Web apps

Finora

A calm, private personal-finance app that turns bank text messages into ready-to-confirm transactions, budgets and goals.

Category
Web apps
Year
2024
Our role
Product strategy, UX research, UI design system, front-end and back-end build

Screens

Finora desktop overview with a large net-this-month figure, a cumulative spending chart, three transactions waiting to be confirmed, budget bars with one over-budget category in orange, recent transactions and savings goals
Overview: net this month, spending against last month, the confirm queue, budgets and goals
Finora transactions list grouped by day with a detail panel showing a grocery transaction, its category, toggles and the original bank text message with the parsed fields highlighted
Transactions grouped by day, with the original bank message attached to each captured entry
Finora monthly report with spent, income, saved and daily average tiles, spending by category bars, an income versus spending column chart and three insight cards
Monthly report: where the money went, six months of trend and plain-language notes
Finora mobile capture screen showing a bank text message, the parsed amount of 42.60 dollars, pre-filled merchant, category, account and time, and a large Confirm button
Capture: a bank message becomes a transaction to confirm
Finora mobile overview with net this month, a small spending chart, a dark card for three transactions to confirm and budget bars
The month at a glance
Finora mobile activity list with search, filter chips and transactions grouped under Today and Yesterday
Activity grouped by day
Finora mobile budgets screen with left to spend, a stacked bar and seven category budgets, one marked over budget
Budgets: what is left to spend
Finora mobile settings with two-step sign-in, Face ID unlock, hide amounts, signed-in devices and bank message capture settings
Security and capture settings

Screens shown with sample data. Client names and details have been changed for confidentiality.

Overview

Finora is a personal-finance app built around one idea: keeping track of money should take seconds, not willpower. Bank text messages are read and turned into pre-filled transactions that need one tap to confirm. Budgets, savings goals and a monthly report sit in a quiet, monochrome interface where colour only appears when something needs attention. It installs on the phone like a native app, has a full desktop layout for longer sessions, and runs on ordinary shared hosting.

Results

to confirm a transaction captured from a bank message
1 tap
colour, used only for warnings
1 accent
phone and desktop, built from one design system
2 layouts

The story

The challenge

Most finance apps ask people to type in every expense, so most people give up within a few weeks. Finora also had to feel private, work well on a phone first, and run on low-cost shared hosting without a heavy stack.

Our approach

We designed the capture flow first. A bank message is parsed into amount, merchant, account and time, and the category is suggested from past transactions, so confirming takes one tap. Around that we built a typography-led, monochrome system: large light numerals, quiet greys, and one warm accent kept only for warnings like an over-spent budget. The same components cover a phone layout with a capture button in the tab bar and a desktop layout with a detail panel.

The outcome

An installable app where the daily job, confirming what you spent, takes a tap. The month is readable at a glance, with net income, budgets and goals on one screen, and anything that needs action is the only thing in colour.

How we got there

  1. Understand the habit

    We looked at why people stop tracking money. Typing every expense was the main reason, so capture came first.

  2. Design the capture flow

    We prototyped the message-to-transaction flow on a phone until confirming took a single tap, with an easy way to correct the parser.

  3. Build a quiet system

    We set the type scale, a monochrome palette with one warning colour, and components for numbers, charts, lists and forms.

  4. Ship and refine

    We built the app as an installable PWA on lightweight hosting, then tuned the overview and the report through real daily use.

Key features

Capture from bank messages

Bank texts become pre-filled transactions. The original message stays attached, with the parsed fields highlighted, so every number can be checked.

One tap to confirm

A queue of new transactions with the category already suggested. Confirm, edit or skip, and the next one is ready.

Colour only for warnings

A monochrome, type-first interface. The one accent colour appears only for over-budget categories and other things that need action.

Budgets and savings goals

Monthly category budgets with what is left to spend, and goals with progress rings, a monthly amount and a target date.

A report that explains itself

Spending by category, six months of income against spending, and short written notes on what changed and why it matters.

Phone first, desktop ready

An installable mobile layout with a capture button in the tab bar, and a desktop layout with a list and detail panel for longer reviews.

Private by design

Two-step sign-in, Face ID unlock, a hide-amounts mode, and pages kept out of search engines. It can be deployed on the owner's own hosting.

Next step

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