From projects and hours to organised professional records

In onboarding choose “Self-employed or professional”, then your first priority: Daily control, Budget, Debt, Savings and emergency or Tax planning. These preferences personalise the experience; they do not change your recorded amounts.

If you already use Prism, open Settings and look for your financial focus or the option to reopen onboarding. Also check your currency and the categories you will use. Screen names and layouts may differ across Android, iOS and web.

Define how to distinguish professional activity from personal expenses: clear categories and, where available, tags, jobs or accounts. Use a consistent name for the same client or project so you can retrieve related records later.

Prism helps organise records. Do not treat a tag as tax validation or confuse recording income with issuing an invoice. Keep original documents outside the record and check which tools are available on your platform.

Keep your list of jobs or pending payments as a planning reference. In Records, add each income entry with the actual amount and date when received. Use a description identifying its source, such as “October shifts” or “Design project”.

If payment arrives in instalments, record each receipt on its own date with a consistent description. An accepted job, issued invoice or prediction does not equal available money. If you use future entries in your workflow, identify them and check which periods your reports include.

Select Hourly income. Fill in the start and end dates and times, paid duration, rate and extras supported by the form. Account for unpaid breaks when preparing the duration; do not assume elapsed time equals paid hours.

Compare the calculation with your agreement and the settled amount. If you record the work to check an estimate, do not add it again as independent income when paid: review the record and avoid duplicating the same operation.

Open Quick templates and prepare a preset for income, an expense or hourly work you often record. Choose the common details supported by your version: description, category or tags, amount and associations.

To use it, select the template from Records or the templates list. Check the form before saving: today’s date, amount or hours may differ. A template speeds up entry; it does not prove that payment occurred.

Open Budgets, select a category and enter the monthly limit you want to track. The limit is a tracking reference, not a money movement: saving it does not record an expense or move funds between accounts.

Start with a category that already has recorded expenses. After saving, compare the spent amount and usage percentage with records from the same period. If they differ, check dates, categories and possible duplicates before changing the limit.

Filter the period and check activity records have correct categories, descriptions and amounts. Separate receipts, expenses and forecasts so you can explain each figure’s source. Export only the data you need to review and compare it with original documentation.

If you selected Tax planning, calculators explore the scenarios available in your version. Check inputs, assumptions and the result’s scope. An indicative calculation does not make an expense deductible or file a return; confirm those matters using applicable documentation.

Find Export or Backup in your version. Choose an available format for your intended use and save the file in a private location. Open the export and check it includes the expected period and entries.

An export for reviewing data and a restorable backup may serve different purposes. Before changing devices or restoring, check the supported format, keep the previous copy and review your version’s restore instructions. Do not assume CSV can recover all settings.