Smarty Bucks — User Guide
This guide explains how families use Smarty Bucks: parents set up allowances and chores, children track money and goals, and — optionally — families can track time categories such as Screen Time or Games alongside money.
Overview
Smarty Bucks helps families teach real-world money habits. Parents manage the household account: add children, assign allowances and chores, approve spending, and review activity. Children can optionally sign in with a PIN to see their balance, request spending, work through chores, and save toward goals—or parents can manage everything on their behalf.
Data syncs across devices so parents and kids see up-to-date balances and tasks.
Getting started
Create an account
Primary parents sign up with email, verify their address when prompted, then complete family setup: family name, children, and optional preferences.
Invite another parent
A secondary parent can join using the invite link from email. That link opens a secure page to set a password (hosted on the AppsByDad site). After joining, they use the same family data as the primary parent.
Child sign-in (optional)
Child sign-in is optional. You can use Smarty Bucks from the parent account only if you prefer. When children do sign in, each uses a short PIN chosen by the family. Parents can help reset or change PINs from family settings when needed.
For parents
Home (dashboard)
The dashboard is your home screen. It shows each child at a glance: allowance balance, upcoming chores, and pending items that need attention. Tap a child's profile to open their detail sheet for allowances, chores, rewards, fines, goals, transfers, and more.
Across the top of the dashboard, stat cards show how many active allowances, chores, rewards, and fines you have. Tap a card to open that section. When something needs your attention, extra cards may appear—for example Overdue Chores, Chore Review, or Spend Requests.
At the top right, tap the grid icon for Quick Actions, or the menu (⋯) for Settings, Sync, Add Child, Add Parent, and Log Out.
Quick actions
Tap the grid icon on the dashboard to open Quick Actions. Depending on your family, shortcuts can include creating allowances or chores, giving rewards or fines (money or time), logging spend or time, reviewing chores, handling spending requests, opening spend or time history, and more.
Recording spending
Parents can log cash or card spending for a child so the in-app balance matches real life. Open a child's profile and tap Log Spend, or use Log Spend from Quick Actions on the dashboard. Enter the amount, description, category, and date.
For children
Dashboard
After entering a PIN, children see their balance, active chores, and shortcuts to allowances, spending requests, savings goals, rewards, fines, and more.
Spending requests
Children can request money for a purchase. Parents approve or decline; approved amounts can move to "spent" when the purchase happens.
Savings goals
Kids can create goals and move money from their balance toward a target. Parents can see progress when viewing the child's profile.
Transfers
Where enabled, children may use Transfer to move money between spendable balance and savings goals, or — when the family uses Time Features — transfer time between siblings.
Transaction history
Recent money activity appears in My Money History. When Time Features are on, time credits and debits appear in My Time History.
Money, chores & goals
Allowances
Parents define allowance templates and schedules (for example weekly). Payments appear in the child’s balance according to the rules you set.
Chores
Assign chores with due dates, priorities, and optional amounts. Children mark work done; parents review completions and can approve or extend deadlines when needed.
Rewards & fines
Rewards add money or time (when Time Features are enabled). Fines reduce money or deduct minutes from a time category. Use Give Reward or Issue Fine from Quick Actions and choose Money or Time on the apply screen.
Spend history
Parents can review spending history per child, filtered by time and child, to reconcile with requests and logged purchases.
Time allowances (optional)
Time Features are off by default. Existing families see no change until a parent turns them on in Settings → Preferences → Time Features.
Categories
After enabling Time Features, add categories such as Screen Time, Games, or TV. Each child has a separate balance per category. Amounts are stored in minutes (for example 90 displays as 1h 30m).
Money or time templates
Allowances, rewards, fines, and chores can each be money or time. Scheduled time allowances pay automatically on the same schedule as money allowances.
Parent actions
From parent Quick Actions (or a child's profile): Give Reward and Issue Fine with a Money | Time picker; Log Time to add or deduct minutes manually; Time History to review the family ledger. Logging time is for parents only.
Child dashboard
Children see a Total Time card when Time Features are on and they have category balances. They can expand it for a per-category breakdown and open My Time History. Money fines and rewards from the dashboard still open My Money History; time events are in My Time History.
Not included for time
Savings goals and spend requests remain money only in this version.
Settings & help
Open Settings from the parent app for account, family, notifications, preferences, security, and data export.
Help & Support includes FAQs, this user guide (link opens in the browser), email support at admin@appsbydad.com, feedback, and links to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Help hints on the dashboard can be reset from Help & Support so tips show again.
Support
Questions or feedback? Email admin@appsbydad.com or use the contact page.