Monthly.Choose your language
Español (España)Español (Latinoamérica)English (United States)English (United Kingdom)Portuguese and Chinese are available in the app selector.
Choose your language
Español (España)Español (Latinoamérica)English (United States)English (United Kingdom)Portuguese and Chinese are available in the app selector.
THE MONTHLY FIELD NOTES /03
Monthly began as a personal project in May 2026. More than 400 changes later, this is the honest product timeline: launches, reversals and the safeguards added along the way.
THE ARCHIVE
A product takes shape through decisions. These are ours.
The idea behind Monthly ↗Monthly started with a familiar problem: payday arrives, urgent bills get paid, and by day twenty it is hard to explain where the money went.
The first version covered income, fixed expenses, a weekend reserve and free cash. It was installable from day one and included a PIN-protected vault for private debt notes.
One day after the MVP, Monthly already had an AI financial assistant. Its engine changed that same day, followed by weeks of work to make model output predictable enough for the app to handle safely.
Monthly added instalments that advance automatically and navigation across saved months.
The assistant gained local financial rules, conversation context and support for concrete goals instead of isolated questions.
A separate search-friendly website launched with practical money content organised by place and topic.
Discoverability became a deliberate part of the product rather than an afterthought.
Monthly built a system that drafts content with AI, checks it against editorial rules and repairs problems before publication.
That weekly publishing cadence continues today.
Analytics, performance work and several homepage rewrites made the site clearer for people deciding whether Monthly fits their needs.
A first-run walkthrough helped new users discover the product.
At the same time, an intermittent swipe-to-edit problem on iPhone led to focused Safari fixes.
Investments and debt became one Net Worth view.
Current bank and wallet promotions were added without asking users to connect an account.
CSV and Excel export through Google Drive arrived alongside recurring expenses, categories and charts. Your data should never be trapped inside Monthly.
Weekly summaries launched with a clear reminder that Monthly is not a licensed financial adviser.
An unavoidable backup alert was removed, duplicate delivery was repaired and three useful, optional alerts took its place.
Automatic expense capture through iPhone Shortcuts and Android Tasker launched and was removed the next day when it did not work well enough.
Monthly moved to its own domain and shipped on Google Play using the same mobile-first experience.
When one free plan disappeared and another proved too limited, the assistant moved again.
Debt-related names were redacted before external processing, and clear cooldowns replaced unexplained failures.
The app and website were rebuilt around a consistent type, colour and spacing system called Ledger.
A fully reviewed dark mode followed, preserving contrast and hierarchy across every major page.
A dismissible installation prompt now explains the right steps for iPhone or Android and can be reopened from Settings.
The website gained a complete English section with US-specific states, cities, topics and editorial quality controls rather than a literal translation of Argentine content.
Monthly added custom email/password registration, sign-in and account recovery alongside Google sign-in.
Existing identities were bridged to the new system so earlier users kept their data.
A WhatsApp assistant launched for checking the month and adding, correcting or removing entries through text and guided menus. Numbers link through a one-time code; every change is validated and receipts always require confirmation. Only high-confidence text rules explicitly enabled in Smart mode may apply automatically.
It recognises Argentine, Latin American and Mexican Spanish plus US and UK English. When language is unclear, it asks, stores the choice and keeps language switching in the menu.
The channel is isolated from AI providers: text uses local rules and, with permission, receipts are read in memory by OCR inside Monthly. Messages and images are not sent to Gemini or used to train models.
The free channel is protected with user-initiated reply windows, a shared global cap, no campaigns or templates, and an automatic pause whenever zero cost cannot be guaranteed. The user gets a clear explanation whenever an action is unavailable.
Ledger had already brought the visual identity together. The next step was to rethink how Monthly tells its story: calendars, notebook pages and receipts gave each section its own shape while keeping the brand's navy, lime and typography. The new homepage puts it simply: Your money. More room for you.
The explanation became something you can try: a demo with sample amounts lets you adjust a reserve and see how much remains available. App screenshots, use cases and answers to common questions help you understand Monthly before creating an account.
The redesign covered the entire website in English and Spanish, from features, guides and history to the blog, city pages and legal pages. Mobile navigation, tables of contents and links to get started were reorganised to make it easier to find what you need and build your first plan.
The experience underneath changed too: lighter images, locally hosted fonts and animations that respect reduced-motion preferences. Contrast, keyboard access and reading without JavaScript were checked. Search titles and descriptions were refined to make Monthly's purpose clearer: a free budget planner and expense tracker.
Every month used to carry a single currency for everything. Now each income, expense, investment, debt and goal can have its own — built for anyone paid in one currency who saves in another, or living between two countries.
Behind the scenes, the database backing all of that gained stricter validation, usage limits for the assistant and WhatsApp, and a cleaner account-closure flow, so a deleted account can't quietly reappear from a late-arriving signal.
The Net Worth chart now shows the whole current year instead of a fixed window of months, making the real trend in savings and investments easier to see.
Unread notifications now carry a colour based on urgency, and swipe like any other card in the app for a faster resolution.
A third-party library update briefly kept the Net Worth screen from opening for anyone visiting that section. It was caught and fixed the same day — the problem was in how the code was packaged, not in anyone's stored data, so nothing was lost.
A real conversation exposed an important gap: recognising ‘I spent 10 on fuel’ was not enough if Monthly did not ask which part of the plan should fund it. The flow now separates daily spending, the weekend reserve and fixed expenses, suggests close matches and always offers the full list.
Before saving, the review brings the amount, concept, date and destination together. The receipt then shows what remains or how far the budget was exceeded. Two fast messages from the same person are processed in order so one cannot overwrite the other's context.
The operational layer became stricter too: multiple amounts trigger clarification, unsupported formats and expired confirmations have a clear recovery path, and every reply attempt leaves an auditable outcome. A global cost guard pauses the whole channel before it can leave the free tier.
The first-run tour now covers months and currencies, daily spending, reserves, goals, net worth and backups, along with where to find the assistant and WhatsApp. Local tests check navigation, whether recorded expenses remain after reopening the app, and whether welcome actions stay visible on short screens in Spanish and English.
Local receipt reading now handles orientation, contrast and off-center photos. If it cannot find a reliable amount, it asks you to type it: it does not invent a total or save an expense without confirmation. Temporary AI limits also trigger a wait to avoid unnecessary retries.
Account switching now has stronger data separation, with fixes to chart loading. If part of the app fails to download at startup, there is now an option to retry without deleting data. Sign-in messages explain connection problems, verification codes and too many attempts in the selected language without exposing provider details.
These changes are implemented and reviewed locally, but are still being prepared for release. This is not a launch announcement or a substitute for the remaining production and real-device checks.
Monthly can now connect to the AI assistant you already use (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf and more) in one click from Settings. From there you can ask how your month is going, or have it add or edit expenses, goals and payments.
It was designed with clear limits: the connection is optional, the token is stored hashed and can be revoked any time, and every change is audited and can be undone. ChatGPT and Claude.ai web connections are still marked as coming soon.