Overwhelmed by your finances? It's not you, it's your tools.

Most budgeting apps are built for categorizing, not deciding. Workbench focuses on how big your budget should be, not just how it's sliced up.

Desktop app — available for macOS & Windows

How it works

Rather than being handed a budget, you build one. Here's the loop.

Guided setup

A series of questions that will pre-populate your forecasts

  • Completely private. The data never leaves your machine.

Clean up what really happened

Transactions have a lot of noise. Removing that noise makes it easier to understand your situation.

All Accounts, Transactions, and Balances in One Place

Categorize Transactions

Split transactions

  • You and three friends go out to dinner for $150. You pay and they each Venmo you $50.
  • Split the charge — $100 for the group share, $50 for yours.
  • Mark the $100 share and two Venmo payments as transfers — only the true expense is left: your $50 portion.

Spread out big purchases and income spikes over time

  • Spread out a bonus to all 12 months
  • Spread out a home renovation over several years

Project it forward

Because knowing where you're going will inform you what you should budget today.

Fine-tuned Forecasting

  • Forecast a raise, a child, a home purchase, etc.
  • Forecast as high-level or fine-tuned as you like

Test the tradeoffs

Side by side comparison of different scenarios because life can go in many different directions.

Scenario Planning

  • Compare buying a house vs. renting one.
  • Compare how a car purchase effects when you'll be able to retire.

Set a working number

Not a rule you're locked into — a starting point

Your monthly budget $0

Track, then adjust

When life shifts, feed it back into the forecast.

Budget vs. Actual Insights

  • Compare those plans versus your actual spending.

And all of it runs locally. Your finances and data never leave your machine.

Philosophy

Understanding can't be handed to you.

It has to be worked for. Your finances are the same. So I built a tool that rewards doing the work, not skipping it.

Pricing

Free to use. $8.99/month for easy bank account syncing.

Similarly capabable tools I found cost $250 a month.

Free

always

Upload statements manually. All other features included.

$8.99 / month

auto-refresh

Automatic bank account syncing.

Cancel any time. Downgrading to free keeps all your data.

Coming soon

See what your current path is actually costing you

No spam, just a single heads-up when it's ready.

One person. Ten years.

Workbench started as a spreadsheet built on a Mint export, because nothing else did what I needed. Ten years and a few hundred iterations later, it's an app. I'm building the next chapter in public at @GardenStudio__.