Eight steps. Three are optional. The first time through takes around five minutes, and you can walk out of it with months of history already in the ledger.
Ledgerly is in closed testing on Google Play. Join the beta with the beta form and we add you to the tester list. Open the opt-in link we send, and Google Play installs Ledgerly and keeps it updated like any other app.
The app installs as com.madmaxlabs.ledgerly. Ledgerly runs on Android 8.0 (2017) or newer.
Or join the waitlist: one email when Ledgerly is on Google Play. Nothing else, ever.
On first launch, Ledgerly asks for permission to read incoming SMS. Allow it and your ledger starts filling itself the next time your bank sends a transaction message.
Right after you allow SMS, Ledgerly offers to import the bank messages already sitting in your inbox, so you start with months of real history instead of an empty ledger. Pick a window (30, 60, or 90 days, or everything), scan, and review what it found, grouped by month. Nothing is saved until you confirm.
Skipped it at setup? Run it any time from Settings > Capture > Import SMS history. An import can also be removed afterwards from the same place, in one tap.
Indian banks send SMS from sender IDs like HDFCBK, JD-HDFCBK, or VK-HDFCBK depending on your operator. Ledgerly canonicalizes them all to the same bank, but the first time you run the app, take a moment to confirm the senders it detected look right.
If a transaction shows up with the wrong bank or no bank, you can correct the mapping. Future messages from that sender will use the correction.
Open the Cards section and add the cards you actually use. Two ways:
Adding cards turns on the optimizer, the Cashback Bank, Card Karma, Welcome Bonus Radar, and the rest of the credit-card features. Without cards in your wallet, those screens stay quiet.
This step is optional. Skip it and the rest of the app still works fine.
If you turn it on, Ledgerly can read the item details inside the supported shopping apps, so a single Blinkit or Swiggy order becomes an itemized list in your ledger, with packaging fees and tip broken out. In the Google Play app, the helper never taps, scrolls or types inside another app.
Depth varies by app: Blinkit, Swiggy, Instamart, Zomato, Amazon Now, and Uber Eats get full itemized capture. For Zepto, Amazon, and Amazon Fresh, Ledgerly takes a screenshot of the order when you ask and turns it into an entry for you to review. Uber Eats orders are captured in dollars and converted to rupees at a rate you can adjust.
To enable: Settings > Accessibility > Ledgerly. Android will show its own warning about the powers an accessibility service has. That warning exists because the API can be misused; the way Ledgerly uses it is described below and in the privacy policy.
If Android shows “Restricted setting” instead, read why Android restricts these permissions and when to leave them blocked. The guide explains the difference between a Google Play install and a downloaded APK before you change anything.
One phone-specific note: aggressive battery savers on Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and similar phones can freeze the capture helper after a few hours. Ledgerly runs a small keep-alive notification to prevent this and shows a Restart prompt if the helper does get frozen. If capture keeps stopping, allow Autostart for Ledgerly and set battery saver to No restrictions in your phone’s settings.
Also optional. Skip it and every non-AI feature still works, with nothing sent to an AI model.
Cloud AI unlocks: the AI insight narrator (a plain-language story of your month), the Card Concierge chat (questions answered against your real wallet), Wallet Roast (the playful version), the loan-reminder drafter (ready-to-send nudges), the goal price estimator (a suggested target amount for a savings goal), and AI-assisted receipt and statement imports.
In the Google Play beta, invited testers get cloud AI through a tester pass with daily limits. There is no OpenAI key to add and nothing to buy inside the app.
Where to turn it on: Settings > AI. Activate your tester pass, then read and accept the cloud AI disclosure. The pass alone does not switch AI on.
The four screens worth knowing about on day one:
Once you have a few weeks of data in it (or months, if you ran the history import), visit Settings, Data and take your first backup. It is one file, and it is yours. There is also a full dark mode, in Settings, General.
The features page walks through every screen, with examples.