Questions about the Zuzefu student expense app

Zuzefu records your spending in one place and sorts it into categories such as rent, groceries, transport, course materials and social costs. You enter a purchase in a few taps, and the app adds it to the running total for the month. It then compares that total with the budget you set, so you can see how much is left before your next loan instalment, wage payment or parental transfer arrives.

It is built for students at universities and colleges, including undergraduates, postgraduates and those on apprenticeships or part-time courses. The default categories reflect student life in the UK: halls or private rent, term-time travel passes, textbooks, printing and shared household bills. Anyone with a tight monthly budget can use it, but the layout and examples assume a student income pattern.

Setup takes about five minutes and follows a fixed order:

First, create an account with your email address and a password. Second, enter your monthly income, such as maintenance loan, wages or family support, with the date each one arrives. Third, add your fixed costs, for example rent and phone contract. Fourth, choose the categories you want to track. The app then shows how much is left for variable spending each week.

Zuzefu runs on current versions of iOS and Android. It is a mobile application, so it is not designed as a desktop program. If you change phone, you sign in with the same account and your records load again, provided you had cloud backup switched on before the change. We recommend keeping that setting enabled from the first day.

No. Connecting a bank is optional and the app is fully usable without it. Many students prefer to enter purchases by hand because the act of typing a figure makes them more aware of it. Manual entry also means the app never holds your bank login details. If you want less typing, you can import a statement file instead, which is covered further down this page.

Open the app, tap the add button, type the amount and pick a category. The date defaults to today and can be changed. You may add a short note, such as "bus pass, term 2". Most entries take under ten seconds. You can also attach a photo of a receipt to any entry, which is useful for items you may need to return or claim back.

Yes. The app ships with a default list, but you can rename, hide or add categories. A medical student might add "placement travel", while an art student might add "materials and studio fees". Changing a category name updates all earlier entries in that category, so your history stays consistent and your monthly totals do not break.

You set a limit for each category, or one overall limit if you prefer a simpler view. The app subtracts every entry from the matching limit and shows the remainder as a bar. When a category reaches 80 percent of its limit, the bar changes colour and the app can send a reminder. The budget resets on the day you choose, which can be the day your loan lands rather than the first of the month.

Yes. A recurring entry is created once and repeats weekly, monthly or on a custom interval. Typical examples are rent, a phone contract, a streaming service or a gym membership. The app lists upcoming recurring costs for the next 30 days, so you can see what will leave your account before it does. You can pause or end a recurring entry at any time.

You can add income as separate one-off entries instead of a fixed monthly figure. Many students working in hospitality or retail receive different amounts each week, so the app lets you log each payment as it arrives. The budget then calculates the remaining balance from actual money received, not from an estimate, which avoids the false comfort of a planned figure that never turned up.

Yes. You can add, edit and view entries without a connection, which helps on trains or in lecture halls with weak signal. Entries are stored on the phone and sent to your backup the next time the device is online. If you edit the same entry on two devices while offline, the app keeps the most recent change and shows you a short note about it.

Create a shared group, invite your housemates by email, and add a shared expense. You choose who paid and how the cost is divided: equally, by percentage or by exact amounts. The app keeps a running balance of who owes whom. Only your own share of each bill counts towards your personal budget, so a council tax payment you covered for four people does not wreck your month.

For full shared tracking, yes, each person needs their own account. If a housemate does not want to install it, you can still add them to a group by name and log their share yourself. They will not see the group, but you will still have an accurate record of what they owe. This is a workable option for short-term lodgers or friends who share only one bill.

No. Zuzefu does not handle payments or hold funds. It only records who owes what. When you settle up, you pay each other by your usual method, such as a bank transfer or cash, and then mark the balance as settled in the app. Keeping payments outside the app means there is no payment account to open and no transaction fee to worry about.

You can mark a member as having left on a specific date. Costs dated before that day still include them, and costs after it do not. Any unsettled balance stays visible until it is cleared, so nobody leaves with a forgotten debt. If a new tenant arrives, you add them from their move-in date and the split updates from that point forward.

We store your email address, the entries you create, your categories and your budget settings. We do not ask for your student number, home address or date of birth. If you attach receipt photos, those images are stored with the entry. Full details of what is held, why, and for how long are set out in our privacy policy.

We do not sell your data and we do not pass your spending records to advertisers. Information is shared only with the people you invite to a shared group, and only for the costs inside that group. Your personal categories and budget stay private to you. Any service provider we rely on to run the app is covered by the terms described in the privacy policy.

Yes. You can export entries for any date range as a spreadsheet-compatible file. This is useful at the end of term, when you want to review where the money went, or when you need to show a budget to a parent, a university hardship adviser or a landlord. The export contains the date, amount, category and note for each entry.

Open the settings page and choose to delete your account. The app asks you to confirm, then removes your entries, categories and receipt images from our systems. Records you added to a shared group remain visible to the other members as part of their own history, but your name is replaced with a neutral label. You can also email us at [email protected] and we will carry out the deletion for you.

The core features, including entry logging, categories, budgets and shared groups, are available without a fee. Pricing for any optional extras is listed on our services page before you agree to anything. Nothing is charged automatically after a trial, and we do not require card details to create an account.

No. Zuzefu is a record-keeping and budgeting tool. It shows you what you spent and how that compares with the limits you set, but it does not recommend loans, investments or any financial product. If you are struggling with debt or cannot cover essential costs, speak to your university's student money advice team or an independent, free debt advice service.

Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected] or call +44 121 739 1327 during working hours. We answer Monday to Friday between 09:30 and 19:00, and the typical reply time to a request is about one hour. Requests sent on a Saturday or Sunday are answered on the following Monday. When you write, include your phone model and a short description of what happened.

Zuzefu was founded in 2017 and is run by a team of nine people from Birmingham, covering development, design and customer support. Since 2017 we have worked with 648 clients in total, and 177 of them came back for a second job. You can read more about how the team works on the about page.

Yes, we take enquiries from institutions and student groups. We can discuss custom categories that match local costs, welcome materials for new students and a group onboarding session. We will not promise a fixed outcome, since results depend on how students use the tool. Send the details through the contact page and we will propose a scope and a price in writing before any work starts.

Yes, by arrangement. Our address is 13 Wake Green Road, Birmingham, B32 0FZ. We are open Monday to Friday from 09:30 to 19:00 and closed at weekends. Please contact us first so that someone is free to meet you, as the team is often working with clients away from the office.