Meet PadalaBook — Every padala, accounted for

Finance

PadalaBook

Every padala, accounted for

What PadalaBook does

PadalaBook is a private remittance ledger for OFW families. Every time money comes home — through GCash, Western Union, Remitly, Wise, Palawan Express or any padala center — log what was sent in the original currency, what arrived in pesos, the fee charged and the channel used. Sent something back abroad? Log that too. Months of transfers become one clean, searchable record instead of a pile of screenshots and crumpled receipts.

The part no remittance app shows you: the rate you actually got. PadalaBook computes the effective exchange rate of every transfer — fee and FX markup combined — and tracks it per channel over time. "Zero fee" promos with a marked-up rate stop being invisible. After a few months you'll know exactly which channel delivers the most pesos for each dollar, dirham or Singapore dollar earned abroad.

Then give the money a job. Allocate each month's padala into envelopes — tuition, groceries, bills, utang payments, savings — and record spending against each one. The monthly summary shows what was received, what was allocated, what was spent and what was saved, so the question "saan napunta ang pera?" finally has a written answer both sides of the ocean can trust.

PadalaBook is 100% offline. No account, no sign-up, no bank linking, no internet required — everything is stored on your device with SwiftData and never leaves it.

• Log padala received and sent, in any currency pair • Per-channel fee and effective-rate history (GCash, WU, Remitly, padala centers and more) • Monthly budget envelopes: allocated vs spent vs saved • Yearly totals: pesos received, fees paid, savings kept • Works for the sender abroad and the family at home • Fully offline and private — your family's money stays your business

Download PadalaBook and give every padala a paper trail.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

• Padala ledger — Log each remittance received or sent: original currency and amount, pesos received, channel (GCash, Western Union, Remitly, padala center, custom), fee, date and an optional note; the home screen lists recent entries with this month's running total.
• Channel rate tracker — For every channel, PadalaBook computes the effective rate of each transfer (pesos received divided by amount sent, fee included) and charts it over time, ranking channels by average effective rate and total fees paid so the cheapest path is obvious.
• Monthly envelopes — Allocate each month's received padala into editable budget envelopes — tuition, groceries, bills, utang, savings — then log spending against each envelope and see allocated vs spent vs remaining at a glance.
• Yearly summary — A summary screen rolls everything up by month and year: total pesos received, total fees paid, average effective rate per channel, and the share of each month's padala that ended up in the savings envelope.

Why we built it

Remittances arrive through a rotating mix of channels — GCash partner transfers, Western Union, Remitly, padala centers — each with different fees and quietly different exchange rates (Filipinos lost an estimated P8.37B to hidden FX markups in a single year), and once the pesos land there is no shared record: the send…

What makes it different

Unlike rosca (rotating savings circles with member turns and payouts) and bahi (a merchant's credit ledger of customer utang), PadalaBook is built around cross-border transfers: every entry is dual-currency (sent amount and pesos received) with a channel, fee and computed effective rate — a dimension generic kharcha-s…

Who it's for

Freelancers, contractors, and small-business owners who want their numbers right at tax time without renting a SaaS to do it.

In one line: Every padala, accounted for

Try it

See the Every padala, accounted for for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use PadalaBook, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.