Ask Penny

Penny is Copper’s assistant, a small copper coin that lives on the Trends tab in the phone app and in the top bar on the web. Ask it about your spending in your own words and it answers with the numbers, a chart or a list of purchases.

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Open Penny

On your phone, tap Penny in the bottom corner of Trends. You can drag Penny anywhere on the screen if it’s in the way. On iPhone Duo, Penny is at the bottom of the bar down the side of the screen, on every page. On the web, click Ask Penny in the top bar or press ⌘ J (Ctrl J on Windows) from any page. You can also type a question in the ⌘ K menu and send it to Penny, or click Penny on Trends. Penny opens in a panel on the right, or full screen on a phone. Esc closes it. Penny opens with a row of questions to start with. Swipe through them:

• How much can I spend?
• Where did my money go this month?
• What subscriptions do I pay for?
• Which days do I spend the most?
• How much at a store you visit often this year?

Or type your own. Tap the new-chat button at the top to start over. If Penny isn’t on Trends or in the top bar, we’ve switched Penny off for a little while, for example during an outage. It comes back on its own; nothing in your budget changes.

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Ask a follow-up

Penny keeps track of the conversation. After “How much did I spend on Xbox this year?”, you can ask “What did that look like in June?”, “How often?”, “Show me those by month” or “What transactions happened in March?” and Penny stays on Xbox. Name a new store, like “And at Target?”, to move on, or ask “And overall?” to look at all your spending again.

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Read the charts

Penny’s charts work like the ones on Trends. Tap a bar, point or slice, or slide your finger across the chart, to see its amount. Tap it again to clear it. On the web, hover over a chart instead.

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Rate an answer

Under each of Penny’s answers are a thumbs up and a thumbs down. Tap one to say whether the answer helped. It’s optional, and it’s how Copper finds the questions Penny reads wrong so they can be fixed. After a thumbs down, a What went wrong? box appears. Type a few words if you like, or tap × to skip it. Your rating is saved with how Penny read the question and the question with store names and amounts taken out, never the answer or your figures. See Send feedback.

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What you can ask

Periods work the way you’d say them: this month, last year, March, the last 30 days, all time. Store names don’t have to match your bank exactly. “Starbucks” finds STARBUCKS STORE 1234 too, small typos are fine, and refunds are netted out of what you spent. When a question could mean two things, like Uber or Uber Eats, Penny asks which you meant.

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Make changes

Penny can also make a few changes for you. It always shows what it’s about to do first, with Confirm and Cancel, and nothing changes until you tap Confirm. Right after, Undo puts it back. Penny won’t move more than a bucket holds or more than your left-to-spend, and doesn’t move money in or out of credit card buckets. If a name matches more than one bucket, Penny asks which one.

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What if

Ask Penny how a change would play out before you make it:

• Cancelling something: “What if I cancel Netflix and Hulu?” shows what you’d save a month and a year.
• Saving toward something: “If I put $200 a month into Vacation, when will I get there?" or "How long to save $5,000 at $100 a week?” gives you a date. If the goal already has a date, Penny tells you whether you’d make it and what it would take.

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What Penny can’t do

Penny answers from your own transactions, bills and buckets, and only makes the changes above, after you confirm. It won’t give financial advice, predict markets or look anything up online. Ask something outside that and Penny says so, then suggests questions it can answer, about the store or category you mentioned when there is one.

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Privacy

Copper doesn’t keep your questions as you typed them. To check that Penny understands them, it keeps a copy with store, category and bucket names and dollar amounts taken out (“How much did I spend at [store] in June?”), how Penny read it, and any rating you gave. See Security & privacy. To understand what you’re asking, your question (and short notes of what the conversation has been about) goes over an encrypted connection to Copper’s server. Only the names your question might be about go with it: your category and bucket names, store names that match a word you typed, and the stores the conversation has been about. Never amounts or balances. Answers read this way are marked Read by Copper. If the server can’t be reached, Penny reads the question on your device instead. Conversations stay in memory on your phone or in the browser tab, and clear when you start a new chat, close the app, or reload or close the tab. Copper doesn’t store your questions. Tap How it works in Penny for the same details, or see How Penny reads your questions for the full picture.