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.

Surrah records what you actually paid, and the cycle counts as closed.

Say your instalment expects 300 and you link a charge of 100. You're warned before you confirm. Go ahead, and 100 goes onto the commitment as this cycle's payment, a loan, credit card or instalment balance drops by 100 — not 300 — and the due date moves to the next cycle.

There's no "partly paid" state in Surrah, and this doesn't invent one. A cycle is open or closed, and recording a payment closes it. It's precisely what Mark paid has always done when you type in less than expected; linking follows the same rule.

What you still owe isn't lost. On a loan, credit card or instalment plan it stays in the remaining balance — the number that tracks the debt. It just won't reappear as arrears on the next cycle.

Paying the rest later. Link or record the second charge the same way. It goes into the history and comes off the balance, and the due date stays where the first payment left it — a cycle only moves once, however many payments it takes.

If it was the wrong charge, Unlink it from the same menu. The balance always goes back. The due date goes back too, as long as that link was the one that moved it.

Because the commitment has already moved past that payment, and undoing it now would rewrite history that other numbers depend on.

Unlinking reverses what the link did. It removes the payment and puts the amount back on the balance — that part always happens. And if this link was the one that moved the due date, it returns the commitment to exactly the date it had before; if the link only recorded a payment without moving anything, there's no date to restore.

That reversal is only safe while the linked payment is still the last thing that happened to the commitment. Once a newer payment is recorded, or the next cycle comes round, Surrah can no longer put the schedule back exactly as it found it — so it refuses rather than guess.

In practice, the undo window is about one payment cycle.

After it closes, work from the commitment itself rather than from the expense. The expense stays where it is either way — unlinking never removed it from your spending.

Two other cases look the same but aren't:

• A payment you recorded through Mark paid was never a link, so there's nothing to unlink. Manage that one from the commitment.
• A paused or cancelled commitment won't accept an undo while it's in that state. Resume it, or reopen it, and try again.

Yes. Completing and cancelling are both reversible — open the commitment and choose Reopen.

Closed commitments don't disappear. They move out of the live list into Closed, with their whole payment history intact, and you can open one whenever you like.

Reopen sets the commitment back to active and rolls its due date forward to the first date that hasn't passed yet. A monthly bill closed in May and reopened in September comes back due in September, not May — you won't land on a pile of missed cycles you never owed.

Two things Reopen doesn't do:

• It doesn't restore a balance. A loan that finished because its remaining balance reached zero reopens at zero. If it wasn't really finished, edit the remaining amount.
• It isn't for paused commitments. A paused one is resumed, not reopened — the action for it says Resume.

A savings goal reopens the same way, with no date to move.

Deleting is the one thing you can't take back, and it takes the payment history with it. When you're not sure, cancel instead: it stops the reminders and takes the commitment out of Upcoming, and it's still there if you change your mind.

Only before any money is recorded against it. Once a commitment has a payment in its history, an amount still to pay off, or a balance you've been saving up, its currency is fixed.

Nothing recorded yet. Pick the new currency and Surrah converts the amounts for you. The form shows what each amount becomes at today's rate before you save, and that figure is exactly what gets saved. If the rate can't be fetched right now, Surrah says so and holds the save — it won't store a foreign amount it has no rate for.

Something already recorded. Surrah stops and explains why. Changing the currency at this point wouldn't convert anything; it would relabel money that has already moved, turning 300 USD of real payments into 300 OMR overnight. Every total that commitment feeds would be wrong, with nothing to show which figures were real.

Create a new commitment in the currency you want instead. Surrah offers that from the same message and copies over the name, type and schedule. You type the amount yourself, so you get to check it against the real bill rather than trusting a conversion. The old commitment keeps its history — complete it or cancel it, and it moves to Closed, where it stays readable.

Paying in a different currency is fine. This is only about the currency a commitment is denominated in. A commitment in OMR can be paid by a charge in USD: Surrah converts the payment before taking it off the balance, so the balance stays in the commitment's own currency.

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.

Yes. Open the expense, tap ⋯, and choose Pays a commitment.

When a bank message comes from a merchant tied to one of your commitments, Surrah asks you first ("Is this your … payment?") unless that commitment's payment is recorded From bank messages. If you answered Not this, or haven't answered yet, the charge stays an ordinary expense. Check the commitment or the expense for a waiting question before you link by hand.

Some charges Surrah can't connect at all. A bank shortens a merchant name, you pay from a card Surrah can't see, the rent transfer looks like every other transfer. Those charges land in your expenses as ordinary spending, and the commitment sits there looking unpaid.

Linking settles it in three taps. Pick the commitment the charge paid and confirm: it becomes that commitment's payment, the overdue flag clears, and a loan, credit card or instalment balance drops. If this is the cycle the commitment was waiting on, the due date moves to the next one. No second expense is created — the charge you already have is simply filed where it belongs.

Sometimes Surrah leaves a charge alone on purpose. If that commitment is already paid for this cycle, a further charge from the same merchant stays an ordinary expense rather than pushing your due date another month out. That's the rule working, not a miss — there's more in I paid the same commitment twice this month.

Picked the wrong one? The same menu offers Unlink, for about a cycle afterwards. There's a full walkthrough in the guide Link an expense to a commitment.

Because a cycle is closed once. The payment that closes this month moves the date to next month; a second payment in the same month is recorded, but the date stays where it is.

You'll still see that second payment in the commitment's history, and on a loan, credit card or instalment the balance drops again. What doesn't happen is a second jump forward — two charges in September shouldn't leave you due in November.

Bank messages follow the same rule, from the other side. If you've already paid this cycle (marked it paid, linked a charge, or answered Yes) and another charge arrives from that merchant, such as a usage bill on top of the subscription or an extra top-up, Surrah leaves it as an ordinary expense. It doesn't ask about it and doesn't attach it to the commitment. Your schedule doesn't move, and the charge still counts in your spending like any other.

The one exception is a cycle Surrah recorded itself on the due date. There it asks whether to replace that automatic record with the real charge, or replaces it straight away when the commitment's payment is recorded From bank messages.

Backdated payments work the same way. Record a payment with a date from a cycle that's already gone by, and it's filed against that cycle: it's in the history, it comes off the balance, and the schedule is untouched. Four months of catch-up payments entered in one sitting don't push you four months ahead.

If the second charge was the real payment and the first one wasn't, undo the first — Unlink it from its expense, or manage it from the commitment — then record the right one.

Open the Commitments tab, tap the ⋯ menu at the top, and choose Hidden merchants. Find the merchant and tap Suggest again.

Every merchant you've turned down is on that list, with the reason underneath:

• Never suggested — you chose Never suggest, and Surrah won't raise that merchant again.
• Hidden until 12 Dec 2026 — you chose Not now, which holds the suggestion for three months. Once that date passes, the merchant drops off the list on its own and suggestions resume; there's nothing to undo.

Suggest again takes the merchant off the list straight away. Next time Surrah spots a recurring charge from it, the suggestion comes back.

It doesn't bring back the suggestion you dismissed, and it doesn't touch a single expense — those charges were always in your spending, hidden merchant or not. Hiding a merchant only stops Surrah proposing a new commitment for it.

The list is yours alone. It's tied to your account, not to a space, so hiding a merchant never changes what anyone you share a space with sees.

If the list is empty, nothing is hidden — that's the usual state.

They are the three answers to one question, How is the payment recorded? You'll find it under Settings when you open a commitment, and under Recording payments when you create or edit one.

Manually. The commitment waits for you: you record each payment with Mark paid or by linking a charge. When a bank message arrives from the commitment's merchant, Surrah asks, "Is this your … payment?", and records nothing until you answer. Once the due date passes with nothing recorded, the commitment shows as late until you record the payment.

On the due date. Surrah records the payment itself the moment the due date arrives and moves the commitment to the next cycle — whether or not a bank message ever turns up. It's for the payments you know will be taken: the standing order, the rent, the subscription that has never once failed. Those payments read Scheduled in the history. If the real bank message arrives afterwards, Surrah asks whether it should replace that record. It's free.

From bank messages (Surrah+). The charge counts as the payment straight away, with nothing to tap, and reads Auto-matched from SMS in the history. If no charge has arrived by the due date, Surrah records the cycle on the due date anyway, then swaps in the amount the bank actually took when the message arrives and leaves the due date where it is. This option only appears on commitments Surrah has tied to a merchant from your bank messages.

New subscriptions, bills and insurance start on On the due date when Surrah recognises the merchant — the ones you add from a brand tile — and you can change that in the form, when you create the commitment or any time after.

Whichever you pick, once a cycle is paid a further charge from that merchant stays an ordinary expense. And none of them adds an expense: the bank message is already in your spending, and recording the payment against the commitment doesn't count it twice.

You can change the option at any time, and it doesn't rewrite the past. On the due date applies from the next due date. Switching to From bank messages doesn't answer questions already waiting for you.

On an older version of the app you'll see a Record on the due date switch instead: on means On the due date, off means Manually.

Answer Yes if that charge paid the commitment. Answer Not this if it was something else from the same merchant: a top-up, an extra purchase, a one-off.

Surrah asks because a bank message tells it who charged you, not what for. Rather than guess, and risk marking a month paid with the wrong charge, it checks with you.

• Yes records the charge as the commitment's payment, the same as linking it yourself. If this is the cycle the commitment was waiting on, the due date moves on.
• Not this keeps it as an ordinary expense. You won't be asked about it again.

Replace or Keep? You'll see these instead when the payment is recorded On the due date and Surrah has already recorded this cycle for you. Replace puts the real charge in place of the automatic record and corrects the amount; the due date doesn't move again. Keep leaves the automatic record and the charge as they are.

There's no deadline, but waiting has an effect. Questions don't expire. Until you answer, though, the payment isn't recorded, so a commitment recorded Manually shows as late once its due date passes.

Rather not be asked? With Surrah+, open the commitment, tap How is the payment recorded? and choose From bank messages. Charges from that merchant then count as its payment without a question. The guide Confirming payments from bank messages covers the rest.

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.

No. An extra payment comes off the loan's balance, not off your instalment. Your instalment stays the same amount and stays due on the same date. What changes is how many instalments are left: with a smaller balance, the loan is paid off sooner.

Right after you pay, Surrah shows how much sooner, for example Payoff moved Aug 2028 → Mar 2028 · 5 payments fewer.

Keep in mind that an extra payment isn't this month's instalment. If an instalment is due, it still needs paying, and the commitment waits for it as usual.

Want to pay more every month instead? Try the What if I pay more each time? slider on the loan to see the effect first, then open Edit, raise the amount, and bring Ends on earlier until Balance ≈ shows what you still owe.

Because Surrah counts your place from the date the circle started and its schedule, not from the payments recorded in the app. If you joined four months ago and pay monthly, four payments have already come due, so it shows 4 of 12 even with an empty history.

If the number looks wrong, open the commitment, tap Edit, and check its start date and Number of payments. See Set the number of payments.

Because Amount varies is on for it. Once you've paid it for two different due dates, Surrah shows the average of what you paid for the last 3 instead of your estimate, marked avg, for example ~35 OMR · avg. Until then, your own estimate stands.

An Extra payment doesn't count toward the average, and neither does a payment Surrah recorded for you on the due date. To go back to a fixed amount, open the commitment, tap Edit, turn off Amount varies and enter the amount. See Bills whose amount changes.

Because the commitment is in one currency and the bank took the payment in another. The payment row shows both, for example 100 USD · charged 39.150 OMR:

• The first amount is what counts toward the commitment, in its own currency.
• charged is what the bank actually took from your account.

On a bill, a subscription or another repeating payment, if the charge converts to within 5% of the expected amount, Surrah counts the expected amount, because the difference is usually the bank's exchange fee. A bigger difference counts as it is, so you can see that the price changed.

On a Loan, a Credit card or an Instalment plan, the converted charge always counts exactly as it is, so the balance left stays accurate.

Your spending shows the charged amount, because that's the money that left your account.

When you link a bank charge to a commitment yourself, Surrah may ask Match future charges? It asks when the merchant name in the bank message isn't one Surrah already uses for that commitment, for example a subscription that sometimes shows up under a different name.

• Yes, match them: future charges with that merchant name count as payments for this commitment. If the commitment records payments From bank messages, Surrah links them for you. Otherwise, it asks you first.
• Not now: the charge you linked stays linked, and nothing else changes.

Surrah doesn't ask when another of your commitments already uses that name, for example several Apple subscriptions that all show up under one name. It couldn't tell which commitment a charge belongs to.

Surrah stops matching a name when you link a charge with that name to a different commitment, when you Unlink the last charge with that name from the commitment, or when you delete the commitment.

It's how an Insurance commitment shows its due date. Your current cover runs until that date, which is when the next premium is due, for example Covered until 12 Mar 2027.

On a policy paid Yearly, Renewal due appears 30 days before that date. Paying the premium with Mark paid renews the cover for another 12 months. See Insurance renewal.

Nothing happens on its own. When a Rent commitment has a Contract ends date, Renewal due appears 30 days before it and the commitment asks Did you renew it? Until you answer, the rent keeps its schedule and its full amount. Once the date has passed, the notice stays and reads Contract ended 12 Mar 2027.

• Renewed moves the contract end 12 months later, unless you pick another date, and lets you enter an optional new amount. Nothing else changes.
• Ended completes the commitment. It keeps its payment history and no longer counts in your Monthly total.

See Renewing your rent contract.

A charge counts as a price change when the amount it counts for differs from the commitment's price by more than 1%. Rounding, like 5.128 charged instead of 5.130, isn't a change.

A charge in another currency is converted first, and anything within 5% of the price counts as the usual price, because banks add exchange fees.

Surrah asks Price changed? once for each new price, and only Surrah+ subscribers see the question.

When you pick Subscriptions in Commitments, the line Cancelled this year counts the subscriptions you've cancelled since 1 January, and saving adds up what they cost you each month. A yearly subscription counts as a twelfth of its price.

The amount is shown in your main currency. The line appears once you've cancelled at least one subscription this year.

Your goal's Target date went by before you reached the target, so the goal shows Target date passed. Its status doesn't change: it isn't completed and it isn't overdue. It keeps its balance, you can keep adding to it, and Surrah sends no notification.

Tap Extend to pick a new date and get a new pace, or leave it as it is. See On track or behind.

Besides your payments, a credit card's balance changes for three reasons, and each one shows in the commitment's History section:

• Card charge: new spending. On a linked card, each purchase from a bank message adds to the balance. On a card you enter by hand, Add new spending does.
• Bank adjustment: when your bank's statement message reports a different outstanding amount, Surrah sets the balance to the bank's figure and records the difference. It's negative when the bank says you owe less.
• A statement you entered: when you answer What's this month's statement balance?, the balance becomes your figure, and any difference shows as a Bank adjustment too.

Deleting a purchase, or moving it to another account, takes it back off the balance. Spending you added by hand can be removed with Undo. New spending never counts as the month's payment.