out
−₱31,284.60Saved this month
₱16,715.40 · 34.8%
Accounts
- BPI Checking ₱4,820.50
- GCash ₱312.75
- Cash on hand ₱1,450.00
- Savings ₱12,600.00
Budgets
- Groceries ₱6,240 / ₱8,000
- Transport ₱3,180 / ₱3,000
- Dining ₱1,890 / ₱4,000
Colour means one thing here.
A green figure is money arriving. A red one is money leaving. Nothing is coloured because a screen looked flat — the buttons wear the logo's green, and no figure ever sits on one.
Which is why a transfer is neither. Moving ₱5,000 from checking to savings is not spending it, and a ledger that paints it red will tell you that your best month was your worst one.
- Income — a salary, a refund, a 13th month.
- Expense — groceries, Grab, Meralco.
- Transfer — your own money, moved. Never counted as either.
Ledger
AugustToday
- −₱1,200.00
Groceries
GCash · Groceries
- ₱5,000.00
To Savings
BPI Checking → Savings
Yesterday
- +₱24,000.00
Salary
BPI Checking · Salary
- −₱185.00
Grab
GCash · Transport
- −₱3,426.80
Meralco
BPI Checking · Utilities
Fri, 8 Aug
- −₱100.00
Load
GCash · Utilities
- +₱899.00
Refund — Lazada
GCash · Shopping
Capture
Type it the way you would say it.
1200 groceries gcash is enough. So is moved 5k to savings, which the app files as a transfer rather than an expense. Photograph a receipt and it reads the total — the total actually paid, not the subtotal above it.
- 1
It always returns a draft. Nothing reaches your ledger until you tap save.
- 2
It cannot invent an account. Names are matched against the accounts and categories you actually have; anything unmatched is left blank for you to pick.
- 3
It never guesses an amount. If you did not say one, the field stays empty and says so.
Add
Describe it
1200 groceries gcash
Or photograph the receipt
Reads the total paid, not the subtotal
Nothing is saved until you tap it. Anything the app could not work out is left blank rather than guessed.
Offline
It works on the MRT.
The app is not a window onto a server. Your ledger lives in a database on your phone, and every screen reads from it. Adding an expense underground is the same operation as adding one on wifi — it is written locally and queued, and the queue survives closing the app.
0
screens that need a network
Nothing spins waiting for a request. There is no offline mode because there is no online mode.
2
clocks in the sync
One decides which edit wins, one tracks what you have already seen. Collapsing them into one is how sync engines lose the edits made while you were away.
₱0.00
of rounding drift
Money is stored in whole centavos, never as a decimal. A thousand additions leave the total exactly where it should be.
Everything a household actually tracks.
Built around the way money moves through a home, not around a spreadsheet someone outgrew.
Accounts
Bank, e-wallet, cash. Balances derive from the ledger rather than being typed, so they cannot silently disagree with it.
Bills
What is due, what it usually costs, and what the rest of the month will take. A variable bill counts toward the number of bills due, never toward a total it cannot know.
Credit cards
Statement date, due date, and the balance you would actually have to clear. Utilisation shown against the real limit.
Budgets
Per-category limits with optional rollover. Rollover looks back exactly one period and is never negative — last month going over does not quietly shrink this month.
Goals
A target, a date, and what you would have to put aside each month to reach it. No projected date is shown when one cannot honestly be computed.
Debts
Balance, rate, and the payoff order. Snowball or avalanche, with the difference between them in months and pesos.
Recurring
Salary, rent, subscriptions — posted on their date, automatically, and never twice. A restart at midnight does not create a second salary.
Reports
Where the month went, by category and over time. Empty months are drawn as empty rather than skipped, so a gap reads as a gap.
Your ledger is yours.
The copy on your phone is the one you use. The server exists so a second device can catch up and so a lost phone is not a lost year — not because the app needs permission to show you your own money.
There is no advertising, no third-party analytics, and no tracker on this page.
-
There is no password to steal
Sign in with a six-digit code emailed to you, good once and for fifteen minutes. Nothing to choose, reuse, or leak in someone else's breach.
-
The AI key never reaches your phone
It lives on the server and only there. The app asks the server; the server asks the model. A bundled key is a key anyone can extract.
-
AI is optional, and it shows
Switch it off and the capture bar disappears rather than failing. Every other feature is untouched.
Questions
Does it work without a signal?
Yes — entirely. The app reads and writes a database on your phone. Adding, editing and deleting all work offline, and the queue drains when you have signal again. Nothing waits on the network.
What happens if I edit the same thing on two phones?
The most recent edit wins, decided by when the edit was made rather than when it reached the server. Both phones end up agreeing, and neither silently loses a change made while it was offline.
Is my financial data sent to an AI?
Only when you ask a question or use the capture bar, and only the figures needed to answer. The AI never writes to your ledger — it returns a draft that you confirm. Turn it off and every other part of the app works exactly as before.
Is it free?
Yes. MicaraBudget is a Micara Labs product built for our own household first. There is no paid tier, no advertising and no analytics on this page.
Start with this month.
MicaraBudget is in private beta while it is being lived in. The Android build is below — install it, and expect a straight answer about what is still rough.
Android, v0.1.0 · APK, about 100 MB. Your phone will ask you to allow installs from the browser — that is Android asking about the source, not about this app. iOS cannot be handed out by link at all, because Apple requires every device to be registered first, so an iPhone build is by request.