Everything you need to set up Perfinova, import your data, and start understanding your money — in about 15 minutes.
Perfinova is a personal finance dashboard that lives entirely on your Mac. No bank logins, no subscriptions, no data sent to any server. You download CSV exports from your banks and credit cards, import them into Perfinova, and the app does the rest — categorizing transactions, tracking budgets, monitoring savings goals, and visualizing your net worth over time.
Net worth with month & year-over-year deltas, income vs. expenses, upcoming payments, recent transactions, and account balances — all at a glance.
Import from any bank or credit card. Perfinova auto-maps columns, remembers your mapping, and detects duplicate transactions automatically.
Auto-categorize transactions using smart rules. Set them up once — every future import is categorized automatically.
Monthly budgets per category with live progress bars. Savings goals linked directly to your accounts — no manual updates needed.
Net worth history, income vs. expenses trends, and category breakdowns — all visualized in clean, printable charts.
Ask plain-English questions about your spending, net worth, upcoming bills, and financial runway — answered instantly from your own data.
Perfinova automatically detects recurring charges and shows what's due in the next 30 days — color-coded by urgency.
Split a single transaction across multiple categories — useful for grocery runs that include household items, food, and personal care.
When you open Perfinova for the first time, you'll be guided through a short setup. Here's what to expect.
Download the Perfinova.dmg file, open it, and drag Perfinova to your Applications folder. Double-click to launch. On first open macOS may ask you to confirm — click Open.
Every time you open Perfinova, it prompts for Touch ID to keep your financial data private. If Touch ID isn't available, it falls back to your Mac's login password. No separate password is created — Perfinova uses what's already on your Mac.
Perfinova launches with 12 months of realistic sample data so you can explore every feature before touching your real finances. When you're ready to start fresh, go to Settings → Data and choose what fits:
| Action | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Reset to Demo Data | Wipes your data and reloads the original sample transactions, accounts, budgets & goals | Want to re-explore the demo after making changes |
| Clear All Data | Permanently deletes everything — transactions, accounts, budgets, goals, categories, rules | Ready to start with your own real data from a blank slate |
Go to Accounts in the left navigation. You can add accounts one at a time or import them all at once from a spreadsheet.
One at a time: Click + Add account, enter the account name, type, and current balance.
Bulk import via CSV: Click Import accounts, then download the template Perfinova provides. Fill it in with your accounts — one row per account — using these four columns:
| Column | What to enter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Account Name | Any name you'll recognise | Bank of America Checking |
| Type | Account type (see accepted values below) | Checking |
| Balance | Current balance — use a negative number for debts | -2500 (credit card) |
| Notes | Optional — anything useful | Employer plan |
Accepted types: Checking · Savings · Credit Card · Brokerage · IRA · Roth IRA · 401(k) · 403(b) · HSA · 529 Plan · Real Estate · Mortgage · Auto Loan · Personal Loan · Equity Comp · Other Asset · Other Liability
Perfinova accepts .csv, .xlsx, or .xls files. Upload the filled template, review the preview, and confirm.
| Account type | Examples | Counts toward |
|---|---|---|
| Checking / Savings | Bank of America, Chase, Navy Federal | Assets (positive) |
| Credit Card | Chase Sapphire, Apple Card, Amex | Liabilities (negative balance) |
| Brokerage | Robinhood, Fidelity, Schwab | Assets |
| Retirement | 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA | Assets |
| HSA / 529 | WEX HSA, Fidelity 529 | Assets |
| Mortgage / Loan | Home loan, auto loan, student loan | Liabilities (negative) |
| Real Estate | Primary residence, investment property | Assets |
Perfinova works with CSV exports from any bank or credit card. There's no direct bank connection — you download the file from your bank's website and import it. This is intentional: your credentials never touch Perfinova.
Log into your bank or credit card website, go to the transaction history page, and look for an Export or Download option. Choose CSV format. Most banks let you pick a date range — start with the past 12 months for a good baseline.
In Perfinova, go to Accounts, select the account you want to import into, and click Import CSV. Choose your downloaded file. Perfinova opens a column-mapping screen.
Tell Perfinova which CSV column is the date, which is the description, and which is the amount. If your bank uses separate debit/credit columns, map both. Perfinova shows a live preview so you can verify before importing.
Once you save a mapping, Perfinova remembers it — the next import from the same institution skips straight to the review step.
Perfinova shows how many rows it found, how many are duplicates (already in the database), and a preview of the transactions. Click Import to bring them in. Duplicate detection runs automatically — re-importing the same file is safe.
Import CSVs for all your accounts. It's fine to import them out of order or to overlap date ranges — duplicates are filtered automatically. Once all your accounts are populated, your Dashboard will reflect your complete financial picture.
The Dashboard is your home base. It updates automatically as you import transactions and update account balances. Everything is live — no refresh needed.
Total assets minus total liabilities. Shows ▲ $X this month and ▲ $X this year pills based on daily snapshots. Includes a 7-bar mini spark chart.
All income transactions for the current month, with a comparison to last month so you can spot changes quickly.
All non-transfer expenses for the current month. Transfers (like credit card payments) are excluded so they don't inflate your expense total.
Recurring charges detected automatically from your transaction history. Color-coded: Expected now Due today Due in X days.
Your 6 most recent transactions across all accounts, with category and account shown inline. Click All → to open the full Transactions page.
All active accounts grouped by type — investments, cash, loans — with color-coded dots. Negative balances (credit cards, mortgages) appear in red.
Progress bars showing planned vs. actual for your top budget categories this month. Over-budget categories turn red.
Each savings goal with a progress bar, target amount, and projected completion date based on your current trajectory.
The categories where you spent the most this month, with a color-coded progress bar for each. A quick visual of where your money went.
The Transactions page is where you review, edit, and categorize every imported transaction. It's the core of Perfinova's data model — every chart and report draws from it.
Use the Search box to find any transaction by description or merchant name. Filter by Account or Category using the colorful dropdowns. Both dropdowns use a custom selector with color-coded account types and category groups (Income, Expenses, Transfers).
Click the category pill on any row to open a quick edit dropdown. Select any category — or type to search. Changes save instantly. Color-coded categories make it easy to scan at a glance.
Click the ⋯ menu on any transaction and choose Split. Enter the amounts and categories for each portion — they must sum to the original total. The original transaction is marked as split and excluded from budgets; the child transactions carry the categories.
Click the ✏️ Edit button to open the full edit form. You can change the description, amount, date, account, category, notes, and whether the transaction is excluded from budget reports.
Tick Exclude from budget in the edit form for one-time large purchases (a car, a medical bill) that you don't want skewing your monthly budget progress bars. The transaction still appears in your transaction history and net worth.
Rules let Perfinova automatically assign categories to imported transactions based on merchant name, description, or amount. Set them up once and every future import is categorized automatically — no manual work.
Go to Settings → Categories. Categories come with a name, a type (income, expense, or transfer), and a color used in charts and dropdowns. Click + Add category to create your own.
Go to Settings → Rules → New rule. Set a condition — for example, "Description contains Starbucks" — and choose the category to assign (e.g. Dining). Rules can match on description, merchant name, or amount range. Click Save rule.
Click Apply rules to categorize all uncategorized transactions. Use Apply (overwrite) to re-run rules across all transactions, even those already categorized — useful after reorganizing your category list.
After the first setup, all future imports are categorized instantly using your rules. You shouldn't need to touch the rules page again unless you add a new merchant or subscription.
Perfinova ships with a full set of categories. You can rename, recolor, or delete any of them.
Expenses
| Groceries | Dining |
| Gas | Automotive |
| Healthcare | Home |
| Subscriptions | Entertainment |
| Shopping | Travel |
| Education | Kids Activities |
| Mortgage | Rent |
| Insurance | Utilities |
Income & Transfers
| Salary | Freelance |
| Investment Income | Rental Income |
| Refunds | Other Income |
| Transfers (for account-to-account moves) | |
Budgets give you a monthly spending plan per category. Goals track progress toward specific targets — and live-link directly to your account balances so they're always up to date.
Go to Budgets, select the month, and click + New budget. Choose a category and enter your planned monthly amount. A progress bar appears under each category showing Planned → Actual → Remaining.
Click Suggest from history to auto-fill planned amounts based on your recent average spending per category. It's a great starting point — you can adjust any amount by clicking the number in the Planned column and typing a new value.
Click Copy last month to duplicate the previous month's planned amounts into the current month. Useful when your budget is stable from month to month.
Go to Goals → New goal. Enter a name, target amount, and target date. You can optionally write a description to remind yourself what the goal is for.
Select one or more accounts to link to the goal. Perfinova will sum the balances of those accounts as the current amount — updating live whenever you update account balances. Goals with linked accounts show a ⚡ live badge.
Each goal shows a progress bar, the current vs. target amount, time remaining, and a suggested monthly contribution to hit the target on time. The Dashboard also shows your top goals at a glance.
Reports give you a visual history of your finances. Ask AI lets you skip the charts and just ask a question — answered in plain English from your own data, with no data leaving your Mac.
A daily snapshot chart showing how your net worth has grown over the past 12 months. Snapshots are taken automatically in the background.
Monthly bar chart comparing income and expenses side by side for the past year. Spot high-spend months and income gaps instantly.
A period-by-period breakdown of spending by category. Drill into any month to see exactly where the money went.
Every report page is print-optimized. Use ⌘P to export a clean PDF of your current report — sidebar and nav are automatically hidden.
Go to Ask AI in the navigation and type any question about your finances. Perfinova sends only your anonymized summary data to the AI — never your full transaction history — and displays the answer inline.
"How much did I spend on dining last month?" or "What's my average monthly grocery bill?"
"What recurring payments do I have this week?" or "How much will I spend on subscriptions this month?"
"Am I on track for my emergency fund?" or "How many months of runway do I have at my current burn rate?"
"How much has my net worth grown this year?" or "Which category drove the most expense growth?"
Perfinova is built around a single principle: your financial data belongs to you. It is stored in a SQLite database on your local drive — nothing is synced to a cloud server, and no analytics or telemetry is ever sent.
Your data is stored at ~/Library/Application Support/Perfinova/finance.db. This is a standard SQLite file — you can open it with any SQLite browser if you ever want to inspect or export the raw data.
Every time Perfinova launches it automatically creates a dated backup of your database in ~/Library/Application Support/Perfinova/backups/. The last 7 backups are kept. You can also enable iCloud backup — a copy is saved to iCloud Drive → PerfinovaBackups on each launch.
Perfinova is a one-time purchase. There are no monthly fees, no premium tiers, and no features locked behind a paywall. You buy it once and own it.