Frequently Asked Questions

A full household budgeting and personal-finance app — accounts, transactions, category budgets, bill tracking, debt payoff planning, and CPA-grade financial reports (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Tax Summary) in one place. It's built by a licensed CPA, so the reports and category structure follow real accounting conventions rather than generic budget-app buckets.

Individuals and households who want a real replacement for the budgeting apps that disappeared or got expensive — especially anyone who wants actual forward-looking budgeting and debt payoff planning included, not upsold as a separate add-on.

Yes — Budget Pilot is built around households, not individual logins. Everyone signed into the same household sees the same accounts, transactions, budgets, and reports. See Household & Sharing in the Help Center.

Yes, for now. Budget Pilot is currently offered free of charge during its beta period. If paid plans are introduced later, you'll get clear advance notice before any billing occurs, and you'll never be charged without your affirmative consent.

Three plans — Navigator ($4.99/mo), Aviator ($9.99/mo), and Commander ($19.99/mo) — each meaningfully below what the major budgeting apps charge. See the full breakdown on the Pricing page. Beta users are using every plan's features free right now, with no card required.

Beta seats are being onboarded by hand while the app is refined. Join the waitlist from the homepage and you'll be contacted personally when a seat opens up.

Paste them, upload a CSV file, or connect your bank directly once Bank Sync is available to your household (see below). See Import & Data in the Help Center for the exact format.

Direct bank connections via Plaid are actively being built and rolling out gradually — not every household has access yet. When it's available to you, you'll see a "Connect a bank" option under Accounts & Data → Import & data. Until then, CSV import and paste are the way to bring in transactions, and both are staying in the app permanently even after bank sync fully ships.

Your data is scoped to your household at the database level — other Budget Pilot users, including anyone not signed into your household, cannot see it. Bank connections (when available) never expose your actual banking credentials to Budget Pilot; that authentication happens entirely inside Plaid's own secure flow.

Every report can be downloaded as Excel, saved as PDF, or exported to Google Drive. You can delete any individual account, transaction, or budget item directly in the app at any time. To delete your entire account and all associated data, email mark@trybudgetpilot.com — see the Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes, fully included — not a paid add-on. Set an interest rate and minimum payment on any debt account, choose Avalanche or Snowball, and see a real projected debt-free date. See Debt Payoff in the Help Center.

Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, a month-by-month Monthly Income Statement, and a Tax Summary organized around commonly tax-relevant categories. Every one of them can be shared directly with your CPA as a single bundled file.

Yes — Autocoding Rules let you set up "if the description contains this text, code it to this category" rules, optionally scoped to an amount range and a specific person. See Autocoding Rules in the Help Center.

Not a native App Store/Play Store app yet, but Budget Pilot can be installed from your browser so it behaves like one — its own icon, its own full-screen window, no address bar. See the next question for how.

Yes — on iPhone, Android, and Windows (or Mac), your browser can install Budget Pilot as an app with its own icon and window. The exact steps are different on each platform; see Install Budget Pilot in the Help Center for each one written out.

With a Google account, or with an email and password. If you forget your password, use the "Forgot password?" link on the sign-in screen.

Email mark@trybudgetpilot.com directly. Budget Pilot is built and supported by Mark Chapman, a licensed Arizona CPA — so you'll hear back from whoever actually wrote the code, not a support queue.

Budget Pilot is built by Mark Chapman, a licensed Arizona CPA (License #18224). The CPA background shapes real product decisions — the category taxonomy follows real accounting groups, debt payments are correctly split into interest versus principal, and every report is built to be genuinely useful to a tax preparer, not just a spending summary with a different name. Learn more about the founder →