Back in April I wrote about why we’re moving Banktivity from a document-based app to a new, unified library-style app. Since then, we’ve been hard at work making that vision real and today I want to share a glimpse of where things stand.
As a brief reminder, with the new Organizer, the term “Ledger” has replaced what was formerly known as documents. Ledgers contain an entire, independent set of accounts, categories, investments, goals, budget and so on. Many customers will only have one Ledger for the finances they manage. But we also know there is a good number of customers out there that manage finances across family members, non-profits and small businesses – for these customers, support for multiple Ledgers is crucial.
UI sneak peak
The most exciting milestone so far: the Organizer UI is now up and running on both Mac and iOS. You’ll see a clean, SwiftUI-driven design that makes managing your Ledgers feel simpler and more consistent, no matter which device you’re on. SwiftUI has let us keep the look and feel aligned across platforms while also preparing us for what Apple may throw at us next.
Screenshots don’t quite capture the responsiveness and polish, but they’ll give you a sense of how it’s shaping up.
You’ll notice that it’s easy to tell the state of each ledger. For example, in both screenshots, “Albert’s Finances” is synced and downloaded locally to the device. Whereas “My Finances” isn’t downloaded locally on either device. In the Mac screenshot you’ll also see that there are two ledgers that are entirely local to the device and aren’t syncing at all. Similarly, in both screenshots, you can see there are two different Banktivity User Accounts, each with totally separate and isolated ledgers.
Under the hood: the foundation is built
While UI is what you see, most of the hard work has been in the architecture. The Library framework — the backbone that replaces our old document system — is in place. That means we can now reliably connect your Banktivity User Account with all of your Ledgers, whether local or synced to the cloud. This under-the-hood work sets the stage for background sync, widgets, shortcuts, and a smoother multi-device experience.
What we’re working on next
The big focus now is onboarding. We’re building a new assistant that helps first-time users get set up quickly: creating a Ledger, signing in, connecting accounts. Along with that, we’re experimenting with a fresh assistant-style interface that guides you through key steps. We’ve also designed this new assistant to behave more consistently across platforms.
Still a work in progress
There’s plenty left to do before this ships. Onboarding needs polish, migration tools need more testing, and we’re continuing to refine how background sync behaves across devices. But the core is there, and it’s exciting to finally see the Organizer running live inside Banktivity.
That’s where we are today: a modern UI, a solid new foundation, and some thoughtful new helpers in the works. We’re making steady progress toward the kind of seamless, Apple-native experience we know our customers expect.
As always, thanks for following along!
- Building the Future of Banktivity: Organizer Progress Report - October 17, 2025
- Filed Away Forever: Why We Built The Organizer - April 25, 2025
- Banktivity 9.5 and Monthly Subscriptions - October 18, 2024
This is looking good. Thanks for your hard work, as always.
Very excited about the future OS integrations possible with all of these changes, particularly across the whole Apple ecosystem.
Also noticed that this is v10.0.0 – makes sense as this underlying overhaul of the file structure is a big update. I do hope we’ll see some UI modernisation as part of this, including some improvements to the way PDF reports are generated (ie. tables not showing shading/colours), etc.
Anyway, keep up the great work. Can’t wait to see it up and running.
I suppose updating the underlying architecture of Banktivity is valuable to better operate in the Apple ecosystem. But I’m also hoping that V10 brings some basic functional improvements. A real ad hoc report generator and more extensive operation of existing reports on the iPad are top of my list.. A new architecture may be important but it doesn’t ‘pay the rent’ ……..
I hope you use this opportunity to simplify both the subscription service and the level of engagement. Like many of your loyal users, I use Banktivity only as a ledger, with no connections to any financial institutions. It would be nice if you included a switch for a Ledger-Only installation at a reduced price.
In any case, keep up the great work!!
Once again you are focusing on the Mac version as the primary version and the iOS versions as some distant side kicks. When are you working on true parity? When you started with the subscription models you promised more frequent MEANINGFUL updates and here we are, near the end of 2025 with no real refresh for well over a year. The last version 9 was released in beta in April of 2023 with the full version sometime in 2024. Based on your blog above we are nowhere near any release date for version 10. Probably near the end of 2026? Your competitors are leaps and bounds ahead of you. Honestly, the only reason I stay with your software is your complex split transaction feature (credits and debits in one transaction). Even your developer blog are very sparse these days. Your users aren’t really getting informed about a roadmap or anything else worth waiting for. Like another comment above said, architecture changes are good, but they don’t pay the rent.
I feel like I must not have written this blog post well enough as moving to the Organizer brings a major part of the app under a single shared codebase across Mac and iOS. This is the opposite of focusing just on a single platform. We’ve released a significant amount of new features, improvements and fixes. Please check out our release notes: https://www.banktivity.com/content/releases/notes.php
I will try to do better with more frequent blog posts, however, one of the challenging aspects is that writing about overhauling data storage behind the scenes isn’t very “sexy” so there hasn’t been much to write about.
I understood this to be the case, but I’m also a developer so probably could read between the lines. I’m imagining the iPad version to be very similar to the Mac version, and as powerful – with multi-window support, menus, etc, with the iPhone version being a visually smaller version the iPad version, but with the same functionality.
The ability to have more than one Banktivity user on a single device with background syncing is going to be great too.
I do very much hope we’ll see some UI polish and modernisation, with more info displayed in a single pane (eg. account summary/chart at top, with ledger beneath – or, for a share, the price history chart/summary at the top with details on lots below for historical visualisation), improved reports (with PDF charts preserving formatting/colours, ability to rotate page to landscape for PDFs) and generally more modern looking charts (it may be just a matter of colours/shadows/shapes/corners to be honest).
Anyway, I’m sure it’s going to be great and I hope we don’t have to wait too long. I understand that these backend changes take forever to do, often result in little outward changes (initially), etc. but I also know that it often paves the way for new ideas & features, often things that could not be implemented without these underling changes.
Sometimes the old data model or architecture really limits what you can do. I ran into this problem with my app. A major version update was visually not much different and I got lots of complaints… but what I’ve been able to do because of those changes has since changed everyone’s minds.
Still looking for a better way for managing credit card cycles. So that I can build report for cash flow that incorporates both expenses from current month, plus expenses on credit card that is paid now, but that were done in past months.
Different ledgers or connectivity to banks are not very appealing to me, but I get the geist of it.