Cashew

Cashew is a budget and financial tracking application built in Canada, available on iOS, Android, and the web. Its core premise is simple: your financial data stays on your own Google Drive, not on Cashew's servers. The app exists to organize that data and sync it across your devices without a middleman.

How money comes in

Cashew doesn't connect to banks. You enter transactions manually, tapping a category and an amount each time you spend. No automatic imports, no Plaid integration, no financial institution logins. This means you own the workflow entirely, but it also means you're typing "lunch: $12" instead of watching it import automatically. The trade-off is privacy and simplicity over convenience. For people whose banks aren't supported by standard syncing APIs, whose banks have blocked third-party access, or who simply don't want to hand their login credentials to another app, this manual-entry model removes that friction point.

When you record a transaction, Cashew stores it locally on your device first. To sync across your phone, tablet, and web app, Cashew uses your personal Google account. Here's how it works: each device uploads its changes to your Google Drive, then downloads changes from other devices. Both steps have to happen for data to propagate everywhere. If you add a transaction on your iPhone and want it on your iPad, you initiate sync on the iPhone first (uploading), then sync on the iPad (downloading). The process isn't instantaneous because the app can't auto-login on the web version, a limitation imposed by Google's security rules. You sign into the web app manually each time, but once you're in, syncing updates your data. The FAQ explains that Cashew works this way to avoid needing its own central server: data lives on your Google Drive, which you already trust and control, and Cashew never stores your financial records on its own infrastructure.

Building your budget structure

Cashew organizes money through accounts, not just categories. You might create a checking account, a savings account, a credit card account, and a separate "tracking account" for a goal. Each account has its own balance. If you need to move money between them, from checking to savings, or from checking to pay a credit card, you create a transfer. Cashew records both sides of every transfer as balance corrections: one transaction debits the source account, another credits the destination. Both appear in your transaction history and can be edited independently.

For spending categories, you set budgets. The app shows a sample display with categories like Food & Dining, Transport, and Entertainment, each with a current total and a monthly limit. You can set the budget cycle to match your paycheck, your credit card statement, or a calendar month, so the reset date aligns with how you actually manage money. Over the month, Cashew shows you how much of each budget you've spent and how much remains. If you overshoot, it flags that too.

Recurring transactions are built in. Any expense or income that repeats, a salary every two weeks, a streaming subscription every month, a savings transfer on the first, becomes a scheduled transaction. Cashew marks these as "subscription" or "upcoming" type. When the date arrives, the app can automatically mark them paid, or wait for you to confirm manually, depending on your preference. You can edit scheduled transactions at any time and create one-time exceptions to the pattern without breaking the series.

Credit card tracking gets its own subsection because the FAQ dedicates real detail to it. If you hold a credit card balance or just want to track credit spending separately, Cashew's advice is to create a dedicated account. Every card purchase goes into that account as a transaction. When your credit card statement arrives, you pull up Cashew's spending summary for that account and match it line-by-line to the bill. You can then create a budget specifically for the credit card account with the same cycle as your statement, so the totals line up. For upcoming payments where you don't know the final amount yet, you can set up a scheduled transaction with the amount field at zero; Cashew will prompt you to enter the real amount when you mark it paid. This workflow lets you reconcile your credit card in Cashew before you pay the bill.

The app also supports goals and long-term loans. You can mark a transaction as contributing to a savings goal, a down-payment fund, or a loan you're paying off. If you want a transaction to appear in your history but not affect your net-worth calculation, useful for internal transfers or tracking-only accounts, you can toggle "Include Amount" on and off per transaction. Net worth can be customized to include only certain accounts, letting you ignore a credit card you're carrying or a separate tracking account and see only what matters to your actual financial position.

Multi-user budgets work by sharing a Google account. If you and a partner want to track spending together, you both sign into Cashew on your devices using the same Google account. Syncing keeps you both up to date from a single shared budget. The FAQ notes that this is the only sharing method available because Cashew's architecture doesn't include a central database or per-user logins. Any other sharing model would either require Cashew to store your data on its own servers (defeating the privacy model) or add encryption layers the current app doesn't support. Shared accounts work for couples, roommates, or a parent and adult child managing a household budget together, as long as both are comfortable with full transparency.

Multiple currencies

Cashew supports accounts in different currencies. You set the exchange rate for transfers between them. If you have a USD account and a EUR account and move money between them, Cashew applies the rate you specify. You update the rate manually; the app doesn't fetch live rates. This works for international travel budgets, expat accounts, or anyone holding money across multiple countries without needing a multi-currency bank account.

What it costs

Cashew's website does not publish a price. The FAQ contains no mention of tiers, subscriptions, paywalls, or premium features. Based on available information, the app is free. It's downloadable from the Google Play Store for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS, and the web app is accessible directly through its domain.

Who this fits

Cashew is built for people who value data privacy and manual control. If giving a budgeting app your bank login makes you uncomfortable, or your financial institution isn't supported by the syncing platforms most competitors use, this app avoids that step. If you manage multiple accounts, currencies, or credit cards separately from your main balances, the multi-account structure gives you the flexibility to mirror your real financial life. It works well for couples willing to share a Google account openly and for anyone who wants to reconcile their own transactions the way a spreadsheet did, but with Cashew's structure on top.

It's probably not the right fit if you need bank-account syncing, if you want encrypted multi-user access where each person has a separate login, or if you need data stored entirely offline without cloud syncing. The web app exists but requires manual login each session, so it's a backup interface rather than a primary workspace. The main experience is on iOS and Android. Overall, Cashew is for someone who owns their financial workflow and prefers privacy and transparency over convenience.