Frequently Asked Questions

AmberLark is a budgeting application that connects to your bank accounts via Plaid, automatically syncs your transactions, and uses AI to categorize your spending against the budgets you set. It supports traditional recurring budgets and pool budgets for lump-sum expenses, and includes multi-user organizations for shared household or team budgeting.

AmberLark differentiates itself in three main ways: (1) AI-powered categorization that learns from your behavior at the budget level, not just categories; (2) Pool budgets for lump-sum and irregular expenses, which traditional tools don't support; (3) True multi-user organizations with shared AI learning, not just account sharing. Additionally, AmberLark uses connection-based pricing where all features are included on every plan.

Yes. AmberLark supports multi-user organizations. You can create an organization and invite your partner, family members, or team. Everyone shares the same budgets, categories, and transaction views. AI-learned categorization patterns are shared across the organization, so everyone benefits from each person's input. Owner and Member roles control access levels.

When you categorize a transaction (assigning it to a category or budget), AmberLark's AI records the merchant name and Plaid category alongside your choice. Over time, the AI uses these learned patterns to automatically categorize new transactions from the same merchants. It learns at the budget level, not just category level, making it more precise. Every auto-applied change has a full audit trail and can be undone with one click.

A traditional budget creates recurring allocations tied to specific dates (e.g., $500 per month for groceries). A pool budget allocates a lump sum over a flexible date range (e.g., $2,000 for Q1 travel). Pool budgets are ideal for irregular expenses like vacations, annual insurance premiums, or quarterly subscriptions.

Yes. AmberLark supports transaction splits, allowing you to divide a single transaction across multiple categories or budgets. For example, a $200 Costco purchase can be split into $150 for groceries and $50 for household supplies.

AmberLark offers Budget vs. Actual reports (showing variance between planned and actual spending), Profit and Loss reports (income vs. expenses by category), a searchable Transaction Explorer, and Duplicate Transaction Detection. All reports are available on every plan.

AmberLark uses Plaid, an industry-standard service used by thousands of financial apps, to connect to over 11,000 financial institutions. Plaid handles the connection directly with your bank. AmberLark never sees or stores your bank login credentials. Our access is read-only — we can see transactions and balances but can never move money.

Yes. AmberLark uses read-only access via Plaid's Transactions product. We explicitly do not use Plaid's Auth product, meaning AmberLark can never initiate payments, transfers, or any money movement. Your bank credentials are managed by Plaid and never stored by AmberLark. Two-factor authentication is available for all accounts.

AmberLark uses connection-based pricing. All features are included on every plan — the only difference is the number of bank connections allowed. You can sign up for free and choose a plan when you are ready to connect your banks. Plans can be upgraded or downgraded at any time. See current pricing.

A bank connection is a linked institution via Plaid. If you connect to Chase and it pulls in your checking, savings, and credit card, that counts as one connection. Each separate institution (Chase, Bank of America, etc.) is one connection, regardless of how many accounts that institution has.

Yes. You can cancel your subscription at any time through the Stripe customer portal, accessible from your AmberLark billing page. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period.