Questions, answered
without the runaround.

Yes — Raqam is offline-first. Logging, editing, budgets, charts and your whole history work with no signal at all, because everything lives in an encrypted database on your phone.

Two things need a connection: AI receipt scanning and the AI coach, since those process on our servers. Scan while offline and Raqam queues the image, then processes it the moment you are back online.

No. You can install Raqam and use it forever without giving us an email address. Nothing leaves your phone.

An account only becomes necessary for syncing to a second device, the web app, and scheduled email reports. You can add one later without losing anything you have already logged.

Yes. Set a home currency, then log any expense in any of 180+ currencies — Raqam converts it at the rate on the day of the expense and stores both the original and converted amounts.

Reports show your home currency by default, with the original amount available on each entry. Change your home currency later and your history recalculates rather than breaking.

Yes, via CSV. Settings → Import accepts an export from most trackers and spreadsheets. Raqam maps the columns for you, shows a preview and lets you fix anything before it commits.

If your file is unusual, send it to support and we will map it by hand for you.

Write it how you would text a friend. All of these work:

• "coffee 6.40" — amount and category from one word
• "lunch 24 and parking 6" — two separate expenses from one line
• "1.2k rent" — shorthand amounts
• "dinner 68 split 2 ways" — logs your share
• "groceries 82.15 yesterday" — backdated automatically
• "15.99 netflix monthly" — flagged as recurring

If it guesses a category wrong, correct it once and it remembers that merchant for good.

Around 97% of receipts read correctly first try. The usual causes when one does not:

• Faded thermal paper — the print has physically gone. Type the total in manually.
• Glare or shadow — flatten the receipt, avoid direct overhead light, let autofocus settle.
• Only part of the receipt in frame — the total must be visible; long receipts can be captured in two shots.
• Heavy creasing — smooth it against a flat surface first.

Any field under 85% confidence is flagged amber before saving, so you can fix it in one tap rather than discovering it a month later.

Custom categories are a Premium feature; renaming and merging is available on every plan. Settings → Categories lets you rename, pick a colour and icon, merge two into one, or archive one you no longer use.

Merging keeps history intact — past expenses move to the surviving category rather than being deleted.

Insights describe what actually happened, so they are as accurate as the data you logged. Forecasts are projections from your own history — they get noticeably better after two full months of use.

Raqam is a record-keeping tool, not an adviser. Treat a forecast as a well-informed estimate, and check anything you plan to file with a tax authority.

Settings → Export. Pick a date range and a format — CSV, PDF, or a plain spreadsheet — and choose whether to attach receipt images. The file lands in your share sheet, so you can email it, drop it in cloud storage, or send it straight to your accountant.

Export is available on the free plan too. Your data is never held hostage by a subscription.

Yes, on Premium. Choose monthly, quarterly or yearly, pick the day, and the report is generated and emailed to you (and up to two other addresses, such as your accountant's).

You can filter what goes in before scheduling — one category, one tag, or reimbursable expenses only.

Unlimited manual and natural-language expenses, five AI receipt scans a month, one budget, the core insights and charts, the weekly spending story, offline mode and biometric lock. No ads, no time limit, no card.

Premium adds unlimited scans, the AI coach and forecasts, report generation, unlimited budgets, recurring detection, custom categories, recap stories and multi-device sync.

Premium is $4.99 a month, or $39 a year — which works out at $3.25 a month, a saving of about 35%.

Students get 50% off either term after verifying with a .edu address. Prices are shown in your local currency before you confirm.

Cancel from your Apple or Google account subscription settings — Settings → Subscription links straight there. It takes about two taps.

You keep Premium until the end of the term you have already paid for, then drop to Free. Nothing is deleted. Every expense, receipt and report you have made stays in the app; you simply lose access to the Premium-only features until you resubscribe.

If you bought through the App Store or Google Play, refunds are handled by them under their policies — we cannot process those ourselves, but we will happily point you to the right form.

If you bought directly from us, email support within 14 days and we will refund in full, no questions asked.

The 7-day trial converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel before it ends. We send a reminder two days before, because silently charging people is a bad way to run a business.

Cancel during the trial and you keep full Premium access until the last day, then move to Free.

Without an account: entirely on your phone, in an encrypted database, and nowhere else.

With sync on: an encrypted copy sits on our servers so it can reach your other devices. Encrypted in transit with TLS 1.3 and at rest with AES-256. You can switch sync off and wipe the server copy at any time.

The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.

Only long enough to read them. A scanned image is processed and then deleted from our servers within 24 hours. The copy attached to your expense lives on your device, or in your synced ledger if sync is on.

Your receipts and expenses are not used to train general-purpose AI models.

Settings → Delete account. It removes your server data within 30 days and cannot be undone, so export first if you might want the history.

If you never made an account, deleting the app deletes the data — there is no server copy for us to remove.

No. Raqam is funded by Premium subscriptions, which is exactly why the free plan has limits rather than adverts. We have never sold personal data and we do not build advertising profiles.

With an account: install Raqam on the new phone, sign in, and your ledger downloads automatically. Nothing else to do.

Without an account: on the old phone go to Settings → Export → Full backup, transfer the file, then Settings → Import on the new one. Do this before wiping the old device — offline data cannot be recovered once the app is gone.

• Pull down on the home screen to force a sync.
• Check both devices are signed into the same account.
• Settings → Sync → Sync status shows the last successful time and any error.
• Toggle sync off and on again — this re-establishes the connection without touching your data.

If the status screen shows an error code, send us a screenshot of it and we can usually resolve it same-day.

Stories are generated on Sunday evening in your local time zone, and need at least three expenses in the week to be worth showing. If the week was empty, no story is made.

Otherwise, check notifications are allowed for Raqam in your phone's system settings, and that Settings → Notifications → Weekly story is on. Past stories are always available under Insights → Stories, whether or not you got the notification.

The web app is available to Premium subscribers with sync enabled, and covers everything except camera capture. A native tablet layout and a Mac app are both on the roadmap — the changelog is where they will show up first.