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Spendify — User Guide

Everything you need to use Spendify in less than 10 minutes.

The idea in one sentence

You download your bank statements, drag them into Spendify, it unifies them, classifies them, and tells you where your money goes. That's it.

1. First import

Situation: You've just installed Spendify and want to load your bank statements.

  1. Go to Import (the first button at the top left).
  2. Drag one or more files into the dashed area — CSV, XLSX, XLS all work together.
  3. Click Avvia elaborazione.
  4. Wait for the green bar. You can close the browser and reopen it: the work continues in the background.

Example: You have three files — estratto_unicredit_gen.csv, carta_visa_gen.xlsx, conto_deposito.csv. You select all three at once. Spendify automatically figures out what type they are.

What happens behind the scenes: Spendify assigns each transaction a unique code based on its content. If you import the same file twice nothing bad happens — duplicates are silently discarded.

2. The Ledger: viewing all transactions

Situation: You want to check what has been imported.

Go to Ledger. You'll find the complete list in chronological order, with filters for date, account, category, and type (income/expense).

Example: You want to see only January 2025 expenses on your current account. You set the date filter and select the account. The table updates immediately.

Quick period filters: use the buttons at the top — Mese corrente, Mese precedente (moves one month back each time you press it), Ultimi 3 mesi, Anno corrente, ♾ Tutto (resets all filters at once).

Additional options in the second filter row:

  • ☑ Nascondi giroconti — excludes transfers between your own accounts from the results (default: follows the global setting)
  • ☑ Mostra raw — adds the "Raw description" column to the table so you can compare the bank's original text with the processed version

Icons in columns:

  • 🔄 = internal transfer (e.g. bank transfer between your own accounts) — excluded from totals
  • ⚠️ = needs review (automatic classification was not confident)

3. Review: transactions to check

Situation: Spendify was not confident about some classifications and has put them on hold.

Go to Review. You'll find the transactions marked with ⚠️. For each one you can:

  • Change the category/subcategory from the dropdown menu
  • Confirm by clicking Salva

Example: "PAGAMENTO POS 00112 FARMACIA CENTRALE" was classified as Casa but you know it's Salute. You correct it once, and if you saved a rule that correction will be applied automatically to future imports.

Reprocess with LLM

At the bottom of the Review page there is the 🔄 Rielabora con LLM button. When you see (N descrizioni non pulite) it means some transactions still have the raw bank description without having been processed. Click it to reprocess them.

When this happens: If the AI model was offline during import, transactions are imported anyway but with the original description. This button recovers them as soon as the model becomes available again.

4. Regole: don't correct the same thing twice

Situation: Every month "ADDEBITO SDD ENEL ENERGIA" shows up and every month you have to correct it manually.

Go to Regole, create a new rule:

  • Pattern: ENEL ENERGIA
  • Category: Utenze → Elettricità

From that point on, every transaction containing those words is classified automatically — both in future imports and in those already present in the database.

Re-run all rules at once

If you have created many rules across different sessions and want to apply them all at once to your entire history, use the ▶️ Esegui tutte le regole button at the bottom of the section. Check the confirmation checkbox and click the button: all rules are applied to every transaction in the ledger, not just those pending review. When finished, it will tell you how many transactions were updated.

Practical example with three rule types:

  • Exact: NETFLIX.COM → Abbonamenti → Streaming (matches only if the description is exactly that)
  • Contains: ESSELUNGA → Alimentari → Supermercato (matches if the word appears anywhere in the description)
  • Regex: RATA \d+/\d+ → Casa → Mutuo (matches "RATA 3/12", "RATA 10/12", etc.)

5. Modifiche massive: category, context, and bulk deletion

Situation: You've imported years of bank statements and want to clean up incorrect data or remove an entire account you no longer want to track.

Go to ✏️ Modifiche massive. The page is divided into two main areas.

5a — Operations on a reference transaction

  1. Search and select a transaction from the dropdown menu (you can filter by text or show only those ⚠️ pending review)
  2. Spendify shows how many other transactions have the same or a similar description (Jaccard ≥ 35%)
  3. Then choose what to do:
    • 2a Giroconto — mark/unmark as an internal transfer; with one click it propagates to all transactions with the same description
    • 2b Contesto — assign a context (e.g. "Vacanza") to the single transaction or to all similar ones
    • 2c Categoria — corrects category and subcategory, saves a deterministic rule for future files, applies immediately to similar transactions

5b — Bulk deletion by filter

Situation: You want to delete all transactions from a closed account, or all those from a test period.

  1. Set the filters (dates, account, type, description, category) — at least one is required
  2. The counter immediately shows how many transactions will be deleted
  3. Click 👁 Anteprima to see the first 10 rows before proceeding
  4. Type ELIMINA in the confirmation field — only then does the button become enabled
  5. Click the red button

⚠️ Deletion is irreversible. Always make a backup of the ledger.db file before deleting large amounts of data (see the Deployment guide).

Example: You accidentally imported the bank statement of an account that isn't yours. You filter by account, see 200 transactions in the preview, type ELIMINA, and remove them all at once.

6. Correcting descriptions in bulk (Review page)

Situation: The bank writes "SOTTOSCRIZIONI FONDI E SICAV SOTTOSCRIZIONE ETICA AZIONARIO R DEP.TITOLI 081/663905/000" — an unreadable mess. You want to replace it with "Fondo Etico Azionario" for all occurrences.

Go to Review, scroll to the bottom, open the ✏️ Correggi descrizione in blocco panel:

  1. Paste the raw description into the Pattern field
  2. Write the readable description in the Descrizione pulita field
  3. Click Applica e salva regola

All matching transactions are updated immediately and the rule is saved for future files.

7. Analytics: the charts

Situation: You want to understand where you spend the most.

Go to Analytics. You'll find:

  • Pie chart of expenses by category
  • Monthly income/expense trend
  • Net balance over time

Use the filters at the top to narrow down to a specific period or account.

8. Check List: is everything in order?

Situation: You want to check at a glance whether you are regularly importing all your bank statements, without gaps of months.

Go to ✅ Check List. You'll find a table with:

  • One row for each month, from the current month going back into the past
  • One column for each account you have configured in Impostazioni

Each cell shows the number of transactions imported for that month and account. If the number is — (grey), you have no transactions for that combination.

Practical example: You have three accounts — Conto Corrente, Carta Visa, Conto Deposito. You look at the check list and see that July 2024 shows "—" for Conto Deposito. This means you never imported the bank statement for that deposit account for that month. Go download it from the bank and import it.

How to read the colours:

  • — grey = no transactions
  • 🔵 light blue = 1–4 transactions (few — maybe something is missing?)
  • 🔵 medium blue = 5–19 transactions (normal)
  • 🔵 dark blue = ≥ 20 transactions (full month)

Useful filters:

  • Mostra solo conti — compare only the accounts you care about
  • Ultimi N mesi — focus on a recent period
  • Nascondi mesi senza transazioni — removes months in which you have no data for any account

You can download the table as CSV with the ⬇️ Scarica CSV button.

9. Impostazioni: changing the AI model

Situation: You want to use a different model for classification (e.g. Claude instead of local Ollama).

Go to Impostazioni:

  • Backend LLM: choose between Ollama (local, free, private), OpenAI, Claude, or any OpenAI-compatible provider (Groq, Google AI Studio, etc.)
  • Model: specify the model name (e.g. gpt-4o-mini, claude-3-5-haiku-20241022, gemma2-9b-it)
  • API Key: enter the key if you use a remote service

Privacy note: If you use a remote backend (OpenAI or Claude), Spendify automatically removes IBANs, card numbers, tax identification numbers, and the account holder's name before sending any data.

For detailed instructions on where to register and how to obtain API keys for each provider, see the Configuration Manual.

Frequently asked questions

Can I import files from different banks together? Yes. Spendify recognises the format automatically. You don't need to tell it what type of file it is.

I imported a file twice by mistake. Is that a problem? No. Duplicate transactions are ignored.

A transaction appears twice — once on the account and once on the card. Spendify handles this automatically (it's called "card-account reconciliation"). If you still see a duplicate, check in Review whether one of them has the 🔄 icon.

I want to export the data. In Analytics you'll find the Esporta button which generates HTML, CSV, or XLSX.

I changed the Tassonomia but the old transactions haven't updated. Old categories stay as they are. You can reprocess them manually from the Review page or by re-applying the rules.

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