PaNotas rests on a handful of ideas that combine: you organize everything into categories, record entries inside them, attach annotations to whatever is not money moving in or out, and use markers to cut across all of it. The rest — file import and test mode — exists to feed and safely experiment with that set.
Fundamentals
Main categories
The foundation of your organization: how to create, order, color and budget the categories that structure everything else.
Subcategories
The extra level of detail: when to create them, how to move them in the tree and how the parent budget propagates.
Entries
The record of each expense or income — descriptions, dates, amounts and splitting one entry across categories.
Markers
The grouping that cuts across categories: how the automatic marker is derived, how to set your own on the entry itself, and how to work in bulk.
Annotations
Annotations
Everything that is not an entry but belongs next to it: reminders, limits, recurrences, birthdays and more.
Checklists and lists
The three item-based annotations — checklist, budget and detailed list: ticking off tasks, comparing quotes and summing a list item by item.
Pre-transaction
The expense you already know is coming: expected amount and date, pending until it becomes a real entry or is discarded.
Alarms
Making an annotation call you at the right moment: the four repeat types, the alarms screen, and what can stop an alarm from ringing.
Importing
File import
Bring OFX and CSV statements into the app, review what came in and categorize in bulk.
Import templates
The presets that make next month a two-tap job: default descriptions, marker, category and currency per source.
Categorization with suggestions
How the app guesses an imported entry's category — by similar text and by recurrence pattern.
Account and cloud
Account and sign-in
Trial period, account creation, sign-in (Google included), subscription, and the three ways out: signing out, erasing data and closing the account.
Synchronize
How your data reaches another device, what is required to turn it on, and what the progress bar is actually doing.
Shared category
Giving someone else access to a category — the two access levels, the invitation lifecycle and what gets locked.
Sharing: frequently asked questions
What the guest can and cannot do, who ends up owning each piece of data, and what happens to what the guest created when the share ends.
Preferences and tools
Currencies & Exchange
Turning on more than one currency, choosing the main one, deciding which currency amounts are shown in, and registering exchange rates effective by month.
Date and number format
Language, the day/month order in dates, and the separators in amounts — the preferences that change how you read and type, without touching what is stored.
Test Mode
A parallel database to experiment, demo or practice without touching your real data.
A suggested order
If you are just starting, following this sequence avoids rework — each step builds on the previous one:
- Build the category tree. Start with a few broad main categories. They are the backbone of every report.
- Record a few entries by hand. Understanding how one entry behaves before importing hundreds of them saves a lot of fixing later.
- Only then create subcategories. They make sense once a category has accumulated enough entries to justify splitting it.
- Bring in history through import. With the structure in place, importing statements and categorizing in bulk goes fast.
- Add annotations and markers. These are the layers that turn a spending history into something that also plans and reminds.
Before touching anything that could disturb your real data, turn on Test Mode: it creates a parallel, masked database where you are free to make mistakes.