A long history of documents.
One of the powerful and unique features of Banktivity is the ability to track independent sets of accounts. Each set of accounts can live in its own document. I love examples, so let’s walk through one. Suppose you track your family finances but also help manage the books for a small non-profit. You’d want to keep these completely separate—no accidental overlap. In Banktivity, that’s as simple as creating two separate documents, stored as independent files on your disk.
That’s all well and good, but since this is the Developer’s Blog, let’s dive into some of the challenges this approach has created—and more importantly, how we’re evolving to improve the user experience.
Document-Based vs. Library-Based Apps
In app-speak, Banktivity has traditionally been what’s known as a document-based app. It lets you create and open independent files (or documents), each with its own data. In contrast, many modern apps—Music, Calendar, Photos—are library-based. These apps typically have a single window and a unified data set.
We’ve long appreciated the flexibility our document model provides. But in practice, most of our customers use only a single file. And more critically, this architecture makes it much harder to integrate Banktivity with the broader Apple ecosystem.
Integration challenges
Imagine saying, “Hey Siri, what’s my Citi credit card balance?” Let’s assume, generously, that Siri interprets you correctly. For her to respond with the right information, she’d need to know which Banktivity document contains that account. And here lies the problem—Banktivity doesn’t centrally track documents. They’re just files on disk, and users can move or rename them at any time. It’s not feasible (or reliable) for the app to index and surface all documents to Siri.
This same limitation affects other technologies we’d love to support—like Shortcuts, Widgets, Mac menu bar applet, Siri search and better Apple Watch integration.
Where’s the money?
Banktivity makes a solid effort to reopen your most recently used documents on launch. For most users, this “just works.” But we can’t guarantee it. If someone turns off recent document tracking or adjusts other system settings, Banktivity may not reopen any document—and the user might assume their data is lost. That leads to support emails, searches through Finder, and confusion.
We’ve worked hard to cache document paths and make recovery robust. Still, it feels like we’re fighting the system. And don’t even get me started on what happens when iCloud Drive offloads a document you haven’t opened in a while.
The old scaffolds
Over time, we bolted new functionality onto this document-based foundation—sometimes awkwardly. Take Banktivity ID, for instance. Originally, each document had to be logged into a Banktivity ID to support cloud sync. That model worked when we launched iBank 5.5, but we never had the time to refactor documents themselves. The result? User accounts and documents became tightly bound in ways that weren’t always intuitive.
Meet the Organizer
After years of patching and extending the document model, it’s time for a proper evolution. Today, I’m excited to introduce the Organizer—a new feature coming to Banktivity.
The Organizer brings together your Banktivity User Account (formerly called a Banktivity ID), your local and cloud-synced Ledgers—all in one unified place.
Wait, you may ask, “what is a ‘Ledger’?” — they take the place of what used to be documents.
It gives you a centralized, intuitive interface to manage your Ledgers and Banktivity User Account settings. For most customers, it’ll stay out of the way until you need it. But its presence unlocks a future full of possibilities.
With the Organizer, we can now support system-wide features like Siri Intents, Shortcuts, and Widgets. We can update your Ledgers in the background when sync changes occur—so edits made on your phone can propagate back to your Mac automatically, even if Banktivity isn’t running.
Organizer also dramatically simplifies cloud sync setup. Just log into your Banktivity User Account and—boom—there are all your cloud-synced Ledgers. Double-click or tap to open. It’s that easy. And yes, background sync is now possible—I’m particularly excited about that!
Conclusion
The shift from a document-based model to the new Organizer framework marks a major step forward for Banktivity. It simplifies how users interact with their data while laying the foundation for deeper system integration, background syncing, and a more seamless multi-device experience. Most importantly, it aligns our app with what our customers expect in 2025: effortless, intelligent, and reliable personal finance management. We’re thrilled about this change—and we think you will be too.
- Filed Away Forever: Why We Built The Organizer - April 25, 2025
- Banktivity 9.5 and Monthly Subscriptions - October 18, 2024
- Coming soon: Banktivity 9.5 - July 19, 2024