Questions

Ahead does not connect to any bank. It has no Account Aggregator link (the framework other apps use to read your statements), it does not read your UPI messages or SMS, and it never asks for a bank login. Every transaction is entered by hand, which is slower on day one and the reason the budget is still accurate in month six.

Yes. Cash is an account like any other: record what you withdrew, spend from it, and reconcile it against what is actually in your wallet. A month paid mostly in notes is not a gap in the books.

Envelope budgeting is the reason to want it. You only ever assign money that has arrived, so a month with two payments and a month with none are both budgeted the same way — you divide what is actually there.

Lakh and crore grouping throughout — ₹1,08,450, never ₹108,450 — with paise shown only when there are paise, and a typographic minus so figures stay aligned in a column.

No. Reports state what happened and what they left out; the runway names the day you are tightest. What to move is your decision, and a budgeting app that starts recommending is one whose recommendations have to be right.

Money that has arrived and is not yet spoken for. It is not a forecast and it is not your balance: it is what you hold minus what you have already promised to a category. When it reaches ₹0, every rupee you have is accounted for, which is the whole objective.

A card is on your budget and holds no cash. ₹2,000 of groceries on a card is spending, so Groceries goes down, and at the same moment ₹2,000 moves into the card's payment category. The money to clear the bill is set aside as you spend, and paying the card is a transfer rather than a second expense, so no report shows you spending twice.

Split one payment across categories, so ₹5,000 at the supermarket can be ₹3,000 of groceries and ₹2,000 of something else. Move money between your own accounts without counting it as spending. Repeat a transaction, such as rent on the 1st, and skip one month without touching the rest. Reconcile against a statement, where any gap becomes a visible adjustment rather than a silent edit. And tick a row off when it shows up at the bank.

They are different facts. ₹0 means the money was there and is gone. A dash means nothing happened. Keeping them apart is how the budget can still tell you that a bill has not been paid yet.

That is the default shape. A household holds one set of books with several people on it, and the tenant is the household rather than a person — so there is no ‘sharing’ to switch on.

Three roles, enforced on the server. An owner administers — invites, renames, billing. A partner budgets exactly as an owner does and touches none of that. A viewer reads and changes nothing. A household holds up to four people in total, which is what a household is; the price does not change with the fourth.

Ahead is a web application and works in the browser on a phone. There is no app store listing, and the pages you would reach on a laptop reach every action on a 390px screen too.

Because in most Indian households money moves between people, and an EMI to a cousin is as real a commitment as one to a bank. Record the terms once and Ahead keeps the schedule, the outstanding balance and every repayment.

One agreement can be kept in step across two sets of books, so a repayment recorded on one side appears on the other. Sharing is off by default and stays optional — a loan behaves exactly as it does today until both people choose otherwise.

Yes, and this is usually the surprise. 11% flat is not 11%: on ₹1,20,000 over two years it works out at 19.87% reducing. Ahead shows the effective rate beside the quoted one, and what a lump-sum prepayment would change.

On a reducing-rate loan, yes. It works out both ways of using the same lump sum, a shorter term or a smaller instalment, side by side, and the shorter term saves far more, because interest is paid for time. On a flat-rate loan it refuses and says why: the interest was fixed by the original amount and term, so paying early changes nothing, and showing you a saving you would not receive would be worse than showing nothing.

No. The schedule is what should happen under the agreed terms, and what did happen is the repayments you record. The two are kept apart all the way to the screen, so a planned instalment is never shown as a payment received, and a late or different payment simply shows as what it was.

Each side keeps its own books, so the two figures can differ, and when they do, Ahead shows both and names the difference without deciding who is right. A repayment the other person records reaches you as a claim that you confirm or reject. Rejecting keeps the row, so a rejection made by mistake is one press to undo, and nothing they do, including leaving, can delete your record of the loan.

Yes, as a read-only link to that one loan, which opens without an account. It can carry a password and an expiry, both changeable afterwards. Your account names, categories, other transactions and private note never appear on it, and neither does a repayment you have not confirmed.

60 days free with no card, then ₹199 a month or ₹1,499 a year, or ₹4,999 once for the founding 100 households, billed per household rather than per person — up to four people on one set of books, at one price.

No. There is no UPI Autopay or e-NACH mandate, so nothing is ever debited automatically — you pay for each period yourself, and we email you before one ends. A lifetime plan has nothing to renew at all.

The budget becomes read-only. Nothing is deleted, and you can start paying again and pick up where you left off.

Everything the household has, as a zip of CSVs — accounts, categories, budget months, transactions, payees, loans, loan events, repeating rules and the wishlist, plus a README explaining each file. It works whether or not you are paying.

Nobody yet — Ahead has not launched. There are no reviews, ratings or press to show, and this site invents none. The trial is free and takes no card, so the quickest way to judge it is to use it.

Yes, permanently, from Settings. Export and deletion shipped together on the view that neither is honest without the other.