SpendApp Privacy Policy
Effective
SpendApp is made by Garrich Farrell Hardjojuwono in Australia (“I”, “me”). This policy explains what happens to your information when you use SpendApp on your iPhone.
In short
- Your information stays on your iPhone. There's no account and no sign-up. I never receive your expenses, budget, contacts or other data.
- Except a split bill you choose to share. Its link is encrypted on your iPhone before it leaves, so only people with the link can read it. Not me, and not the company that hosts it. It's deleted a day after everyone's paid, or after 30 days without use.
- No ads, no tracking, no selling or sharing of data.
- Information only leaves your iPhone when you send it, for example a reminder message to a friend, a split bill link or a CSV export.
What SpendApp stores, and where
Everything you enter or create in SpendApp is stored only on your iPhone, protected by iOS:
- expenses: amounts, categories, tags, notes, shops, dates and currencies
- your budget, pay day, budget period and subscriptions
- receipt and product photos, and what SpendApp read from them
- the people you split bills with, what they owe, and any contact details you link to them
- your PayID or bank details, if you add them for payment messages
- your settings, message templates and Usage Summary counts
SpendApp's Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets read a short summary (such as what's left of your budget and what you spent today) from the same iPhone. The Lock Screen widget can hide today's spending until your iPhone is unlocked.
Backups. If you back up your iPhone to iCloud or a computer, iOS may include SpendApp's data in that backup. Apple handles backups under your Apple Account settings; I can't see them.
Permissions
SpendApp asks for a permission only when you first use a feature that needs it. You can say no and keep using the rest of the app, and you can change your choice at any time in the iPhone Settings app › SpendApp.
| Permission | What it's used for |
|---|---|
| Camera | Photographing receipts and products. Photos are kept on your iPhone. |
| Photos | When you choose a photo, iOS gives SpendApp only the photo you picked, not your library. |
| Contacts | When you link a person to a contact, iOS shares only the contact you picked. If you also allow Contacts access, SpendApp keeps those linked people's name, photo, phone number and email up to date. It reads only the contacts you've linked, and never adds to, changes or deletes your contacts. |
| Microphone and Speech Recognition | Dictating notes by voice. What you say is turned into text on your iPhone and isn't sent anywhere. |
| Notifications | Telling you when someone taps “I’ve paid” on a link you shared, reminders you set up to follow up money someone owes you, and confirmations after an Apple Pay purchase is logged. |
Reading receipts, and other on-device features
SpendApp reads receipts with Apple's on-device technology: Vision text recognition and, on iPhones that support it, the on-device Apple Intelligence model. Translating a receipt uses Apple Translation, which also works on your iPhone; the first time you translate a language, iOS may download that language from Apple. No receipt, photo or text is sent to me or to any other company for this.
When information leaves your iPhone
Only when you choose to send it:
- Reminders and split messages. When you tap to send a reminder, a group message or a settlement message, SpendApp opens Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram or the share sheet with the text filled in. The text can include names, amounts owed and your payment details. You choose who it goes to and press Send yourself. Those apps handle the message under their own privacy policies. SpendApp never sends messages on its own.
- Exports. CSV files and photo exports go wherever you choose in the share sheet.
- Usage Summary. SpendApp counts which features you use on your iPhone (for example, how expenses are added and roughly how long logging takes). It never includes amounts, shops, names, notes, photos or dates. It's only sent if you tap Share Usage Summary and send it yourself; you can read every word first, and Clear Counts deletes it.
- Siri and Shortcuts. If you use Siri or set up a Shortcut or automation (for example, logging Apple Pay purchases), Apple's Shortcuts app passes details such as the amount and shop to SpendApp on your iPhone. Siri requests are handled by Apple under Apple's privacy policy. SpendApp doesn't read your Wallet, cards or bank accounts.
Split bill links
When you share a split bill as a link (Share Bill Link, Send to Group Chat, or a reminder), your friends open it in their browser at spendapp.garrich.dev to see their share and how to pay you back, and can tap “I’ve paid”. To make that work:
- Encrypted on your iPhone. The bill (the shop, date and amounts, each person's name and share, what they had, your name and photo if you've added one, and your PayID or bank details) is encrypted on your iPhone. The key is in the link itself, after the “#”, which browsers never send to a server. So the server stores only unreadable data, and only people with the link can read the bill.
- The receipt photo, if you leave “Include receipt photo” on, is encrypted the same way and deleted 14 days after you share it.
- What the server can see: a random id for each bill, a random code for each person on it (not their name), whether each person has paid, says they've paid or hasn't yet, and when that changed. It also counts, per day, how many links were shared and opened and how many people tapped “I’ve paid”, without saying which bill or who.
- Notifications. So you hear the moment someone taps “I’ve paid”, your iPhone's Apple push address is stored with the links you shared, and only with those. The notification the server sends says only that someone says they've paid; your iPhone fills in who and how much from the bill it already has. When Apple says the address is no longer valid, it's deleted.
- Deleted automatically: a link stops working and is deleted 24 hours after everyone on it is confirmed paid, 30 days after it was last used, or soon after you delete that expense in SpendApp. A person's balance link can be stopped at any time with New Balance Link, which deletes the old one.
- Hosting. The links run on Cloudflare (in its Oceania data region), which processes requests, including the visitor's IP address, to deliver the page and protect it from abuse. Cloudflare can't read the bills either.
- If someone shared a bill link with you: you don't need SpendApp or an account. Opening the link shows the bill in your browser, which remembers which name is yours so you don't have to pick it again. Tapping “I’ve paid” only records that you said so for the person who paid.
Information Apple shares with me
If you've chosen to share analytics with app developers (iPhone Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements), Apple sends me crash reports and anonymous statistics, such as how many people opened the app. I use these only to fix problems and improve SpendApp. They don't include your name, your Apple Account or anything you've entered in the app.
What I don't do
- I don't collect or have access to your personal information. Shared bill links are stored only in a form I can't read.
- I don't use advertising, analytics or tracking tools from other companies.
- I don't sell, rent or share your information with anyone.
- I don't use your information to build a profile of you.
Children
SpendApp is a general-audience app and isn't directed at children. It doesn't collect personal information from anyone, including children. Shared bill links are encrypted so I can't read them.
Keeping or deleting your information
You're in control of everything SpendApp stores:
- Delete an expense, person, group or photo in the app at any time.
- Export your expenses as a CSV file from Settings whenever you want a copy.
- Deleting SpendApp from your iPhone deletes everything it stored (except copies in your iPhone backups).
- Shared bill links delete themselves (see above). Deleting the expense deletes its link too, and New Balance Link replaces a person's link. You can also email me a link and I'll delete it.
Apart from shared bill links, I never receive your data, so there's nothing for me to delete on my side.
Changes to this policy
If SpendApp ever changes how it handles information (for example, adding optional iCloud sync or another feature that uses the internet), I'll update this page before that version is released and change the effective date at the top. Any new feature that sends information off your iPhone will be optional and will ask you first.
Contact
Questions or concerns about privacy? Email [email protected] or visit SpendApp Support. I'll reply within five business days.
If you're in Australia and aren't happy with my response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.