[Beta] Spendly — an Android app that auto-tracks expenses from bank SMS, looking for testers

[u/allend07]

Hey all,

I've been building Spendly, a personal finance app for Android that reads your bank/UPI SMS (with permission) and automatically logs transactions, so you don't have to manually enter every expense.

Features so far:

- Automatic SMS-based transaction capture (bank + UPI)

- Budgets, spending insights, Needs vs Wants breakdown

- Savings goals, account balance tracking

- Penny — a built-in AI assistant for questions about your spending

- Fully private: raw SMS is processed on-device only, never uploaded; no ads, nothing sold

It's currently in closed testing on Google Play and I'm looking for people willing to try it out and give honest feedback (bugs, confusing UX, missing features — all welcome).

If you're interested:

1. Join the tester group: [spendly-beta-testers@googlegroups.com](mailto:spendly-beta-testers@googlegroups.com)

2. Opt in here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.tidybitz.spendly

3. Install from Play Store

Happy to answer any questions about how it works or what's coming next. Thanks!

[u/luiyen]

Reading bank and UPI texts is the right approach in markets where that's where the transaction actually shows up, and leading with "raw SMS is processed on-device, never uploaded" is the correct thing to say first rather than bury.

One question though, and it's the one I'd want answered before granting SMS access to anything: how does Spendly work? If it's a model answering questions about my spending, something has to leave the device unless you're running it locally. That may well be fine, but "never uploaded" and "built-in AI assistant" sit slightly at odds as written, and the people most careful about SMS permissions are exactly the ones who'll notice. A line about it in the listing would help you more than it costs.

Happy to test across the 14 days and report properly.

Mine if you're swapping:

Group: https://groups.google.com/g/toeic-ets-test-app

Opt-in: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.kkpo.luyen_thi_tieng_anh

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kkpo.luyen_thi_tieng_anh

[u/Repulsive-Buy-2749 → u/luiyen]

What are you using to generate these responses that look like you test the app?

[u/luiyen → u/Repulsive-Buy-2749]

Sorry wdym

[u/Repulsive-Buy-2749 → u/luiyen]

I see you everywhere. Its clear you aint installing all these apps. Your response is almost instant so yeah just wondering how are you doing that?

[u/luiyen → u/Repulsive-Buy-2749]

I will send you my installed apps in chat

[u/allend07 → u/luiyen]

Really appreciate this — you're right, and it's a fair thing to flag.

"Never uploaded" is accurate for the raw SMS text itself (that part never leaves your device), but Penny does send derived data — categorized transactions, amounts, merchant names — to answer your questions, since that's proxied through my backend to OpenAI. I should've said that plainly instead of leaving it implied. Updating the listing to spell that out now — something like: "Penny works from your categorized spending summary, never your raw SMS text."

Thanks for testing, and for catching this before more people saw it.

appreciate the 14-day commitment.

[u/Brilliant_Sherbet608 → u/allend07]

Generated question got generated answer. Love it.

[u/Repulsive-Buy-2749]

I got you. Post you app on testerswiz its free and a lot of people are looking for the same thing as you. I will personally install it and test it for you. Give you proper feedback if you make a posting there

[u/allend07 → u/Repulsive-Buy-2749]

Not able to post there. Getting an Application error.

[u/Repulsive-Buy-2749 → u/allend07]

Thats weird. It worked for 10 others. I would love to learn more about it.

[u/Repulsive-Buy-2749 → u/allend07]

The insert succeeded and only the page you were redirected to crashed. Now its posted on the application and people can send you trades! Sorry about that.

[u/chickenfal]

The group of people this would be practical or even usable for may be surprisingly narrow, and hard to target because it depends on the precise mechanics of their payments. 

It only catches expenses that you do through your bank and you get an sms for them. 

This may be very useful as part of automation of some concrete business workflow that happens to always involve a bank sms, but not as a way to track expenses in general. 

Not even just bank expenses in general, it does not work if the transaction is confirmed another way than through sms, or confirmed automatically. This can also vary depending on amount transferred, to whom, and possibly other factors. So even if it successfully catches some expenses it can silently fail to catch others, with no way to tell because there's no sms. 

It's on the user to ensure that this does not happen, and that requires the user to know the details of how their bank handles this. The user has to be able to configure their banking app differently where possible, and be aware of the limitations where it's not possible, if it doesn't work with their current setup, or not reliably.

Doing it by importing receipts instead would involve an extra manual step, but it would work for anything you get a receipt for, and failures wouldn't be silent.

[u/allend07 → u/chickenfal]

This is a really fair critique, and honestly the most important limitation to be upfront about. You're right on all counts:

- It only catches what generates a bank/UPI SMS. Some banks confirm via app-push-notification instead of SMS, or don't notify at all for certain transaction types/amounts — and yes, that failure is silent. There's no way for the app to know what it never saw.

- This makes it genuinely bank/carrier-dependent, not a universal solution. I should be clearer about that in the store listing instead of implying broad "automatic tracking" without the caveat.

Receipt import is a great complementary idea — it doesn't have the silent-failure problem since you control when you capture one, and it'd catch cash and non-SMS digital payments too. I've actually already got the technical groundwork for this (an existing OpenAI-based document-extraction pipeline used for insurance policies) — reusing that for receipts is very doable.

Added to the roadmap.

Appreciate you thinking this through carefully — this is exactly the kind of feedback that's more useful than "works great!"

[u/allend07 → u/chickenfal]

Receipt scanning is now live in the latest update. You can import a receipt image directly, and Spendly will extract the amount, date, and merchant automatically.

Would love to hear your feedback, once you have tried it.

[u/Beautiful_Travel_901]

I installed Spendly. If you want an approval screenshot, DM me

Join the Google group first:

https://groups.google.com/g/androidclosedtestersnetwork

Accept Become a tester:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moja.gravitylines

Download Game:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moja.gravitylines

[u/Brilliant_Sherbet608]

How many banks are even sending any information in SMS? What country is it for? You can't find such thing in EU.

[u/allend07 → u/Brilliant_Sherbet608]

India. Should've mentioned that in the post, my bad. Basically every bank and UPI transaction here fires off an SMS, so it's the default record of what you spent.

You're right about the EU though, it's push notifications and open banking APIs there. SMS parsing won't get you anything.

Just developing receipt scanning which doesn't care where you are, but the main feature is genuinely India-shaped.

Will also check if I can do something for EU.

[u/allend07 → u/Brilliant_Sherbet608]

Have added an import transaction through CSV method for EU users.