A small purchase is easy to forget; a month of them is harder to understand. But handing a finance app access to a bank account can feel like too much just to keep a spending record. Cenno is aimed at that gap: it is an iPhone and iPad expense tracker for people willing to enter transactions themselves, with records and calculations kept on their devices.
The tradeoff is central to the product. Cenno does not present itself as a way to pull in account activity automatically. It offers a personal ledger instead, with manual entry, budgets and balances. Its product page describes an app that works without an account or bank login, and says data stays on the device unless a user enables their own iCloud sync.
A ledger you fill in yourself
The basic job is recording what came in or went out, then making those entries useful later. Cenno's landing page describes an entry screen that opens on a keypad. You type an amount, can use a simple expression, choose details such as a category, and save. Templates and a “Save & new” option are intended to reduce repeated typing. Those choices suggest a tool built around quick, frequent logging rather than connecting accounts and importing a transaction feed in the background.
Once entries are in the ledger, Cenno says it can search merchants, notes, tags and amounts. Categories can be broken into subcategories. Receipt photos can stay with the records on the device. These details matter if a user wants to find a particular purchase later, but they also point to a responsibility: the tracker is only as complete as the information entered or imported into it.
Cenno has a free plan with a paid upgrade. The developer says the free tier includes unlimited records, budgets, export and backup. Optional Pro features include importing statements, multiple ledgers, recurring entries, reports and themes. Statement import is not automatic account access: the stated workflow is to export a CSV from a supported service and open it in Cenno. That extra step, and the paid tier for imports, will not suit someone looking for a hands-off view of their finances.
Budgets and balances, not just a list of purchases
Cenno's budget feature is more than a monthly spending total. The app describes budgets for categories, a daily allowance that changes as spending accumulates, and rollover for money left unspent at the end of a month. This is for someone who wants a planned amount to guide day-to-day choices, rather than only reviewing what happened after the fact.
It also calculates balances from a starting figure and the records that follow. The developer describes a reconcile action for adjusting a balance without rewriting the ledger's history. Credit limits and statement or due-date reminders are included, as are refunds and reimbursements that offset an expense rather than counting as income. Together, these are useful accounting conveniences for a household ledger, but they do not turn Cenno into a bank account or a full financial-planning service.
Privacy depends on the setup you choose
Cenno says it has no account requirement and stores the ledger locally. Sync is optional and uses the user's iCloud, rather than a Cenno-operated server. The page says sync is off by default, and that exporting a backup is available without paying. That makes the privacy model understandable: keep one copy on a device, or use iCloud to carry the ledger between Apple devices. It also means users need to make a deliberate choice about backup and transfer when changing devices.
This is an iOS app, listed for iPhone and iPad, with the page specifying iOS 17 or later. Someone looking for a browser-based ledger or an app for another mobile platform will need something else. Likewise, users who expect transactions to arrive through a bank connection will find manual recording, or CSV import through Pro, a real constraint rather than a minor setup detail.
Cenno is for iPhone and iPad users who want to maintain a private, manually managed spending ledger, set category budgets and see their balances without signing into a finance service. It is not for people who want automatic bank feeds, broad platform access or a system that removes the work of keeping records current.
A quiet, private expense tracker for iPhone and iPad