DOCS

TEXTBOOKS number: (855) 516-7010
TEXTBOOKS: Contact Card (add to your phone’s contacts)

If you have questions or want to send feedback, use the (?) in the upper right after signing into your account.

To learn about TEXTBOOKS over text, just text tutorial to the number and it will take you through some basics.

We recommend setting your timezone on the account page

SMS/TEXT COMMANDS

SERVICE

Command	Action
help	Get list of commands
info	Guided help
chat	Get secure chat link
tutorial	Start/restart text message tutorial

BASIC

Command	Action
50 groceries, $50 groceries	Record an expense
50 groceries note: publix	Record expense with notes
balance	Check Safe-To-Budget/Spend & Total Funds balances
balances	See all Budget & Goal balances
groceries, vacation	Check specific entity balance
50 income, $50 income deposit	Record an income/deposit transaction
50 vacation, $50 vacation	Contribute to a goal
cancel, c	Start-over when in a flow
back, b	Go back one step in flows

TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT

Command	Action
edit transaction	Edit recent transactions
refund	Refund a recent transaction
recurring	Make transaction recurring
delete	Delete a transaction
restore	Restore a transaction

TOOL MANAGEMENT

The tools are: Trackers, Budgets, Goals, Recurring Transactions

Command	Action
budgets	List all budgets
goals	List all goals
trackers	List all trackers
new budget	Create a new budget
new goal	Create a new goal
new tracker	Create a new tracker
edit budget groceries	Edit specific budget
edit goal vacation	Edit specific goal
edit tracker dining	Edit specific tracker

GUIDED FLOWS | ONE-WORD COMMANDS

When using a GUIDED FLOW, type one word and then follow the prompts.

Example: recurring or new.

Command	Action
new	Create transaction flow
recurring	Convert transaction to recurring flow
refund	Refund flow
tutorial	Resume/restart tutorial
cancel, c	Cancel flow/start over
back, b	Go back one step

EASTER EGGS

Command	Action
define [word]	Look up word in dictionary

QUICKSTART GUIDE

There is an onboarding/tutorial that happens over text when you sign up. Those steps are also in the quickstart guide.

TEXTBOOKS: THE BASICS

Textbooks takes inspiration from a system called “envelope budgeting”. Basically, you take cash and put it in an envelope labeled “groceries” and that’s your budget for groceries for this month.

In TEXTBOOKS we call these “envelopes”, Tools and we can do a lot more than just put money into them.

These Tools are: Trackers, Budgets, Goals, Recurring Transactions.

Tools are similar but each one helps you do specific things.
Learn more about Tools.

TRANSACTIONS

Everything in Textbooks relies on transactions:

• Track an expense, you’ll see a tracked transaction
• Create a budget, you’ll see a budgeted transaction
• Spend money, you’ll see an expense transaction
• Add money, you’ll see an income transaction

There are 4 types of transactions:

• tracked | Any expense for a Tracker
• budgeted | Shows what you’ve ‘budgeted’ for a Budget/Goal
• expense| Any expense for a Budget
• income | These are ‘deposit’ transactions where you ‘Add Funds’.

DASHBOARD

The Dashboard gives you a high-level overview of your spending. As you use Textbooks more, this data become more and more useful.

ACCOUNT SETTINGS

On your account page, you have these settings:

• Email
• Password Update
• Time Zone
• Hide Goals (if you don’t use them)
• Invite Additional Spenders to the account

TRANSACTION LOG

There is a “recent transactions” log at the bottom of most pages. There is also the full “Transaction Log” in the main navigation which shows you all of your transactions by year/month and includes various filters.

On the Dashboard and from the Tool pages, there are links to Tool specific transactions. This allows you to see all the transactions for a particular Budget, Goal, Recurring Expense/Income or Tracker.

BALANCES

SAFE TO BUDGET/SPEND

This shows your unallocated funds this month — money that hasn’t been set aside for any Budgets/Goals. Pending and budgeted transactions are subtracted to give you a more realistic view of your money.

Not sure if you have enough money for that new computer, check your Safe-to-Spend Balance and if not, create a Computer Goal.

TOTAL FUNDS

This reflects the running balance you actually (technically) have — money that has come in or gone out. It doesn’t pay attention to Budgets/Goals or pending/future transactions. It only cares about what has been actually added or spent since you started using the app.

TOOLS

TRACKERS

A Tracker is the simplest Tool. All it does is track your spending in a given category. That’s it. It doesn’t interact with any other Tool or change your Total Funds balance. It just tracks how much your spending each week/month.

The goal of Trackers is to give you an idea of how much your spending on: groceries, take out, subscriptions, etc. And once you’ve been tracking for a bit, you can convert the Tracker into a Budget. It will automatically have amount based on the Tracker’s monthly total and transfer all the transactions over.

BUDGETS

A Budget is the main Tool. It is similar to Tracker but with a few more features:

• Amount: the amount you’ve budgeted.
• Balance: how much money you have left to spend.
• Tracked: track your Balance weekly or monthly.
• Your Balance resets at the end of each month.
• You can also create an ‘un-timed’ budget which doesn’t reset. This is great for large, one-time budgets like a vacation or wedding.

If you send the message “$23.89 groceries”, the system will log that transaction and respond:

Recorded expense of $23.89 for groceries

GROCERIES Balance: $226.11

At the end of the month, if you’re under Budget, your extra funds will be put back in your Safe-to-Budget/Spend balance. If you’ve set up a carryover Goal, the remaining balance from a budget can be put towards your Goal.

GOALS

-> how-to

Goals are a special kind of Budget. Instead of budgeting your spending, you contribute towards future spending.

For example, you could set up a Goal called “Savings”. Let’s say you want your savings to be 3x the amount of your monthly essentials, that would be the target amount for the Goal.

RECURRING

-> how-to

You might find that there are some expenses and income transactions that are always the same amount. For this scenario, you can enable “recurring” for any expense or income transaction

(Tracker transactions can’t be made recurring).

RECURRING INCOME

If you receive income on a regular basis and it’s the same amount, you can make that income transaction Recurring. The system will automatically create new transactions for you based on your settings. This way, you don’t have to manually enter transactions that are the same every week/month, etc.

RECURRING EXPENSE

If you have a bill, subscription, rent that is the same every month, you can make that expense transaction Recurring. The system will automatically create new transactions for you based on your settings. This way, you don’t have to manually enter transactions that are the same every week/month, etc.

ADD SPENDERS

You can add additional spenders on the account page. They can’t access the full web app but a spender can do quite a bit over text message. Check out the full list of commands.

REPORTS

This feature is coming soon. Reports will allow you to:

• backup all your transactions in a simple to edit/read plain text format
• export all your transaction data in CSV format which can be imported easily to other tools
• request monthly or weekly reports for all spending, budgets, trackers, etc., which will provide similar summaries as you see on the Dashboard.

FAQ

Can I connect to my bank?

Nope. This may feel like a must-have feature but the point of Textbooks is to pay attention to your spending. When transactions are automatically logged for you, spending is “out of sight, out of mind”.

SUPPORT & FEEDBACK

You can send an email to: textbooks@weareontheweb.com with any questions, thoughts, requests, bug reports, etc.

If you’re signed into the app, there is a (?) icon in the upper right on every page. Use this to send an email anytime.