Frequently asked questions

They moved — both of them — into a single tab called Commitments, and nothing was lost along the way.

Goals and Subscriptions used to be two separate features that answered the same question badly: what money have I got coming? Subscriptions had a tab of its own. Goals had no tab at all — you reached it through a card on Home. Now they sit together, alongside the other money you owe on a schedule: loans, credit cards, bills, rent, instalment plans and insurance.

Every subscription and every goal you had is already there. We moved them for you, with their amounts, their due dates, and — for goals — the full balance you had saved. You do not need to re-enter anything, and there is no import step to run.

A few things worth knowing:

• Your goals kept their progress. If you had saved 340 of a 1,000 target, that is still 340.
• Your subscriptions kept their dates. The next payment date you were expecting has not moved.
• A goal is now a commitment type, not a separate feature. You add one the same way you add a loan or a bill — pick Savings goal 🎯 from the type list.
• Commitments are yours alone. Unlike expenses and budgets, they are not shared with a space. If you switch spaces and the list looks identical, that is correct — the same commitments follow you everywhere.

The first time you open the tab you will see a short note explaining the move. You can bring it back any time from the ⓘ button at the top of the tab.

Surrah is your money, finally in one clear place. It helps you see where your spending goes, stay inside your budgets, and understand your habits — without the chore of writing everything down.

Here's what you get:

• Track spending and income in a few taps, or let Surrah do it for you.
• Automatic tracking — its standout feature — turns your bank's transaction texts into ready-made expenses.
• Budgets and categories that show, at a glance, how much is left.
• Multiple currencies, converted automatically so your totals always make sense.
• Shared spaces for a household or a business, so you're not the only one keeping score.

Start simple — add a few expenses — and switch on automatic tracking whenever you're ready to put it on autopilot.

Most of the time, you won't have to. Surrah's automatic tracking turns your bank's transaction texts into ready-made expenses — that's the effortless way the bulk of your spending gets logged, with no typing at all.

But you're never locked out of the details. Whenever you need to, add or edit by hand:

• Add an expense automation can't see — a cash purchase, or a split with a friend.
• Add income too, so your full picture isn't just what you spend.
• Edit anything Surrah captured: fix the amount, the category, the date, or which space it belongs to.

Think of manual entry as the backup, not the daily job — automation does the heavy lifting, and you stay in full control whenever you want it.

Categories and budgets are two simple tools that work together.

Categories label every expense — Groceries, Dining, Transport, and so on — so your spending sorts itself into a picture you can actually read. Each transaction gets a category (Surrah suggests one, and you can change it), and many categories have sub-categories for finer detail.

Budgets are the limits you set for yourself. Give a budget a name and an amount, and Surrah tracks your spending against it, showing how much you've used and how much is left. No more guessing at the end of the month whether you overdid it — you can see it building up in real time.

Use as few or as many as you like. A single budget is a fine place to start.

Yes — that's exactly what Spaces are for.

A space is a self-contained set of expenses, budgets, and categories. You can keep more than one:

• A Personal space, just for you.
• A Household space you share with family or a partner, so everyone sees the shared spending.
• A Business space to keep work money separate from life.

Every expense belongs to one space, and you choose which — manually, or by letting Surrah ask when it isn't sure. Switching between your spaces takes a tap, and each one keeps its own budgets and its own currency. Your personal coffee habit never gets mixed up with the family grocery run.

It does, and it's effortless. Travel, online orders, a subscription billed abroad — Surrah keeps it all straight.

Each space has its own base currency. When an expense comes in a different one, Surrah records the original amount and converts it to your base currency using the exchange rate, so your totals and budgets always add up in a single, familiar currency.

You don't lose the detail, either: the original amount and currency stay on the expense, so you can always see what you actually paid abroad alongside what it came to back home.

Only you. Your salary is stored against your own account, never against a space, and Surrah never includes it when it shows the other people who share a space with you.

You add a salary so that Coverage can show what's left after your commitments — see the Coverage guide. It's used for that and nothing else. Spaces share expenses and budgets between their members; they never share your salary, your payday, or your commitments.

If you'd rather not keep it in the app at all, open the salary sheet and tap Remove salary. Coverage returns to its empty state and the figure is gone.

No. Coverage — the card at the top of Commitments that shows what's left of your salary — is free for everyone. So is adding your salary and payday.

Coverage used to be part of Surrah+. It isn't any more. Add your salary, set your payday, and the card fills in with your own numbers straight away.

If the card still looks empty, it's waiting on your salary, not on a subscription — tap Add your salary on the card. There are full steps in Set up your salary and payday.

The rest of Commitments is free too: adding them, marking them paid, savings goals, reminders. What Surrah+ still adds here is suggestions — spotting your recurring charges and offering to add them as commitments for you.

It's gone, and what was in it now lives on Home — where it stopped competing with the figures Home was already showing you.

Insights and Home had drifted into showing each other's numbers, so you had to remember which tab held the figure you wanted. Home is now the single place for looking back at your spending.

What moved to Home:

• Budgets Usage — how much of each budget you've used.
• Category Usage — where your money went, by category.

Both sit below your existing sections, and both respect the period selector at the top of the section — so you can look at last month, or any period your plan allows. Spending Summary follows the same selector. Weekly Spending and Recent Transactions ignore it on purpose: "this week" and "your latest 5" only mean one thing.

What's still reachable: the full Budgets list, any budget's detail, and All Expenses — all from the header actions on the new Home sections, never more than two taps away.

What went away: Month-End Projection and Spend Concentration. They were the two least-used cards and we removed them rather than carry them forward.

Exports were never really an Insights feature — you'll find them where they've always also been, under Profile.

If you had reordered or hidden sections on Home, your arrangement is kept. The two new sections slot into their default positions and everything you'd customized stays as you left it.

It's a placeholder for a feature we're building: sharing and splitting spending with the people you live and travel with.

There's nothing to use yet — open it today and you'll see a short description and a Coming soon label, and that's all it does. We added the tab now so that the app tells you where shared spending will live once it's ready.

We're not announcing a date. When it's ready, it'll be there.

Because Surrah shows a brand logo only for services it recognises. If yours shows its emoji instead of a logo, one of two things is true:

• You picked a category, not a brand. When you add a subscription, the picker has a Brands section (services with logos) and a Categories section (general groups). Only the Brands section carries logos.
• The service isn't in Surrah's brand list yet. Not every provider is covered, and the list grows over time — a service with no logo today may gain one later with nothing for you to do.

Either way, nothing is wrong. The emoji is a normal, complete way to show a commitment — the same one every non-subscription type uses. There's more in the Brand logos on your subscriptions guide.

Both dismiss a suggestion. They differ in whether Surrah+ may bring that merchant back later.

When you tap Dismiss on a suggestion, you're offered two ways to turn it down:

• Not now — a pause. Surrah+ holds off on that merchant for 3 months, then may suggest it again if it's still charging you. Choose this when you're simply not ready to add it yet.
• Never suggest this merchant — permanent. Surrah+ won't suggest that merchant again at all. The button names it, so you'll see exactly which one you're silencing. Choose this for a charge you never want tracked as a commitment.

"Never" isn't a locked door. If you later add that merchant as a commitment yourself, Surrah+ takes it as a sign you do want it tracked, and suggestions for it switch back on.

Either choice affects only you. Dismissing a merchant in a shared space never changes what anyone else sees.

No — automatic detection and suggestions are part of Surrah+. Everything else about Commitments stays free.

On the free plan you add and track commitments yourself, mark them paid, set savings goals, and see the whole Upcoming feed of what's due — none of that is gated. What Surrah+ adds is the automatic part: it watches your recurring charges, works out which ones are real services, and offers to add them for you as suggestions you confirm in a tap.

Subscribe to Surrah+ and detection starts finding your recurring charges from then on. Cancel later and you keep every commitment you've already added — you simply stop getting new suggestions.

Your bank already texts you every time you spend. Surrah turns that text into a ready-made expense — amount, merchant, and date filled in for you. No receipts to snap, no numbers to type.

First, the reassurance that matters most: Surrah never asks for your bank login, password, or card number. It works only from the transaction alerts your bank already sends to your phone. Your money stays exactly where it is.

How a message reaches Surrah depends on your phone:

On iPhone — you stay in control of every message. When a bank alert arrives, you forward it to Surrah:

1. Open the bank message in Messages.
2. Share it to the "Log bank message" Surrah shortcut.
3. Surrah reads it and adds the expense.

To go faster, run the shortcut from the Shortcuts app or just say it to Siri — "Log bank message in Surrah." Surrah only ever sees the messages you choose to send.

On Android — Surrah can do it for you, once you switch it on:

1. Open the SMS automation setup in Surrah.
2. Tap Enable SMS Automation and allow the SMS permission when Android asks.
3. Pick the currency your bank texts use (it defaults to your space's currency).

From then on, Surrah quietly picks up new bank messages as they arrive and adds the expenses in the background. You can turn it off any time from the same screen.

Either way, the expense lands categorized and ready — you just glance and confirm.

Because Surrah suggests — and you decide. Nothing is logged behind your back.

When a bank message comes in, Surrah reads the merchant out of it and uses smart categorization to place the expense — Groceries, Dining, Transport, and so on. Most of the time it's right, and the expense files straight away.

But when a message is ambiguous — a cryptic merchant name, an unclear category, or it's not obvious which of your spaces the expense belongs to — Surrah doesn't guess. It holds the expense in Review and asks you. There you can:

• Confirm or change the category.
• Pick the right space, if it wasn't clear.
• Dismiss anything that isn't really an expense.

Your corrections stick. And if there's a merchant you always want filed the same way, set a merchant rule — for example, always file Carrefour under Groceries (you can even point it at a specific budget). After that, every Carrefour transaction is categorized that way automatically, no review needed. Surrah learns your preferences instead of asking twice.

When a bank message arrives, Surrah can tag the new expense with where you were at that moment. It's an optional add-on to automatic tracking, off until you switch it on, and free.

Turning it on does two things:

• Sorts out confusing merchant names. Banks often describe a purchase with a cryptic code that could belong to more than one shop. If you were standing in the same spot the last time you paid that merchant, your location helps Surrah recognize it and file the expense correctly — without you fixing it in Review.
• Remembers where you spent. Each expense quietly keeps the spot it happened, so the place is there when you look back.

How to turn it on — flip Tag expenses with location on under Profile → Automation (there's a step-by-step in the manual: "Tag expenses with location"). You're also offered it as an optional step while you set up automatic tracking — enable it there, or skip and do it later.

If Surrah can't get a location — say you're indoors with no signal, location is switched off, or it simply takes too long — the expense is still logged, exactly as normal, just without a location. You never miss an expense because of it.

Because for most payments, the expense already exists — and recording it twice would inflate your spending.

When you mark a commitment paid, you will see a checkbox: Also record as expense. It is off by default, and that default is the right answer far more often than not. Here is the reasoning.

Surrah already builds your spending history from your bank's messages. When your loan instalment leaves your account, your bank texts you, and Surrah turns that text into an expense — with no help from you. Marking the commitment paid is a separate act: it tells Surrah "this cycle is settled," updates what you still owe, and moves the commitment to its next date. It deliberately does not create an expense, because one already arrived.

Tick the box only when no bank message will arrive for this payment. In practice that means:

• You paid in cash. Nothing left a bank account, so nothing gets texted.
• You paid from an account Surrah doesn't see — a different bank, a family member's card, a wallet you haven't set up.
• You're recording something after the fact that never produced a message.

A quick way to decide: did money leave an account whose messages reach Surrah? If yes, leave the box alone. If no, tick it.

Get it wrong and it is not permanent — a duplicate expense can be deleted from your expense list like any other.

Because it spotted a recurring charge in your bank messages and thinks it's worth tracking — but it won't add anything without you.

When the same service charges you at least three times, at a steady amount and on a regular rhythm, and Surrah+ confirms it's a genuine subscription, bill or insurance provider, it proposes a commitment for it. The proposal appears in a Suggested section at the top of the Commitments tab, marked with a ✨ sparkle, and you get a notification.

A suggestion is only a proposal. It doesn't count in Upcoming or Coverage and changes none of your numbers. You review it, edit anything that's wrong, then either Confirm & add it or Dismiss it. Until you confirm, nothing is added.

This is a Surrah+ feature. There's a full walkthrough in the guide Suggested commitments.

Only your own transactions — nothing else, and no one else's.

To suggest a commitment, Surrah+ looks at the charges already on your account: which merchant charged you, how much, and when. When that pattern repeats enough to look like a real recurring service, it proposes a commitment. It reads nothing beyond your own spending, and it needs no new permission — these are the same bank messages Surrah already turns into your expenses.

A suggestion is private to you. Even in a space you share with others:

• No other member sees your suggestion or can act on it.
• A charge that's yours is never matched to someone else's commitment, and theirs is never matched to yours.
• Dismissing a merchant affects only your own suggestions.

Your commitments have always been yours alone. Suggestions follow the same rule.

This is the question we hear most, so here's the straight answer: Surrah is interested in your bank alerts, nothing else — and your data stays yours.

Your messages, first:

• On iPhone, Surrah reads nothing on its own. There's no blanket access to your Messages — the only ones it ever sees are the ones you choose to forward.
• On Android, Surrah does need SMS access, because that's the only way the system can hand it incoming messages. But access doesn't mean it reads everything. The instant a message arrives, Surrah checks it right there on your phone: if it doesn't look like a bank or transaction alert, it's discarded on the spot. Your OTPs, your chats, promo texts, personal messages — none of that ever leaves your device. Only the bank-alert messages are sent on, so Surrah can pull out the amount, merchant, and date.

Your data, after that:

• It travels over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection — it can't be read in transit.
• It's scoped to your spaces — only you, and anyone you invite to a space, can see it.
• It's never sold or shared with advertisers or data brokers.
• The original message text isn't kept permanently — once a transaction is confirmed or dismissed, Surrah clears out the raw text. We keep the expense you wanted, not an archive of your texts.

And if you ever want to leave, deleting your account permanently removes your data — a one-tap option in your profile.

We build for a region that takes personal data seriously, and we treat yours the way Oman expects: your money, your messages, your call — always.

Yes — the heart of Surrah is free to use. With no subscription you still get:

• Automatic capture of expenses from bank messages, up to a monthly limit.
• The Review queue, where you confirm what Surrah suggests.
• Merchant rules, so a merchant always lands in the right category.
• Budgets, categories, and shared spaces for everyday tracking.
• Commitments, savings goals, and Coverage — add your salary and payday and see what's left before you're paid again.

Coverage and salary entry used to need Surrah+. They're free for everyone now.

Surrah+ is an optional upgrade for people who want to go deeper:

• Unlimited SMS automations — no monthly cap on automatic capture.
• Extended statistics — 3-month, yearly and all-time views of your spending.
• Multi-currency expenses, converted to your space currency automatically.
• Export your data to CSV.
• Receipt upload and Paste to extract.
• Commitment suggestions — Surrah spots recurring charges and offers to add them for you.

If that's useful to you, it's there. If not, everything above keeps working exactly the same on the free plan.

Short answer: one reading, at one moment, kept on one expense. Here's exactly what that means.

• A single fresh reading, only when a message arrives. Surrah takes one location reading at the instant a bank message comes in — nothing before, nothing after. It does not follow you around, keep a history of your movements, or track you in the background. There is no continuous tracking.
• Why it asks for "Always." Bank messages arrive at any time, usually while Surrah is closed. To read your location at that exact moment, your phone has to allow location "Always Allow" on iPhone / "Allow all the time" on Android. That is the only reason the app asks for it — not to watch you between purchases. If you'd rather not grant it, tagging simply stays off and everything else works as before.
• It stays in your space. The reading is attached to that one expense and lives inside your space — visible only to you and anyone you share the space with. It is never sold and never shared with advertisers. Matching a merchant by location only ever compares against your own past expenses, never anyone else's.
• Delete the expense, delete the location. Because the coordinates live on the expense itself, deleting the expense removes them too. And you can turn the whole feature off anytime under Profile → Automation — new expenses stop being tagged from that moment.