Pack Money

Updated 2 October 2026

Pack Money keeps household spending, savings and upcoming bills together. It works with manual entries: bank notification SMS, Telegram and The Mental Load are optional. Public purchases are not open yet. These instructions are for households with access.

Need help? Email [email protected]. Include what you tried and the error message. Hide names, amounts and account details in screenshots. Never send passwords, bank verification codes, bot tokens or connection tokens.

Start without bank SMS

1. Open your own household’s Pack Money website and sign in with your account.
2. In Setup & connections, confirm your household currency and time zone before adding records. Choose Add entries myself. A currency change does not convert old entries.
3. Choose Add entry. Select the type, date, shop or description, amount and category, then save. Manual amounts use your household currency.
4. Set your payday, planned pay, savings target and category limits. Add recurring bills and yearly costs you want to track.
5. Compare Transactions with your bank records. Resolve possible duplicates before adding the same purchase again.

Pack Money records money; it does not move it. A transfer between your own accounts is different from a purchase. Tracked savings can include estimated pay-cycle surplus and are not a verified bank balance.

Import a statement

Open the statement importer, choose the file and review its preview before confirming. Resolve any ambiguous matches so an existing purchase is confirmed instead of counted twice.

The current PDF reader supports the documented Emirates NBD AED credit card statement format. CSV imports require posted records in the Family-Spending CSV format. Other banks and layouts may need manual entry. A review export containing estimates is not a restore file.

Optional bank SMS on iPhone

An SMS is a text in Messages, not a bank app’s push notification. Your bank must send a compatible transaction format. Pack Money currently supports the documented Emirates NBD transaction texts; manual entry remains available for other banks.

1. Open Setup & connections → Set up bank SMS on iPhone in your own household website. Use its collector address and your household’s collector token.
2. In Apple Shortcuts, create a Message personal automation for your actual bank sender. Pass the incoming message text to your capture Shortcut. If iOS cannot select that sender, check your device’s options before continuing; do not forward all messages.
3. Configure the capture Shortcut to reject one-time passwords, PINs, verification codes and login or payment approval requests before saving or sending anything.
4. Use Run Immediately, or the equivalent automatic option on your iOS version. Approve the required file and network permissions while the phone is unlocked.
5. Follow the collector recipe shown in Setup: save each message with one event ID and receipt time before uploading. Retries must send the same saved record. Delete it from the private outbox only after Pack Money confirms it was accepted.
6. Test one transaction you intend to record. Confirm it appears once in Transactions. Retry the saved record, then test with the phone locked and after an offline period. Review bank statements for missed messages.

Use one collector per shared message stream. Keep the collector token inside your private Shortcut; never share an iCloud Shortcut link containing it. The collector token, Telegram bot token and Mental Load access token are different credentials.

The setup page provides the current recipe. A shared Shortcut template still needs your own address, private credential and device testing; a template link alone does not establish that uploads or retries work. Apple’s Shortcuts guide explains personal automations.

Optional Telegram

Customers use the shared Pack Money bot. You do not create a bot or need its token. Connect it through your own signed-in Pack Money account.

1. Open Setup & connections → Connect Telegram.
2. Open the pairing link and choose a private household group without topics. The first person connecting must be a group administrator. Add the bot and make it an administrator so membership can be checked; optional powers such as banning people or deleting messages are not needed.
3. Return to Pack Money and select Check setup. Check the group and your Telegram identity, then confirm. Pairing links expire after ten minutes; start again if yours has expired.
4. Send /budget in that group and compare the reply with the website. Choose your notification preferences and save them.
5. Each additional household member signs in with their own Pack Money account and chooses Connect my Telegram account, using the same group. If the bot is already there, the pairing card provides a one-time command to paste into the group.

Only approved members can issue financial commands, but everyone in the group can read its messages. Disconnecting a member in Pack Money does not remove them from Telegram or erase old messages. Remove them from the group too when necessary.

If setup never produces a reply, check the group is private, topics are off, the bot is an administrator and your account is confirmed. Use a fresh /budget message after reconnecting; old buttons stop working. Contact support if Check setup reports a service problem. Don’t create a replacement bot.

Connect The Mental Load

The connection is one-way: Pack Money shares the information you select, and The Mental Load displays it. It does not send task completion or edits back to your financial records. The connection is being prepared for the next App Store update; existing supported builds show Pack Money in Settings.

1. In Pack Money, open Setup & connections and create a Mental Load connection. Give it a recognisable device label.
2. Choose reminders and whether to share their names and amounts. Separately enable the Family spending, savings or category-limit summaries you want. Those overview switches start off.
3. Choose access for 30 days, 90 days or one year. Copy the connection details while they are shown.
4. In The Mental Load, open Settings → Pack Money connection, tap Paste, then Connect Pack Money.
5. Open Family for your enabled summaries and Today for bills due this calendar month. Refresh now checks for an update immediately.

When access expires, create a new token in Pack Money and choose Renew access in The Mental Load. Your saved reminders and notes are kept. Restoring an iCloud backup also requires reconnection. Revoke old tokens in Pack Money when they are no longer needed.

If Family has no figures, check the overview permissions on your connection. A reminder-only token does not include spending or savings. If figures are stale, refresh and check the last successful update. Updates are checked while the app is open; background delivery is not guaranteed.

Don’t have the app? Get The Mental Load on the App Store. Pack Money access does not currently include The Mental Load Premium.

Foreign purchases and exchange rates

A compatible foreign purchase keeps its original amount and currency. When a dated reference rate is available, Pack Money adds a labelled estimate in your household currency to totals. Tap the estimate to see its rate and date inside Pack Money.

Reference rates come from Frankfurter and may use the last available business day. They are not your bank’s final rate and do not include its fees. A confirmed statement amount replaces the estimate for the matched purchase; the original foreign amount remains. If a rate is unavailable, the original is held outside totals until it can be converted or confirmed. Resolve ambiguous statement matches before confirming.

Privacy, deletion and recovery

Pack Money never asks for your bank login and cannot initiate payments. It does store the records you give it in your household’s cloud database. Optional AI and Telegram features process additional information: read the privacy policy.

An exported spending CSV is not a complete backup. For a household export, account deletion or recovery request, contact support from an account we can verify. Disconnect optional services as needed, and delete copies you made in Downloads, Shortcuts or Telegram separately.