BaleineCash — Frequently asked questions

What is BaleineCash?

BaleineCash: personal accounting software. Everything stays on your own PC. No cloud, no subscription to your own data. Bank imports, budgets, portfolio…

BaleineCash helps you keep your personal finances in order and know exactly where you stand. It sorts your bank transactions for you, tracks your securities portfolio, documents your income and your assets — in your own name as well as in joint ownership, and country by country if you live abroad — helps you prepare your tax returns and stick to a budget.

Our own goal isn't to mine your data so we can sell you a new vacuum cleaner or nudge you into voting differently. We don't know your data — we have no access to it. It stays private, on your PC.

As for us: after a full working life, we go sailing. Our questions these days are the weather, the state of the sea, the state of the boat, and… how long we can keep sailing given our finances. So we needed software that handles our situation even in the middle of the Atlantic, with no internet.

BaleineCash answers our need. Maybe it will answer yours too.

Who is it for?

For the individual looking for help with a tax return.
The student learning to track spending.
The landlord with one or several flats to let, following rents and works.
The expatriate with accounts in several countries.
The person in co-ownership, often after an inheritance, who wants to see both the total and their own share.
The investor who wants a global report on their portfolio, not share by share.
The CEO who wants to keep at home, offline, a view of the accounts their accountant maintains, by importing the company's data.

Do I need to be an accountant to use it?

No.

To track your bank transactions, no accounting knowledge is needed: a chart of accounts is supplied, VAT is hidden, accounts are found by name and amounts are allocated automatically.

To follow a business, knowing what a debit and a credit are does help. And if you want to go further — depreciation, quotes, consolidation — the structure is there, ready when you are.

That is how we started ourselves. Nobody is born an accountant, and very few feel called to it. Let us remember that the first writings of humankind were accounting records. Surely not out of love, but out of necessity. And that was before tax codes were invented.

Does it connect to my bank?

No, and that is deliberate.

BaleineCash never connects to your bank and knows none of your credentials. You download the file of your transactions yourself, then you import it. It is a choice of privacy and independence.

How is it different from an app like Bankin' or Linxo?

Those services connect to your bank and store your data in the cloud. BaleineCash does the opposite: everything stays on your computer, nothing travels over the internet.

And above all, those tools do not handle co-ownership, and they struggle to produce a complete net worth statement, across countries and pro rata — which is exactly what BaleineCash was built for.

What does it run on?

Windows, with the Chrome browser — the only one we have tested. There is no Mac or Linux version.

Does it work on my phone?

No. Windows PC only.

Do I need to install anything else first?

No. The program comes ready to use, as a standalone application.

Does it need the internet to work?

No. It runs on your computer, and your licence is checked there, with no network call.

It connects in three cases only: when you buy, when a subscription expires and it fetches the next code, and when you ask it yourself to refresh your stock prices. Downloading your bank statements is your own doing, on your bank's site, outside the program.

With a permanent licence, none of those calls remains after the purchase.

Why does it open a page at `127.0.0.1`? Is that safe?

Yes. 127.0.0.1 means your own computer, not the internet.

BaleineCash is an application that runs locally and displays in your browser. Nothing leaves your machine.

A black window opens at start-up: is that normal?

Yes, it is the engine of the software. Not a spy, we promise.

The one thing to remember: leave it open while you work. Closing it stops the program.

How do I close the program properly?

Through the DATA → Quit menu. It creates a dated backup, then closes both the software and the black window.

If you close the browser window directly, no backup is made — and you will still have the black window to close by hand.

How long before I am really up and running?

Most of the initial effort is the setup: your accounts, your balance sheet hierarchy, your bank's import format. A basic chart of accounts is supplied and simplified screens let you start on day one.

If your financial life is simple — one account, one card, one country — you can start from scratch without difficulty. If it has more facets, start small: the bank account first, businesses and net worth later.

We advise starting small and seeing what you actually need.

How much does it cost?

One month free to try. After that, €49 including tax per year, or €249 once and the software is yours.

If you stop, you lose nothing: all your data stays available.

How long can I try it, and is anything held back?

Thirty days, with no sign-up and no card.

Nothing is held back: every function is there, with your own statements, on your own machine. It is the only honest way to find out whether the program suits you.

Can I restart the trial by reinstalling?

No. The trial period is tied to your computer's fingerprint, not to the program or to your accounting database. Reinstalling, or creating a new database, does not reset it.

Buy or subscribe: what is the difference?

The permanent licence is bought once. It does not expire, it is never checked again, and the program will never need the internet again.

The subscription runs twelve months and renews. At each expiry, the program fetches the code for the next period.

The program, its functions and your data are the same either way. Only the length of your right to key in entries differs.

What exactly am I paying for?

The ability to key in accounting entries. It is the only function an expired licence blocks, and it is therefore the heart of the product.

Everything else — imports, statements, budget, fixed assets, portfolio — stays open to you, licence or no licence.

Do you help with the setup?

Normally you can get going on your own.

If you would like a hand, it is possible and it is chargeable, against a quotation — and you will have to explain your situation, because we cannot configure your financial life without you. We need no banking codes, and we certainly do not want any.

Try alone first. If you get stuck, write to us.

How do I pay, and how do I get my code?

The sale is handled by our official seller, Paddle, who takes the payment and issues the invoice. Your card details are entered with them; we never see them.

Once the payment goes through, your code reaches you by email within the minute, at any hour, any day.

The code is tied to the computer from which you started the purchase. If you paid from a phone, the email points you to the activation page on our site.

Nothing has arrived

In order: check your junk folder, the email comes from desk@baleinecash.com; close BaleineCash and open it again, it re-reads the available codes at every start; if entries are still blocked, write to us.

Pasting a code by hand

The licence management screen lets you paste a code received by email. It is the same gesture for a first purchase and for a renewal.

One licence covers how many computers?

One. Your code is tied to your computer's fingerprint: it does not work elsewhere, and the licence does not allow two machines to run in parallel.

What is this "machine fingerprint"?

A technical signature of your computer, which ties the licence to that machine without another password to remember.

Copying or backing up your files to another disk does not change it.

Where do I see my expiry date?

In the User → My licence screen.

What happens when my licence expires? Do I lose my data?

No, you lose nothing.

On expiry, only the keying in of new entries is blocked. You go on consulting your whole set of accounts, exporting them and printing them. Your data stays on your disk.

My entries are blocked — why?

Because the program found no valid licence for your computer. Three possible causes: your trial has ended, your subscription has expired without the next code being fetched, or you have cancelled.

Nothing is lost. The program goes on looking for a code at every start, and a valid code reopens keying in straight away.

How does the subscription renewal work?

The official seller takes the payment at expiry and tells you beforehand. A code covering the new period is then issued.

You can do nothing at all: the program fetches it by itself, it has fourteen days for that and retries at every start. You can also paste it by hand from the email you received.

During those fourteen days, nothing changes for you.

How do I cancel?

Online, with the official seller, at any time, without a reason and without writing to us. The link is in his confirmation email and in the licence management screen.

Cancelling stops future payments. You keep full use of the program until the end of the period already paid for.

Can I stop mid-year and get the rest back?

No. The subscription is firm for twelve months: you pay for a year, you use the product for a year. The current period is refunded neither in full nor pro rata.

That is the other side of a program that works offline: once the code is issued, it is not checked again before the next expiry.

I stopped, and I want to come back

A new subscription, or a permanent licence, reopens keying in on your existing accounts. Nothing to rebuild, nothing to re-import: you pick up where you left off.

Can I get a refund?

The purchase comes after thirty days of full trial, and at the time of the order you are asked to waive the withdrawal period in exchange for immediate delivery of your code. Without that confirmation, the transaction does not take place.

A refund remains possible where a defect is established, under the conditions set out in our cancellation and refund terms.

How do I get my bank transactions?

From your bank's online area, which offers an export of your transactions — sometimes only on its website, sometimes in its app as well.

You save that CSV or Excel file on your PC, you open BaleineCash and you import it. The program guides you through defining the format, then proposes the entries.

Will it work with my bank?

In principle yes.

There is no fixed list of supported banks, because the import is configurable: you describe your bank's format once — separator, columns, date format, debit and credit in one column or two — and the setting is remembered. You create as many configurations as you have banks.

If your bank only supplies a PDF, a dedicated entry screen lets you copy and paste the text and post the entries as you go.

My bank puts everything in one column: does that work?

Yes, that exists too, and we live with it.

A splitting engine breaks the catch-all column into date, description, reference… following rules you define once.

How do I avoid importing the same transactions twice?

Before each import, BaleineCash shows you the latest transactions already recorded for that account, sorted by value date, and checks for duplicates as far as it can.

Nothing is guaranteed 100 % — banks do not always export same-day transactions — so check your balance after importing. A matching screen is there for that. This program comes out of experience.

Do I get a preview before validating my entries?

Yes, twice over.

First the file as the program understands it, split columns included. Then the entries, proposed one by one through recognition of keywords and amounts.

You validate, you correct, you add associated entries, you go back, you look up how you handled a similar case. Nothing is written without your say-so.

Can I import several accounts or several banks?

Yes. Each bank has its own import configuration, and several accounts at the same bank can share the same settings. We try as hard as possible not to make you reinvent the wheel.

How does the program know where to file a transaction?

You teach it.

On import, automatic recognition proposes a classification from keywords, formats and amounts that you define as you go. Each import is quicker than the one before.

The proposed classification is wrong: can I correct it?

Yes, you validate or correct every transaction at import time.

And every correction feeds your keyword list, which improves the following proposals — including for your other banks. You can even make the account depend on the amount or on the bank: "bank charges" will go elsewhere depending on the institution, if that is what you want.

The program takes a great deal of filing off your hands. But you stay in charge.

A transaction is half private, half business: can I split it?

Yes, a transaction can be spread across several lines.

We advise leaving the bank entry untouched, in amount and on a single account, then splitting it into as many sub-entries as you need.

I transfer money between two of my own accounts: do I get a duplicate?

The movement will indeed appear twice, going out at one bank and coming in at the other.

The answer is an interbank suspense account, which must come back to zero at the end of the period. The program's help sets out the method.

Can I key in a transaction by hand (cash, cheque, invoice…)?

Yes, a manual entry screen is provided, single or grouped, with automatic VAT handling.

For cheques we advise a suspense account: you then know at any moment which cheques you have written have not yet been debited.

If I make a mistake keying in, can it be corrected?

Yes, at any time, including long afterwards.

An entry is never destroyed — it can be brought back to zero, but it stays in the journal with its number. A journal with holes in it is no longer a journal.

You can also close periods already filed, so as not to correct by accident a month whose VAT has gone out. It is a safeguard you set yourself, and can reopen.

Can I create a budget and follow it month by month?

Yes.

You pick up last year's figures in one gesture for a quick budget, or you start from a blank sheet. You adjust your estimates along the way, as often as life requires.

For a private individual, a budget is not a machine for calculating bonuses: it is a road map. A heading, not a contract.

Can I compare what I planned with what I spent?

Yes — against the budget, against last year, or against another business.

Budgets are built per business and at balance sheet group level, not account by account: fine enough to be useful, aggregated enough to stay manageable.

I have building works: quotes, invoices, payments. Does it help?

Yes, through the notion of a project.

A project gathers several suppliers, several quotes and several invoices, even across several businesses. A report gives you the total envelope, what has been paid and what remains open, supplier by supplier.

Can I see my spending by category?

Yes, over whatever period you choose.

And not only by category: you can read your entries by account, by business, by project or by balance sheet group — which few accounting programs offer. From your whole net worth down to a single payment line, without changing tool.

I have several flats, or an activity to follow alongside my personal finances. How does that work?

Two cases.

If it is a separate legal entity with its own bank accounts, create a dedicated accounting database. You can create as many as you need, and export entries from one to another.

If it is the same estate, with accounts shared between private life and the activity, stay in one database and create businesses — grouped by manager, themselves grouped by country. You can rename those three levels as flat / street / town, or whatever speaks to you.

And if some assets are held in co-ownership, their accounts can be valued at their share within the same set of books.

How do I follow the result of a flat I let?

You create a business "flat" and post the transactions to it, at whatever level of detail suits you: net rent, service charges, building charges, insurance, taxes.

You then produce a trial balance, a balance sheet, or a rental statement: amounts called, amounts received, amounts still open, breakdown of charges. One flat, or all of them, separately or grouped.

How do I follow a renovation from quote to payment?

Through the chain project → quotes → invoices → payments, cross-checked with your accounting entries.

You key the quotes in detail or as a total, you carry them over into invoices, and you compare all three.

Can I see the total cost of a job, across all suppliers?

Yes, that is precisely what the project report is for: quotes, invoices and payments together, however many suppliers are involved.

Can I manage several properties with an overall view?

Yes. Balance sheet groups let you consolidate businesses, and even countries.

Can I bring in the reports of a letting agent?

Yes, as accounting entries — which incidentally lets you check what your agent is telling you.

Does it handle VAT?

Yes for posting it, no for declaring it.

You state that an account carries VAT and at what rate: as soon as an entry touches it, the VAT entry is posted automatically, and the income or expense account stays net.

But BaleineCash does not prepare your VAT return. There are too many countries, too many laws and too many changes — we are not SAP, and we do not cost what SAP costs. All the information is there, exportable by country and by business, and that is already a real help.

Does it do customer invoicing?

No.

The quotes and invoices module is turned towards what you receive, not towards what you issue. A customer invoice implies a customer file, chasing payments, a template compliant with your country: you probably already have a document that does that very well, and better tools exist for the rest.

I buy a boiler, a car, a kitchen. Does it handle depreciation?

Yes. You describe the item once — value, life, calculation rule, accounts — and the program works out the rest: monthly depreciation, charge for the year, accumulated total, net book value, end date.

Better still: when you post the purchase entry, it offers to create the asset record there and then, already pre-filled. You do not have to remember it later.

Do I have to post depreciation every month?

No, and that is deliberate.

You give a "depreciate up to" date whenever it suits you — quarterly, yearly, at the year end. The program works out the total due and posts only the difference. A preview shows you asset by asset what is about to be written, before you confirm.

Which depreciation rule should I choose?

The calculation is always straight-line; the rule only decides when it starts: year, half-year, quarter, month or exact day.

Depending on the country, the authorities expect one or the other. When in doubt, take the one your tax adviser uses — and above all keep the same one for all your assets: it is consistency that holds up, not refinement.

My assets are already partly depreciated elsewhere. Do I lose everything?

No. Each record provides for the accumulated total as at 31.12 and the financial year concerned. What you declare there is authoritative: the program never recalculates your past, it starts from that figure.

If you have many assets, an Excel import takes them over in bulk from a supplied template, with a line-by-line control report.

Land is not depreciated. And an asset I sell on?

Two distinct mechanisms.

An asset you do not depreciate down to zero is frozen: it stays on the balance sheet, but nothing more is posted on it. Typically land.

An asset that leaves your estate is disposed of, with its date, its reason and its disposal value. It drops out of future calculations but stays viewable — which is not the same as deleting it.

Can I produce a fixed asset schedule for my accountant?

Yes: a statement grouped by balance sheet group then by account, with purchase value, depreciated value and net value, subtotals at every level and a grand total. Printable and exportable to Excel.

You can also display, for a given asset, all its depreciation entries since purchase — handy for justifying an accumulated total.

Can I separate my accounts by country to prepare each return?

Yes — multi-country is one of the reasons the program exists.

Within one database you separate by country and by business, and you export by country. If your countries do not share a currency, you create one database per currency and consolidate afterwards into a holding.

Either way, you keep a global view of your net worth and a detailed view country by country.

Does it handle several currencies?

Yes and no.

You can post credit card entries in foreign currency, and declare the currencies you want to follow. The program reminds you of the last rate you used.

But it will not fetch public rates: the rate that concerns you is the one your bank applied, and it is on your statement. For a listed security, the price already carries the rate. An automatic public rate would make sense in neither case.

Does the program fill in or file my tax return?

No. It helps you prepare it — statements, tables, exports — but there is no filing with the authorities.

You do choose your level of detail, though: net salary, or gross salary less contributions and tax as shown on your payslip. Enough to check what your employer or the tax office have calculated.

Am I liable if a calculation is wrong?

Yes. BaleineCash is a tool, not tax advice, and there is neither a tax guarantee nor an accounting guarantee.

An error in a program, in data or in keying in does happen. Detecting it is the job of regular accounting checks — no tool does that on its own. We come from finance departments; we have seen a few.

Does it handle several languages?

The interfaces exist in French, German, English and Spanish, switchable at any time.

Your data, however, is not translated: the names of accounts, businesses and balance sheet groups stay in the language you created them in.

Can I see both the total of an asset and my share?

Yes — not on the same printout, but yes.

You set an ownership share per account, and you then produce your statements either at gross 100 % value or pro rata to your share.

Can I share the accounts of an asset with the other co-owners?

Yes, both ways.

You export the part of your accounts that concerns the jointly held asset and pass it on to them. And you can import their journal into your own accounts, with an import protocol you save for next time.

Can several of us work on the same accounts at once?

No. There is no real-time collaborative mode: sharing happens by exchanging data, not simultaneously.

Can I set accounts with their own ownership share?

Yes, and it is one of the distinctive features of the program.

Within the same set of books you can have a bank account of your own at 100 % and a shared account at 50 %, each with its expense accounts at the same rate. Same gross value, different value pro rata.

You can even go down to 0 %, and we advise doing so: it lets you take out of a joint account the share belonging to the other party, without polluting your own income statement.

Just be aware of what that implies: an account at 0 % is worth zero in the co-ownership view. It is a real advantage and a real point of vigilance — the program's help explains how to keep it clean.

Can I follow my shares and my funds?

Yes, through a module tracking securities identified by their ISIN code: shares, funds, bonds, ETFs and cryptocurrencies.

Can I import my broker's statements?

Yes, through the same import system as for banks.

If your custodian keeps a second journal — accumulations, stock splits, movements with no impact on your bank account — that can be imported too.

Does it fetch prices automatically?

Yes, from Yahoo Finance, day by day or at a chosen date. You trigger the retrieval yourself, and you can make retrospective calls.

Can I follow the composition of my portfolio?

Yes, and it is probably the most useful part.

To our mind, the risk in a portfolio lies in its spread and in its indirect holdings. The program retrieves the composition of funds and ETFs, and you can rebuild your portfolio by geographical zone, by industry, or follow a few flagship names — Amazon, Nvidia, Apple…

You discover the concentrations you did not suspect.

Can I follow my capital gains?

Yes. The program takes the difference between purchase value and sale value, and follows the purchase cost on a FIFO basis — first in, first out.

Are there portfolio charts?

Yes. You save portfolio values at different dates and draw charts of their evolution from them, along with analysis and comparison tables.

What can I produce or print?

Annual, monthly and budget balance sheets, trial balances, account statements, position statements, rental statements, a fixed assets statement — all printable and exportable to Excel and PDF.

Can I compare several years?

Yes, the accounting journal keeps the last 10 years.

Can I choose the period (month, quarter, year)?

We follow the month and the year.

Are the exports in my language?

Yes, in the language of your interface.

Where is my data? In the cloud?

On your computer only, in local files. Nothing is stored at the publisher's.

Can the publisher see my accounts?

No. There is no central server: nobody but you has access to your data.

You can of course export it yourself, raw or as a report, for your tax adviser or your accountant.

Does the software store my banking credentials?

No. Since it never connects to your bank, it holds no login and no password. That is deliberate.

Is it password protected?

By default the program logs you in automatically — the convenience of a personal PC. You can require the password at every launch under User → My account.

Be aware that your data is not encrypted: losing your password loses you your user, not your accounts. On a shared machine, it is disk encryption that protects you.

How do I back up? Is it automatic?

A dated backup is created automatically on every clean exit from the program, in a dedicated folder. You can create others whenever you like.

Your databases are standard .db files: copy them, open them with an SQL tool, export to Excel or CSV. They are yours.

What if my disk fails?

Your local backups are there to recover from a wrong move — not from a disk failure.

Keeping a copy off your machine remains your responsibility: external drive, USB stick, NAS.

What becomes of my data if I stop using BaleineCash?

It stays on your disk, in standard .db databases, independent of the licence.

You go on consulting, producing reports and exporting. Only the keying in of new entries is blocked.

Can I consult my accounts from my phone or from outside?

No.

If I use it from two places, do I risk overwriting my data?

Your database is local and single-user.

You can put it on a NAS to share it, or work from two machines — but only if the data is replicated, and never while you are working: an open database cannot be replicated cleanly.

If replication has not had time to do its job before you switch machines, you will find an out-of-date version. It is for you to judge.

A word on the licence. Your code is tied to the fingerprint of one computer. On the second machine you can consult, produce statements and export, but not key in entries.

How do I receive updates?

As a file that you drop into a dedicated folder — the same procedure as the installation. The program upgrades itself, after an automatic backup.

Is my data at risk during an update?

No. Your data and your settings are in an area that updates never touch, except to widen the database when a new function requires it.

What happens to all this if the publisher stops the product one day?

Your data stays available and readable: these are open databases. Only the keying in of new entries would be blocked at the end of the licence.

You will never be locked in with your own data.

And should we have to stop, subscribers still running would be sent a code with no expiry: nobody is left with keying in blocked for want of someone to ask.

Is support by phone or by email?

By email only.

Do you answer in the evening and at weekends?

No, support is not provided in the evening or at weekends.

Is there a manual or tutorials?

Built-in help that you search by keyword, a glossary of accounting terms, and an explanation reachable from every screen — a double-click on the whale icon gives you the article for the screen you are on.

I am afraid of breaking something. Is it risky?

No. Keying errors can be corrected, automatic backups let you go back, and safeguards exist — you can close periods already filed so that nothing touches them again.

Does this software have legal standing for tax or the authorities?

No. It is a personal tracking tool, with no official standing and no filing with the authorities. You remain responsible for your returns.

Accounts kept regularly are good evidence of good faith, but we seek no tax certification.

Can I start simply and do more later?

Yes, and we recommend it.

Start by tracking the spending on your main account. Add a budget. Then switch on the advanced functions when you need them — not before.

The tool can grow with you.