SMSLedger – on-device SMS bookkeeping
Parse bank SMS into expenses locally, never uploading financial data
- Problem
- In many regions banks and payment apps only notify users by SMS, so keeping a ledger means manually copying amounts and merchants. Someone already built a local-first expense tracker that parses bank SMS, confirming demand for keeping financial data off the cloud, yet most tools are tied to one bank or country.
- Solution
- Ship a purely local app that reads bank and payment SMS, parses amount, merchant, and balance with template rules, and auto-categorizes entries across multiple banks. Data stays on device, exports to CSV, and lets users edit parsing rules.
- Users
- Privacy-conscious individuals and small merchants who receive bank alerts by SMS
- MVP
- Read and parse SMS locally with no upload; several built-in bank/payment templates plus editable rules; auto-categorization and monthly summaries; CSV export and manual fixes; works offline
- Revenue
- Free core app with a subscription for more bank templates and reports, or a one-time purchase
- Why now
- On-device rules and small models are lightweight, privacy concerns make local-first a selling point, and big cloud-based bookkeeping apps leave the SMS niche open.