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A new phone and sync: what carries over

Sync (Premium) keeps up to 4 devices working on the same records: signing in with the same Google or Apple account brings the accounts, movements and documents recorded on one phone to the others. It is designed to share the records, not to clone the phone — on a new device most things appear, but some of the work exists only on the phone where it was done. Knowing which is which, before switching, avoids surprises after.

What arrives on the new phone

After signing in with the same account and letting the first sync finish, the new phone shows:

• Accounts and all their movements — income, expenses and transfers;
• Categories and subcategories, with their icons and colours;
• Entities (customers, suppliers, "Other");
• Invoices and documents recorded against those entities;
• Budgets and projects;
• Recurring transactions and planned cash-flow events;
• Custom exchange rates;
• The reconciliation periods that were closed;
• The reconciliation state of each movement — whether it is reconciled, the date, and the bank identifier (FITID) — which lives on the movement itself: a reconciled movement stays reconciled on the new phone, and matching already done does not have to be repeated;
• Current-account reconciliations per entity, including how each one is composed.

What stays on the old phone

• Receipt photos and PDFs — from version 1.5.0 they travel. Files attached to movements are kept in the cloud (a data centre in Europe) and downloaded on whichever of your devices opens them; a document created in the current account from a movement carries that movement's first attachment. Up to version 1.4.0 the files existed only on the phone where they were added — on that version, see the next section for the way to take them with you.
• The bank statement import history and the reconciliation rules (the automatic categorisation), together with the per-supplier reading templates used by receipt scanning. The movements an import created do travel, like any other movement, and reconciled movements stay reconciled — but the record of which statement files were imported, and the rules learned from them, stay on the device that learned them.
• Most settings. Only a small set travels with the data: the currency, the currency symbol position, the date and number formats, the chart type, the balance-chart period, the Entity and Note field options (including whether Entity is required), the Projects option, the notification days and the exchange rates. Everything else in Settings has to be set again on the new phone.

Switching phones: a safe order

1. Export first, on the old phone. The export (Premium) writes the movements to Excel / CSV / OFX files, and reports can be saved as PDF. Those files live outside the app — they are the copy that does not depend on any phone.
2. The receipt files. From version 1.5.0 they arrive with the movements once the new phone has synced with a connection — nothing to do. On version 1.4.0 they exist only on the old phone: the one export that includes them is the accountant package (Premium), a ZIP with one PDF per transaction; generate it on the old phone and keep that phone until the files are confirmed safe. The package now asks which form each document takes — with the movement's details (a strip with date, account, category and amount over the document) or the document only, exactly as scanned; the choice is remembered.
3. On the new phone, install ZeniCash, sign in with the same account, and let the first sync finish completely before judging what is missing.
4. Review Settings on the new phone: as listed above, most preferences are per-device.
5. Keep the old phone until everything checks out. Only wipe it, or pass it on, after confirming the new phone shows the accounts, movements and documents expected.

When sync says "No internet connection"

A network that claims to be connected but does not answer — a hotel Wi-Fi, a broken DNS — used to leave the sync spinner going with no end. From version 1.5.0 each call to the cloud waits one minute and then gives up: the app says "No internet connection.", keeps everything already received, and the next sync picks up where it left off.

A fresh install follows the phone's region

From version 1.5.0 a new installation opens in the currency, date order and number format of the phone's region, with the theme set to follow the phone. An existing installation changes nothing: it keeps the currency, formats and theme it had.

Sync is not a backup

Sync's job is to keep the devices in use consistent with one another — not to preserve a copy of everything for later. The copy that survives any phone is the one exported out of the app. Exporting regularly — for example at each period close — costs little, and means a change of phone never depends on what sync carries.