Quick Start
Your first five minutes with ZeniCash
Eight small decisions, in the order the app asks them. None is hard to change later — but made now, the records start out the way they will be needed at month-end.
Not installed yet? Google Play · App Store. Free, no ads, no sign-up.
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Decide whether to sign in — nothing else is required
ZeniCash works entirely on the phone, offline, with no account. Signing in with Google or Apple is only for cloud sync (Premium): the same records on up to 4 devices, receipt files included. It is a decision, never a requirement — while sync is off, nothing leaves the phone.
Where it is
- Settings › Cloud Sync
The free plan keeps one device in sync; Premium keeps four. Sync is never switched on by itself.
Settings › Cloud Sync: the sign-in screen, and the way back out of it. -
Check the currency and formats — they are already set
A new install opens in the currency, date order, decimal separator and symbol position of the phone's region (100 € in Portugal, $100 in the United States), with the theme following the phone. There is nothing to configure before the first movement; if the region guessed wrong, the fix is one tap — twenty-three languages, and a long list of currencies with a search. Move the symbol to the other side and the whole app follows at once. Appearance holds the rest of the look: a colour for the app, and a Light, Dark or Automatic theme.
Where it is
- Settings › Language & Currency › Default Currency
- Settings › Formats
- Settings › Appearance
Installed the app before version 1.5.0? Nothing changes — these defaults apply to new installs only.
The language, the currency and the symbol; then the date and number formats — opened, and left as they were. -
Business and personal: keep both, or pick one side
Every movement, account, budget and document can be marked Professional, so one app holds both lives and the reports and the accountant package filter on it. Someone who uses the app only for themselves — or only for the business — does not need that mark at all.
- Both
- — each record chooses. The default.
- Personal only
- — the mark disappears from the app.
- Business only
- — everything recorded is born professional; the personal side goes out of view.
Where it is
- Settings › Formats › Professional
- Settings › Premium › My business
Switching a side off deletes nothing already recorded — it only goes out of view. My business (Premium) keeps the company name, tax number and logo, and recognises the company's own documents.
The three options in Professional, and then My business — name, tax number, logo. -
Name your accounts — short, and one per currency
The app is born with one wallet in the default currency. Add the bank accounts, cards and cash you actually use, each with its own currency, an opening balance and the date it refers to. Short names read better everywhere the account is listed — "Bank €", "Travel card", "Cash".
Where it is
- Menu › Accounts › +
Free: up to 3 accounts. Two accounts may share a name (the app warns and asks) — they stay separate, because an account is identified by its own code, never by its name.
One bank account from empty form to dashboard: name, currency, opening balance and date, the Professional chip, and the overdraft and usage alert a bank account can carry. -
Keep the default categories — add a project only if you bill by job
ZeniCash ships with categories for personal and professional spending, and with no subcategories at all: those are yours to create, here or from inside the movement form. Renaming or adding is a tap, and the + asks first which kind is being created — personal or professional, expense or income. Projects (Premium) answer a question categories cannot: what did this job, this client, this site cost in total, across categories and months.
Where it is
- Menu › Categories — the three dots on a category: Edit, Manage Subcategories, Merge Category, Delete
- Settings › Formats › Projects (Premium)
The categories that ship with the app are not fixed — they can be renamed, edited and deleted, and deleting is only blocked once a category is in use, when the app offers to merge it into another instead. Merging is also in that same menu on its own, available whenever a second category of the same kind exists — it is not only what happens when a delete is refused. A category can also be created from inside the movement form, without leaving it. A project narrows the list in turn: tick categories on it and only those appear while that project is selected — tick none and every category of its side is offered. A subcategory created inside a project belongs to that project alone.
The professional and the personal sets, the four things the menu on a category offers, a subcategory created — then Projects switched on, and the project screen it opens. -
Log the first expense by photographing the receipt
Tap − at the bottom of the dashboard for an expense, and use Scan. On the free plan the photo is attached to the movement; on Premium the app reads the receipt while the camera is aimed at it — supplier, tax number, document number, date and amount — on the phone, before the photo is even taken. From the second receipt of the same supplier, the category comes back by itself, and a field you corrected is looked for where it was found before.
Where it is
- − › Scan (or Attach for a file already on the phone)
Up to two files per movement, photo or PDF. Attaching is free; the automatic reading is Premium.
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If someone owes you money, switch the Entity field on
Entities are customers, suppliers, the tax office — anyone money moves to or from. With the field on, an expense or an income recorded with an entity and a document number files that document in the entity’s current account (Premium) — and files it already settled, because the movement IS the payment. What is still owed goes in the other way round: the document first, in Current accounts › Documents, on the To Pay or the To Receive side, and the payment against it whenever it happens. That is what lets the dashboard say who owes what, and since when, without a spreadsheet.
Where it is
- Settings › Formats › Entity Field — Disabled, Optional or Required
- Menu › Current accounts — two tabs, Entities and Documents (Premium)
Required is the right setting for a business that invoices; Optional for someone who mostly tracks personal spending with an occasional client. Once there are unpaid documents, the dashboard lists who owes and who is owed by name — and tapping a name opens that entity’s current account, already filtered to it.
Path to the Entity Field setting and its three options. -
Make the form shorter — the note and the entity both switch off
A new install shows a Note field in the movement form, under the date, and an Entity field under that. The note is the place for the detail that fits neither a category nor an entity — “invoice xyz”, “coffee with the new client”. Neither has to be switched on: the note is on from the first day and the entity starts Optional. Switching them off is what takes a tap, and it leaves a form with the amount, the account, the date and the buttons that attach a document — which is all someone logging a coffee wants to see.
Where it is
- Settings › Formats › “Note field (forms)”
- Settings › Formats › Entity Field › Disabled
- The − button (expense) — the note sits between the date and the entity
Both are display settings, not data ones: switching one off hides its field, it never erases what was already written there, and turning it back on shows the field again with everything in it. Switching one off also takes its column out of the movement list, so the two places agree — but turning it back on does not put the column back: that is done in Settings › Transaction info, deliberately, because by then the app cannot know which of the two is wanted.
The form with both fields, the two switches in Formats, and the same form without them.
After the first five minutes
The help guides take each of these further, by the problem it solves: who owes you, receipts for the accountant, a cash-flow forecast, several currencies, a new phone, one book shared with a team or a family.
One small thing worth knowing: some words can be renamed with a long-press on the word itself — the screen titles Settings, Accounts, Entities, Documents, Reports, Schedule and Calendar, the title of the movement form, and Income, Expense and Transfer — the first two on the dashboard cards, all three on the form's tabs. A small editor opens; the new word replaces the old one everywhere it appears, it is kept per language, and Reset brings the original back. Nothing else in the app is renamed that way.