Allowances — User Guide
This guide explains how families use the Allowances app: parents set up allowances and chores, children track money and goals, and everyone stays aligned on spending and savings.
Overview
Allowances helps families teach real-world money habits. Parents manage the household account: add children, assign allowances and chores, approve spending, and review activity. Children sign in with a PIN, see their balance, request spending, work through chores, and save toward goals.
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 Apps by Dad site). After joining, they use the same family data as the primary parent.
Child sign-in
Each child 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 shows each child at a glance: balance, upcoming chores, and pending items that need attention. Tap a child to open their detail sheet for allowances, chores, rewards, fines, goals, transfers, and more.
Bottom navigation
- Home — Family overview and child cards.
- Allowances — Browse and manage allowance schedules and templates.
- Chores — Chore assignments, due dates, and review.
- Fines — Fine templates and history when rules are broken.
- Rewards — Reward templates and one-off rewards.
Quick actions
From the dashboard menu, quick actions can include adding a child, reviewing chore completions, handling spending requests, opening spend history, and other shortcuts depending on what is pending.
Recording spending
Parents can log cash or card spending for a child so the in-app balance matches real life. You can record spending from the child sheet or from flows that list “record spending,” with 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 may move to “spent” when the purchase happens, depending on your workflow.
Savings goals
Kids can create goals and move money from their balance toward a target. Parents can see progress when viewing the child.
Transfers
Where enabled, children may move money between spendable balance and savings goals.
Transaction history
Recent activity helps children understand what changed their balance.
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 recognition for good behaviour. Fines reduce balance when something goes wrong. Both can be tied to templates for consistency.
Spend history
Parents can review spending history per child, filtered by time and child, to reconcile with requests and logged purchases.
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.