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What each part of KiwiSlice does, and what the words mean.
Your data is stored on your deviceKiwiSlice keeps everything in your browser, and it stays there unless you turn on cloud sync — in which case a copy goes to your own Google Drive, encrypted, and never to a KiwiSlice server. If you clear browser data, use Import/Export to back up first.
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Your financial command centre. Shows your net worth (everything you own minus everything you owe), a health score based on your spending habits, upcoming bills, and how your actual spending compares to your budget. The cash flow card shows income vs expenses for your current pay period, and alerts warn you about overdue bills or unmatched bank imports.
Tip The health score improves as you reduce debt, increase savings, and keep essential spending under control.
Where you plan how your money is spent. Add all your income sources at the top, then your expenses below. Expenses are split into sections: living expenses (essentials and discretionary), debt repayments (loan and credit card payments), and savings & investments. Each item has a frequency (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, etc.) and the app converts everything to the same period so you can see the true picture. Use the "Actual" toggle to compare what you budgeted vs what you actually spent.
Tip Mark expenses as "essential" or "discretionary" — this feeds into your financial health score.
A month at a time, showing everything with a date on it: pay days, scheduled bills and transfers, WoF and rego expiry, insurance renewals and tasks. Each day shows what comes in and what goes out, and the month totals both at the top, so you can see whether a bill lands before or after payday. Tap a day for the breakdown. Dots mark the things that are not money — a WoF expiring, a policy renewing. "Add to my calendar" downloads a file your phone or computer's own calendar can open, which is how you get reminded when KiwiSlice is closed.
Tip The Amounts button hides every figure, on screen and in the downloaded file — worth using if the file is going into a calendar other people can see.
Shows your scheduled bills — the ones with specific due dates. This is where you mark things as paid when the money leaves your account, or skip a payment if it didn't happen this period. Bills are grouped by urgency: overdue, due soon, upcoming, and completed. This page only shows "scheduled bill" type expenses — spending budgets (like groceries) don't appear here because they don't have due dates.
Manage your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgages, and other financial accounts. Each account shows its balance and monthly money flow (in vs out). For credit cards and loans, you can track the amount owed and repayment progress. Accounts can be set up for bank reconciliation — importing CSV statements from your bank to match transactions against your budget.
Tip The "Reconcile" button on full-reconciliation accounts takes you to a dedicated page for processing bank imports.
Process bank statement imports for accounts set to "Full reconciliation" mode. Import a CSV file from your bank, and KiwiSlice will try to automatically match transactions to your budget items. For each unmatched transaction, you can: confirm a suggested match, pick a different budget item, mark it as a transfer between accounts, categorise it against a spending budget, or ignore it. The processed tab shows everything that's been handled, and you can undo any match if you got it wrong.
Add everyone in your household — partner, children, and pets. Family members can be linked to specific expenses (like pocket money or child support), insurance policies, and government payments. Adding children unlocks NZ government payment templates like Working for Families. Pets can be tracked too, with breed, vet details, and any pet insurance linked.
Track your housing situation. For homeowners: record your property value, rates, and link your mortgage account to see equity. For renters: track your rent, bond, lease dates, inspection schedule, and landlord contact details. Both modes let you link related expenses (rates, insurance, maintenance) directly to the property so you can see the true cost of your home.
Catalogue your valuable belongings for insurance purposes. Each item records purchase price, current value, insured (replacement) value, and depreciation rate. Upload receipts and record warranty details including expiry dates. If you sell or dispose of an item, the app tracks the sale and removes it from your totals. You can import items in bulk from a spreadsheet.
Tip If you ever need to make an insurance claim, having everything recorded with receipts makes the process much easier.
Track cars, motorbikes, boats, trailers — anything with a registration. The app monitors WoF, registration, and CoF expiry dates and alerts you when they're due. Record service history, link insurance policies, and track running costs. When you sell a vehicle, record the sale price and the proceeds can be deposited into an account.
Track your household utilities — power, gas, water, internet, phone, and more. Adding a utility automatically creates a matching expense in your budget, keeping everything in sync. You can record the provider, account number, and plan details.
Keep tabs on all your recurring subscriptions — streaming services, software, gym memberships, apps. It's easy to lose track of what you're paying for, and this page shows the total cost across all subscriptions. You can pause subscriptions temporarily without deleting them.
Track regular services you pay for — lawn mowing, cleaning, accounting, vet visits, or any professional service. Records the provider, contact details, and linked expense.
Manage all your insurance policies in one place — house, contents, car, health, life, travel, and more. Track premiums, renewal dates, and what's covered. Policies can be linked to the assets they protect (a specific vehicle, property, or family member) so you can see the full cost of ownership.
Track KiwiSaver, shares, term deposits, managed funds, and crypto. For KiwiSaver, you can record the full breakdown — your contributions, employer contributions, government contributions, and fees. For shares, track the number held and dividends received. Term deposits show the maturity date and interest rate. The app tracks value over time so you can see growth. When you cash out an investment, record the sale and proceeds.
A clear view of everything you owe. This page pulls together all your debt accounts (credit cards, loans, mortgages, student loans) and shows the total. Useful for understanding your net worth — assets minus liabilities.
A digital filing cabinet for important documents. Upload PDFs, photos, and other files, then link them to vehicles, properties, rental agreements, or insurance policies. Search and filter to find what you need quickly.
Work out your take-home pay from a gross salary or hourly rate. Includes NZ-specific calculations for income tax, ACC levies, KiwiSaver contributions, and student loan repayments. Useful when comparing job offers or planning a budget around a new salary.
Model loan repayments before you borrow. Enter the amount, interest rate, and term to see your monthly payments and total interest cost. Compare different scenarios to find the best option.
Plan for big life changes. Create "what if" scenarios — like getting a new job, buying a car, or having a baby — and see how they'd affect your budget. Each scenario shows the impact on your surplus or deficit.
Syncing copies your budget to your own Google Drive, into a folder called KiwiSlice. There is no KiwiSlice server in the middle and no KiwiSlice account holding your data — the file belongs to your Google account, and you can open the folder and see it. Turn it on in Settings → Cloud sync. Once two devices are connected to the same folder, each one keeps its own full copy of the budget and uses the file in Drive to stay in step, so everything still works with no internet and catches up later.
Tip The folder holds two files: your budget, and a second one for documents and receipts.
Automatically, once you are connected. It syncs about 30 seconds after you stop making changes, when you come back to the tab, when you leave the page, and every five minutes while the app is open. Separately, it checks about every 90 seconds whether anything has changed in the cloud, and quietly brings it down if you have no unsaved changes of your own. Sync Now in Settings is there if you would rather not wait, but you should not need it.
Tip Auto-sync is on by default. You can turn it off in Settings → Cloud Sync, and KiwiSlice will remember that.
It says whether what you are looking at matches the cloud. A cloud with a tick means this device and the cloud hold the same thing. A cloud with an up arrow means you have changes here that have not gone up yet. A cloud with a down arrow means there are changes waiting in the cloud. A plain cloud with no mark means KiwiSlice has not been able to check — which is not the same as being up to date, and is shown differently on purpose. Click it to sync.
Tip The icon is worked out from your actual data and the actual file, not from whether the last sync reported success.
KiwiSlice combines the two copies rather than asking you to pick one. If you added an expense on your phone and your partner added a different one on their laptop, you end up with both. If the same record was edited in both places, the more recent edit wins. Either way a message appears at the top of the screen afterwards saying exactly what changed on this device — what was added, edited, deleted or brought back, naming each record — so you can check it rather than take it on trust.
Tip Deleting something counts as an edit, so a deletion made on one device travels to the other and is reported as a deletion.
In Settings → Sharing, invite them by the email address on their Google account. They install KiwiSlice, sign in with that Google account, and choose the shared files when prompted. From then on you are both working on the same budget and changes flow both ways. They do not need their own subscription — one per household.
Tip Ask them to choose both KiwiSlice files in the chooser. Google only lets the app open files you have picked yourself, so if they pick only the budget they will see your records with no documents attached.
Your budget is encrypted before it leaves your device, so what sits in Drive is unreadable without the key — including to anyone who somehow got into your Drive. When encryption is first switched on you are shown a recovery key. That key is how a new device, a cleared browser, or your partner opens the file for the first time. If you lose the code but still have a device that works, Settings → Cloud sync can issue a new one. That replaces the old code: once the new key reaches your folder, the previous one stops opening anything uploaded after it — so a partner holding the old code will need the new one.
Tip Write the recovery key down somewhere outside KiwiSlice. If you lose it and lose every device that already has the key, the cloud copy cannot be opened by anyone, including us.
Photos and PDFs you attach — property titles, vehicle records, receipts — are kept in their own file in the same folder, separately from the budget. That is what keeps everyday syncing quick: renaming a category sends a few kilobytes rather than re-uploading every scan you have ever attached. The documents file is only rewritten when you actually add or remove an attachment.
Tip A backup saved with "include documents" turned off leaves all of these out, which makes for a much smaller file.
Start with the cloud icon in the header — it will tell you whether this device is ahead, behind, or has not been able to check. Settings → Cloud sync shows the last error if there was one, and has a Sync Now button. If a record has gone missing or looks wrong after a sync, save a backup first (Settings → Backups) so you have a copy of the current state before changing anything.
Tip Syncing never deletes the cloud copy and your local copy at the same time, and a backup file is always readable on its own.
The bell in the header lists what needs attention: vehicle compliance and insurance coming up, bills and tasks due soon, accounts that have not been reconciled lately, and imported transactions still to match. Settings → Notifications chooses which of those appear. Email and push are shown but not switched on — both need a server that knows when your things fall due, which KiwiSlice deliberately does not have.
Tip Nothing in the app can reach you once it is closed. For that, use "Add to my calendar" on the Calendar page — your own calendar does the reminding, on any phone, and it works for a partner too.
Back up your data to a file, or restore from a previous backup. Since KiwiSlice stores everything locally in your browser, backing up regularly is important. If you switch browsers, clear your data, or get a new device, you can restore from a backup file.
Everything that configures the app, in bands you can collapse. Budget preferences (your pay cycle, which decides how every budget period is worked out, plus categories, locations and appearance). Cloud sync, for your Google Drive folder — it reads "KiwiSlice Cloud" until you subscribe. Sharing, for who else can open this budget. Notifications, for which reminders reach you and how. Backups, for the file you keep. And a Danger Zone for clearing data.
Tip The pay cycle is the one worth getting right first — it determines how budget periods are calculated everywhere else.
If this didn't answer it, get in touch — and say which part you were on, so the answer can go back into this page for the next person.