Finly is a free Khatabook alternative for your own money rather than a shop's. It keeps a khata of what you lend to friends and family, with a running balance per person, alongside what you spend, your budgets and your investments.
Khatabook and Finly solve different problems, and picking the wrong one is a waste of your time. Khatabook is business software: a shopkeeper tracking credit extended to customers, sending payment reminders, managing staff and billing. If you run a shop, that is what you want. If the ledger you are keeping is your own rather than a business's, Finly is the one built for it.
The honest split
| Khatabook | Finly | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Small businesses and shopkeepers | Individuals |
| The ledger is | Customers who owe the business | People you lend to and borrow from |
| Payment reminders | Yes, sends them for you | No. It is your record, not a collections tool |
| Your own spending | Not the focus | Core: categories, budgets, trends |
| Investments | No | Stocks, crypto, funds, gold |
| Staff, billing, invoices | Yes | No |
| Platform | Mobile app | Browser, installs as a PWA |
| Price | Free tier, paid features | Free |
When Finly is the better fit
- The money is yours, not a business's. You want to know what you spent this month, not what a customer owes the shop.
- You want lending tracked alongside spending. Finly keeps them separate in the maths but together in one app, so a loan does not distort your monthly total and you are not running two apps over the same life.
- You do not want reminders sent. Finly never contacts the other person. Some people want that feature; for personal lending between friends, many strongly do not.
- You want it on a laptop too. Finly runs in any browser and installs to a phone home screen.
- You also track investments. PSX, global stocks, crypto and gold live in the same app.
When to stay with Khatabook
If you are running a shop, Khatabook is the right tool and Finly is not a replacement for it. Finly has no invoicing, no staff accounts, no automated reminders to customers, no GST or tax features, and no multi-user access. Those are not gaps that will be filled later; it is a personal finance app.
Plenty of people need both, and there is nothing wrong with that: Khatabook for the business, Finly for your own money.
What the khata in Finly does
Both directions, lent and borrowed. A running balance per person, so Ahmed's page shows every transaction with Ahmed and one net figure. Partial repayments reduce the balance without erasing history. A settled balance drops out of your active list but keeps its record. And none of it touches your spending totals or budgets.
The full explanation of how the khata works, including what it deliberately does not do.
Starting from a paper khata
Most people arriving here are not migrating from software, they are migrating from a notebook, a phone note, or memory. That is easier than it sounds, because a khata does not need history to be useful.
Enter only the outstanding balances, one entry per person for what is owed right now in whichever direction. Past loans that were already settled do not need to exist; they change nothing about what you are owed today. Ten minutes of typing usually covers years of informal lending.
From then on, record each new loan and each repayment as it happens. The balance per person stays correct, and you stop relying on two people remembering the same number the same way.
Why lending must not be an expense
The reason a general expense tracker fails at this is arithmetic, not features. Lending 5,000 is not spending 5,000. The money is still yours, it is somewhere else. Log it as an expense and your month looks 5,000 worse than it was, your category budgets are wrong, and the repayment has to be logged as income, which is wrong too.
Log nothing and you are back to memory, which works for one loan and fails at the fourteen small ones that accumulate over a year between family, colleagues and the shop on the corner.
Finly records lending in a separate ledger that never touches your spending totals, which is the only arrangement where both numbers stay true.
Common questions
Is Finly free like Khatabook?
Finly is free with no paid tier at all. Khatabook has a free tier with paid features on top.
Can I import my Khatabook data?
No. There is no bulk import yet, which is a real limitation if you have years of entries. Finly exports to CSV, so your data can always leave.
Does Finly send payment reminders?
No. It never contacts the person you lent to, by SMS, WhatsApp or anything else. It is your private record.
Can I use Finly for my shop?
You can, but it will fight you. No invoicing, no staff accounts, no customer messaging. For a business, use business software.
Does it work offline like a mobile app?
Yes. Records are written to your device first, so it works with no signal. See offline expense tracking.
Does it support PKR and INR?
Both, plus nine others including AED, SAR, USD, GBP and EUR.