Everything from your first bill to backups, in the order you are likely to need it. Menu and setting names are written exactly as they appear in the app.
The first time Bill Compass opens it asks whether you would like reminders, then points out the two things you need to find: the + button for adding a bill, and the Calendar. After your first bill is added it shows you, once, how to record a payment.
On iPhone, the five main screens — Overview, Calendar, History, Reports and Tags — are tabs along the bottom. Archived and Settings are in the ••• menu at the top left. On iPad and Mac every screen is in the sidebar, with each of your tags listed beneath.
Tapping a bill does nothing, on purpose. You scroll past bills far more often than you act on them, and a tap that opened something would turn every interrupted scroll into a payment screen. Instead:
A full payment moves the bill to its next due date, and the payment appears in History. A partial payment leaves the bill due, marked with a half-filled circle, until the rest is paid. A one-time bill paid in full is finished.
When a bill was not due this time — a holiday from the gym, a waived fee — touch and hold it and choose Skip This Cycle. It moves on to its next date without money being recorded, and History lists the skip so the gap is explained later.
Turn on Recorded Automatically for any bill that leaves your account by itself. On its due date Bill Compass records a full payment for you and moves the bill on, exactly as if you had done it by hand. Its reminder becomes a nudge to ensure enough funds are available in the account. Such bills carry a small A beside their name.
A bill whose amount is still zero — a varying bill whose statement has not arrived — is left for you to record, rather than logged as a $0.00 payment.
Your bills, soonest first. Each shows its amount and a countdown whose colour says how close it is: red for overdue, then orange and amber as the date approaches, and teal when it is comfortably far off.
Use Category to show one kind of bill, and Due to show Overdue, Current Month, or the Next 30, 60 or 90 Days. The two combine. Show All Bills clears them.
The coloured dot beside the page title is your status at a glance — green when nothing is overdue, amber for one or two overdue bills, red for more.
Days with a bill due are marked. Select a day and the list beneath opens at it, showing that day's bills and everything after. Today returns to the current date, and the arrows beside the month step between months. Bills in the list respond to touch and hold exactly as they do on the Overview.
The Calendar lists only what you still owe. Paid bills are in History.
Every payment you have recorded, grouped by month and marked Paid in full, Partial payment or skipped. Use the Payments filter to show one bill's record — or choose Payment History from any bill's menu to jump straight there.
Touch and hold a payment for View Payment, Edit Payment or Delete Payment. Deleting a full payment or a skip also puts the bill back on the date it was due before, so a mistaken payment is undone completely. A skip can be deleted but not edited.
When you stop paying something but want to keep its record, choose Archive from the bill's menu. It leaves the Overview, the Calendar and your reminders, and every payment against it is kept.
Find archived bills under Archived (in the ••• menu on iPhone, in the sidebar on iPad and Mac). From there you can Restore a bill to the Overview, see its Payment History, or delete it for good — which also deletes its payments and cannot be undone.
The number on the app icon counts bills that are overdue or coming due within your reminder window.
Appearance, reminder times and the start screen are set per device, so your Mac and your phone can differ. Your bills, payments, tags and payment methods are your data and sync with the rest.
Settings → Backup → Export Backup… writes your bills, payments, tags and payment methods to a single CSV file. Save it to Files, email it to yourself, or keep it anywhere you like.
Restore From Backup… reads that file back. It merges by record — updating what it recognises and adding what is missing — and never deletes anything already in the app.
Bill Compass