There's a particular frustration that comes with finance tools: you see a number on screen and you don't quite know where it came from. Your "total spending" includes a transfer to your own savings. Your "monthly average" is skewed by that one-off car purchase in March. A projection tells you you'll have £247,000 at retirement, but you've no idea what assumptions it's making.
Numbers without context create anxiety rather than confidence. You end up doubting the tool, doubting yourself, or — most commonly — just closing the app.
Show the working
Keep is built on a simple principle: every number should be explainable. If you see a spending total, you can see exactly which transactions make it up. If Keep finds a transfer match, you can see why — the amounts, the timing, the confidence score. If a projection shows a future outcome, you can see every assumption behind it.
This isn't about overwhelming you with data. Most of the time, you'll glance at a number and move on. But the explanation is always there if you want it. Trust comes from knowing you could check, even when you don't need to.
Assumptions on the surface
This matters most with projections and scenarios. When Keep shows you what your mortgage could look like if you overpaid by £200 a month, it also shows you what it's assuming: that your interest rate stays at 4.5%, that you maintain the overpayments for the full term, that there are no payment holidays.
You can adjust any of those assumptions and see how the picture changes. What if rates rise to 6%? What if you can only overpay for three years? What if you take a six-month break?
This idea came from a conversation with my partner Jenny, who pointed out that most financial projections present assumptions as facts. They give you a confident number and hide the uncertainty underneath. Keep does the opposite: it shows you the range of possibilities and lets you explore them.
No black boxes
When Keep categorises a transaction, you can see why. When it detects a pattern, you can see the data behind it. When it suggests you might want to start saving for your expensive summer season, you can see the historical spending that prompted the suggestion.
This extends to the AI features too. When you ask Keep a question and it gives you an answer, it shows you which transactions and accounts it looked at. You can verify, challenge, or correct it.
We think this matters because finance tools ask for a lot of trust. You're handing over the most detailed picture of your life and asking a piece of software to make sense of it. The least that software can do is show you how it's thinking.
Trade-offs, not answers
Keep rarely tells you what to do. Instead, it shows you trade-offs and lets you decide.
Should you pay your car insurance annually or monthly? The annual payment is £144 cheaper, but it creates a cash flow crunch in September. The monthly payment costs more but spreads the load evenly. Keep shows you both options with honest numbers — and the question isn't "which is cheaper?" but "what's the cost of cash flow stress worth to you?"
Sometimes paying a bit more for peace of mind is the right choice. Keep gives you the information to make that call yourself.
Why transparency matters
Confidence with money doesn't come from being told everything is fine. It comes from understanding what's happening and feeling equipped to make decisions. When you can see how every number was calculated, when assumptions are explicit and adjustable, when trade-offs are laid out honestly — that's when you start to feel genuinely in command of your financial life.
Not because a tool controlled it for you. Because you understood it.