If your checkbook app lost your data
On an iPhone or an Android phone, BalanceWright copies your whole register every day you open it, and once you pick a folder it keeps a copy there too, outside the app, where deleting the app does not reach it. Putting one back is a button.
The app: free to try, $9.99 once. App Store · Google Play
It cannot recover what another app lost.
What it can do is keep the same thing from happening to you again, and below is how, including what a copy cannot survive. If the app that lost your data still opens at all, do one thing before you read any further: get a CSV out of it while you still can.
If an update deleted your checkbook app’s data
If the app that deleted your data still opens at all, export a CSV from it before you do anything else. Here is how to bring that history into BalanceWright.
This app works differently. Your register lives on your own phone, and the app keeps rotating copies of it by itself.
It cannot recover what another app lost.
A copy each day you open the app, without having to remember
Your register lives on your own phone, and the app keeps rotating copies of it by itself. The first time you open the app on a new day, it copies the whole register to a dated file. There is nothing to switch on and nothing to schedule. Two windows are kept, and one of them depends on which day of the week you open it.
- 10daily copies
- One is written the first time you open the app on a new day, and the ten most recent are kept. That is the last ten days you opened it, not the last ten days on the calendar.
- 5weekly copies
- A weekly copy is written when the day you open the app is a Monday. If you open it on Mondays you have up to five of them, roughly a month back. If you never open it on a Monday there are none, and the Restore list tells you which kind each copy is.
It copies the real file, not a summary: every account, every entry, every reconciled mark. The copy is made while the app is running, by the routine built for exactly that, so what lands is a whole copy and not a half-written one.
What is automatic, and what you choose once
Those daily copies still sit inside the app, so on their own they would go when the app goes. There are two ways one gets out. The first you choose once, and it works the same whichever phone you have. The second happens without you, and that one really is different on an iPhone and on an Android phone — so both are written out below, rather than run together into a single sentence that would be wrong for one of you. Either way, the backup screen tells you which of them you have. It does not leave you guessing.
The part you choose once, on either phone
Tap Back up now and the app offers you a folder to choose. It writes a copy there straight away, and it keeps the folder only if that copy checks out — a folder that cannot take a backup is never kept as though it could. After that, every copy goes there by itself, and those files stay when the app is removed. Both phones remember the folder across restarts and across a reboot. They do the remembering by different means, which is the app’s problem rather than yours.
The part that happens without you, which differs by phone
- iPhone
- On iPhone, if you are signed in to iCloud with iCloud Drive turned on, every copy is also written to the app’s own iCloud Drive folder, by itself. If you are not, the Backup screen tells you so rather than claiming a copy it did not make. The app can confirm that the copy reached that folder on your phone. When Apple uploads it from there is Apple’s schedule, and the app does not claim to know.
- Android
- On Android, the register is included in the phone’s own backup, and you can pick a folder for the app to write its copies into — one that syncs to Google Drive if you want it to. That folder is the one you pick, above. On Android 10 and newer there is also one that asks nothing of you at all: every copy is written into your phone’s own Documents folder, in a folder named BalanceWright, with nothing to switch on and no permission to grant, and those files stay when the app is removed. Android 9 and older do not get that folder, so on those phones the folder you picked is the one doing the work.
Every copy written outside the app is checked after it is written, against the size it should be, and on either phone. If the check fails, the screen says that folder could not be reached and that no copy was made there. What you see is the last thing that actually happened, so a failure is never papered over with an older success. A backup screen showing a stale date is how people find out too late.
What a copy cannot survive
Four things, said plainly, because you have already been told once that your register was safe.
Deleting the app while every copy is still inside it. On an iPhone with iCloud Drive switched off and no folder picked, that is the state you are in. On an Android phone it is harder to end up there, because the copy into your Documents folder asks nothing of you — but on Android 9 and older, which do not get that folder, the same gap opens. The backup screen says which side of the line you are on, in those words: either a copy survives deleting this app, or nothing has left this app yet.
Erasing or losing the phone, when the only copies outside the app are also on that phone. A folder in your own storage outlives deleting the app. It does not outlive a factory reset or a phone left in a parking lot. For that you want a copy that is not on the phone at all: iCloud Drive if you are on an iPhone and signed in to it, a folder that syncs to Google Drive if you are on Android, or a copy you sent somewhere else.
Entries written after the copy was made. Restoring Tuesday’s copy gives you Tuesday, and the app shows you the date and time of the copy before you confirm.
Your own housekeeping. Copies in your folder are your files. If you delete them, they are gone. The app clears out only the older copies it put there itself, and does not touch anything else in that folder.
Putting it back
There are two ways, and they are the same two on both phones. You can restore from the list of copies held on the phone, one button per row. Or you can tap Restore from a saved copy, which opens your files, so you can bring back a copy from wherever you keep it: your folder, iCloud Drive or Google Drive, or one you emailed to yourself and saved back down. That is the door that works on a phone you have replaced, as long as the copy lives somewhere the new phone can reach.
Before anything is overwritten, the app checks that the file really is an undamaged BalanceWright register, and refuses if it is not. It also takes a safety copy of your register as it stands, and will not go ahead if that safety copy cannot be made, so the restore itself can be undone. If the overwrite fails partway, the app puts your register back from that safety copy. If even that fails, it tells you which copy in the list to restore by hand.
Why it is built this way
Read the recent one-star reviews of the popular checkbook apps and the same complaints repeat: an update that erased years of entries, balances that drift or duplicate, ads still showing months after someone paid to remove them, and support email that bounces.
That is the wound this app was built around, so backup and restore are not part of the paid upgrade. They work whether or not you have ever paid us anything. Any register exports to a CSV file or a printable PDF, whenever you want, and that keeps working whether or not you have paid. You can also save a copy anywhere you like and restore from it — your own folder, a file you emailed to yourself, or iCloud Drive on an iPhone. On an Android phone, read Google Drive for iCloud Drive there: what the app opens is your phone’s own files, and it will take a copy back from anywhere that phone can reach.
One payment. No subscription, no premium tier, and free updates. It works with no internet connection. There is no bank login, so there is no password of yours to lose and no sync to break. There is no account to be logged out of, and nothing of yours is held anywhere you cannot reach.
An honest note. BalanceWright is out now, on the App Store and on Google Play. BalanceWright is a phone app for iPhone and Android. Nothing here describes something we are planning to build; it describes the app as it stands today, and we would rather you heard that from us than from an empty search result.
If you would rather ask a person
One address, read by the person who built the app. It is not a rescue service for another company’s software and it will not pretend to be one — but if a file will not import, or a restore will not take, that is where to write.
