Getting Started

1. Enter your email address and choose a secure password on the signup form.
2. Check your inbox. Cadence Money sends you a 6-digit code and a confirmation link, and either one finishes the job. The screen you are left on reads “We’ve sent a 6-digit code to” above your email address, with a box for the code underneath - type the six digits and it submits itself. Clicking the link in the email does the same thing.
3. Sign in and start the onboarding wizard.

More on codes, links and signing in afterwards is in Signing In.

A brand-new account has no plan on it yet, and Cadence Money gives you 24 hours from the moment the account is created to work through setup and look around before the plan screen becomes a hard wall. It is a grace window rather than a trial: it is measured from when you signed up, it only applies while you have never picked a plan, and it does not come back once it has run out.

Inside that window, anything that needs a plan - linking a bank, for instance - opens the plan picker as a sheet over the screen you were on instead of sending you away. That sheet is dismissible, so you can close it and carry on. The full plan page carries a Skip For Now button for the same reason, and that button disappears the moment the 24 hours are up.

The 14-day free trial is a separate thing and it begins when you start a subscription, not when you sign up.

After creating your account, the wizard walks you through setting up your financial profile. It is six steps, and every plan sees the same six:

Step 2 offers the same two things everywhere, but not in the same order. In Canada the CSV card comes first and the bank connection sits under it, because Canadian bank connections fail often enough that leading with one leaves too many people finishing setup with no transactions at all. Everywhere else the bank leads. Both are on the step either way, and you can use both.

Canadian setups can also get a caution under the connect button naming the banks that are hard to connect to right now. It appears only after you have tried to connect a bank and come back to the step without one, so it does not stand in the way of a first try. It is read from live connection data rather than a list written into the app, so it reflects this week rather than last month, and it names every affected bank rather than the first few. If yours is on it, importing a CSV is the way through. The same caution appears later in the Connect Bank panel inside the app.

It only ever shows on the offer it is about, so you will not see it if your plan does not include bank syncing, or once you have connected a bank on the step. And no caution is not an all-clear - it means nothing current is worth reporting, not that every bank is healthy.

Step 1 is a short form rather than a welcome screen. Your timezone and province or state are filled in automatically - the timezone from your device, the province or state from your location - and you can change either later in Settings → Account under Region.

Steps 2 to 5 each carry a Skip button, and skipping a step means nothing from it is added. On steps 3 to 5, Continue stays faded until you have added at least one item - an income, a bill, or a budget - so Skip is the way past a step you want to leave empty.

Step 5 starts with nothing picked. Tap Add WorryFree Budget for one monthly spending limit (see WorryFree), or add individual budgets under Detailed Monthly Budgeting - tap a suggestion such as Groceries, or Add Another Budget for your own. The suggestions already know which transaction categories they cover. You can switch between the two later in the app.

Accounts, assets and debts are not part of onboarding, and neither are savings goals. Both live in the app and can be added whenever you like, from the Wealth and Plan pages.

If you connect a bank during step 2, the accounts it brings across are added to your net worth for you.

Leaving the wizard - whether you finish it or step out early - takes you to the plan screen if you have not picked a plan yet and you are still inside your first 24 hours. Choose a plan there, or tap Skip For Now to go straight to your Dashboard. Once you have a plan, the wizard hands you to the dashboard directly. A reasonable order from there:

1. Look around the dashboard and swap the chart between net worth and spending to see which you want by default.
2. Check your categories. Correct a few transactions that landed in the wrong place - that is how Cadence Money learns your merchants. See Categories.
3. Clear Needs Review. The widget lists transactions missing a budget or a category.
4. Add anything you own that no bank knows about - a car, a property, holdings. See Net Worth.
5. Set one goal. Even a rough one gives the numbers something to be measured against. See Goals.

• Turn on two-factor authentication and save the recovery codes somewhere real. See Security.
• Install the mobile app and enable biometric unlock. Most people set things up on the web and check in on their phone. See Mobile App.