Voice & receipt capture

Writing down what you spend is the whole point of Thrift, so it should take seconds. Alongside typing, you can speak a transaction or scan a receipt, and Thrift fills in the details for you. Both run on your device — the audio and the receipt image never leave the phone.

Voice

Tap the microphone on the add screen and say the transaction as a normal sentence. Thrift parses the amount, the merchant, and the category out of what you said, in whatever order you say it:

• “Twelve dollars on lunch at Subway.”
• “Bi-Rite, groceries, forty two fifty.”
• “Spent 9.75 on coffee this morning.”

The words are transcribed and parsed on the phone by default — nothing is sent to a server. Review the parsed result, adjust anything that needs it, and save.

First-time setup (iOS). Voice uses on-device dictation, so the speech model for your language has to be present. If voice never transcribes, enable on-device dictation once (Settings › General › Keyboard › Dictation, or set up Siri for the language) so the model downloads. After that it works offline.

Receipt scan

Choose the receipt option and point the camera at the paper. Thrift reads the text locally and fills in what it can — typically the total and the merchant — which you then confirm.

• The image is processed on device; it isn’t uploaded anywhere.
• Good light and a flat receipt read best.
• You can always correct or add the category before saving.

First-time setup (Android). Receipt reading uses an on-device text model that Android delivers through Google Play Services. On a brand-new device the very first scan can come back empty while that model downloads; try once more after a moment. On iPhone the model is bundled, so there’s nothing to wait for.

Manual entry

Typing is always available and is the most precise option. Set an amount, a category, and an account; add a note, tags, or split it across categories if you want to. Every field beyond amount, category, and account is optional.

Recurring transactions

For anything that repeats — rent, a subscription, a paycheck — set it up once as a recurring rule and Thrift posts it automatically on schedule. That keeps the ledger honest without asking you to remember the predictable things. Manage these under Budget › Recurring.

What reaches the network

Nothing about capture does, by default. Voice and receipt parsing are on-device. The one exception is an optional AI parsing mode you can switch on for harder receipts or dictation — it sends only that single item to an AI provider using a key you supply, and it’s off unless you enable it.