How AmberLark works
From sign-up to full budget visibility in four steps. No spreadsheets, no manual data entry, no complicated setup.
Create your account and organization
Sign up with your email. AmberLark creates an organization for you automatically. If you are budgeting with a partner or team, invite them to your organization — everyone shares the same view.
Time: Under 1 minute
Connect your bank accounts
Link your checking, savings, and credit card accounts using Plaid's secure connection. AmberLark has read-only access — it can see transactions but can never move money or initiate payments.
AmberLark supports over 11,000 financial institutions across the US and Canada. Once connected, transactions sync automatically every day.
Time: 2–5 minutes per bank
Set up your budgets
Create budgets for your spending categories. Use traditional budgets for recurring expenses (e.g., $500/month for groceries) or pool budgets for lump-sum allocations (e.g., $2,000 for Q1 travel).
Organize budgets under categories, set up recurrence patterns to auto-generate budget items, and enable rollover for unused amounts.
Time: 5–15 minutes for initial setup
Let AI categorize and review your reports
As transactions flow in, AmberLark's AI starts suggesting categories and budgets. Confirm a few, and the AI learns your patterns. Over time, most transactions are categorized automatically.
Check your budget-vs-actual reports to see where you stand. The P&L report shows your income vs. expenses, and the transaction explorer lets you dig into the details.
Ongoing: The more you use AmberLark, the less manual work it requires.
What happens after setup
AmberLark works in the background so you can focus on decisions, not data entry.
Daily sync
Transactions update automatically. No manual imports needed.
AI improves
Each categorization you confirm trains the model. Less manual work over time.
Reports update
Budget-vs-actual and P&L reports reflect your latest data instantly.