A Private Expense Tracker With No Cloud and No Account
Expense records are among the most revealing data you own. Where you go, when, what you buy, what you are treating, who you pay. Most apps ask you to keep that in an account on their servers and promise to look after it.
No sign-up. Records stored in an encrypted database on the device.
HeyJerni takes the other route: there is no account, no copy on our side and no server that receives your records, so the promise is not something you have to take on trust.
Policy privacy and architecture privacy
A privacy policy is a description of what a company intends to do with data it holds. It can be honest, well meant, and still change when the company is acquired, funded differently, or breached.
Architecture privacy is different. If the data never reaches the company that made the app, the company has no copy to leak, sell, be subpoenaed for or accidentally expose, because it never had one.
HeyJerni is built the second way. That is a stronger claim than a policy, and it also constrains what the app can offer: no sync, no web access, and no recovery from us if you lose the phone: only from a backup of your own.
What that means concretely
No account to create
No email, no password, no profile. There is nothing to sign in to, which means there is nothing to be locked out of and nothing to delete later.
Encrypted on the device
Records live in an AES-256 encrypted database on the iPhone, alongside the receipt images they belong to.
The AI runs locally
Receipt reading and spending questions use a model downloaded to the phone. Your receipts are not processed by a service and your questions are not prompts sent to one.
No bank connection
No credential is asked for and no data provider sits between you and an account, because there is no import feature at all.
Exports go where you send them
A Accountant Pack or a backup archive is a file. It goes to Files, your own iCloud Drive, or an email you write. HeyJerni keeps no copy.
It works with the radio off
Aeroplane mode is the simplest test of any privacy claim. Everything except the one-time model download keeps working.
The parts that do touch the internet
Two things, neither of which involves your records. Saying so plainly is more useful than claiming nothing ever connects.
| What | What it sends | How to avoid it |
|---|---|---|
| The one-time AI model download | A file request for the model. No user data. | Nothing to avoid; it happens once. |
| Banner ads in the free version | Standard technical data such as IP address and device model, to Google, to serve non-personalised ads. | The one-time Remove Ads purchase disables the ad SDK entirely. |
| The Remove Ads purchase | Handled by Apple. HeyJerni never sees your name, payment details or Apple ID. | Not applicable. |
HeyJerni never requests iOS tracking permission, and ads in the free version are non-personalised.
The cost of no cloud
Nobody else holding your data also means nobody else can give it back. Lose the phone without a backup and the records are gone, and there is no support ticket that changes that.
So the backup is yours to have, and there are two ways to have one. Turn on iCloud backup and the records are saved to your own iCloud Drive once a day, with each receipt image sent once. It is off until you turn it on, it sits where you can see and delete it in the Files app, and it goes to your iCloud, not to us. Or export a full backup archive by hand and keep it wherever you like. Making that choice once is the price of the rest of this page.
This is for you if you
- Would rather no company held your spending history
- Do not want to hand over a banking login
- Are comfortable managing your own backups
- Use one iPhone and do not need sync
This is not for you if you
- Want records available on several devices
- Want a service that can restore your data for you
- Want to share tracking with a partner or an accountant inside the app
- Prefer automatic imports over keeping receipts
Frequently asked questions
Where are my expense records stored?
Does HeyJerni have my data at all?
Are my questions to the AI sent anywhere?
What about the ads in the free version?
Can you recover my data if I lose my phone?
How is this different from an app that promises not to sell my data?
Related pages
Nothing to sign up for
Download HeyJerni and start recording. No email, no password, and no copy of your spending anywhere but your phone.
