Frequently asked questions

Almanac turns your online-shopping order emails into a tidy, categorised budget. Forward (or paste) an order confirmation and it pulls out the items, prices and dates for you. It also tracks recurring subscriptions and draws simple spending graphs. A paid Business plan adds Australian GST expense reports, tax invoices and client bill-back.

Right now Almanac reads order emails from iHerb, AliExpress, McDonald's and Amazon. More retailers are on the way. If a store you use isn't supported yet, you can still add purchases by hand.

When you sign in, Almanac gives you a personal forwarding address. Forward an order confirmation to it and Almanac reads the email and adds the purchase automatically, no copy-and-paste. Set up a Gmail filter that auto-forwards those receipts and it becomes completely hands-off. There's a separate address for subscription receipts.

No, never. Almanac only reads the order emails you forward or paste. It has no access to your bank, cards or accounts.

Your data is yours alone. From an order email, Almanac keeps only the item, price, date and order number; the rest of the email is never stored in Almanac. If you forward the email rather than paste it, our mail processor holds the raw copy for around 45 days and then deletes it. You can download everything we hold about you from Account, delete any record in the app, and delete your whole account, all at any time and on any plan. Deleting your account removes all of it from our database straight away. See the Privacy Policy for the detail.

The core of Almanac is free: purchases, subscriptions, spending graphs, the live spreadsheet feed and exports. The Business plan (A$4.99/month or A$39/year, with a 14-day free trial) adds GST expense reports, professional tax invoices and turning client-tagged expenses into invoice line items.

Open Account, then Your Almanac plan and manage your subscription through the secure Stripe portal. You can cancel anytime, and cancelling never deletes your data; your account simply reverts to the free plan.

It's a personal link you can drop into Google Sheets (with IMPORTDATA) or Excel so a live, always-up-to-date copy of your purchases (or subscriptions) appears in your own spreadsheet. Treat the link like a password; you can regenerate it in Account if it ever leaks.

Yes. On the Graphs tab you can set a monthly cap for any category. The bar turns amber once you pass 80% of it and red when you go over, so you can see a category running hot before the month ends. Leave a category blank and it simply has no limit.

Two kinds, both optional. Early each month you get a short digest of the month just gone: what you spent, how many purchases, your top category, and whether that is up or down on the month before. Separately, if a category crosses 80% or 100% of its budget, you get a one-off heads-up rather than a message every time you buy something.

Both are controlled by a single switch under Notifications in Account, and every email has an unsubscribe link.

Open the Businesstab and enter it in the “Have a promo code?” box. It unlocks the Business plan straight away with no card and nothing to pay. If you later want to see the free experience again, you can switch back to Private from Account at any time, and your data stays either way.

Yes. Double-click any item, price, quantity or category in the table to edit it. Nothing is set in stone.

Almanac works in your phone's browser today, and you can add it to your home screen. A dedicated app may come later, but everything already works on mobile.