SavePoint v1.6.1: Optional Encryption, Smarter Import, and New Filters

Version 1.6.1 is here, and it is built around one big, carefully considered addition and a set of refinements that make everyday importing faster and more accurate. The headline is optional database encryption, a way to lock your entire SavePoint database behind a password for anyone who wants a higher security posture. Alongside it, we have made SavePoint's import auto-categorizer noticeably smarter, added two new date filters and a new type filter to the Transactions page, and made the import wizard show you more of your actual file before you commit. As always, everything here is opt-in where it should be, off by default where it should be, and shaped by your feedback. Thank you for being part of the SavePoint community.

Encryption at Rest: Optional, and Only If You Want It

SavePoint has always stored your data locally on your own machine. Version 1.6.1 adds the option to go a step further and encrypt the entire database file with AES-256, so it cannot be opened by anyone without your password. This is entirely optional, off by default, and can be turned back off at any time. Nothing changes for existing users unless you choose to turn it on.

We built encryption to serve two purposes:

• A stronger security posture, even locally. If you want your financial data protected at rest on your own computer, this gives you a higher level of security than before.
• Groundwork for the future. Encryption also lays the foundation for an optional online-capable version of SavePoint down the road. When that arrives, local encryption will be required for it. For today's offline-only client, it stays completely optional.

How it works when you turn it on: a guided wizard walks you through acknowledging how encryption works, choosing a strong password (12+ characters or 4+ words, checked against known breached passwords offline), and saving your one-time recovery key. SavePoint even asks you to re-enter two random parts of the recovery key to make sure you actually saved it. The conversion is atomic and verified before anything is swapped, and your original file is renamed aside rather than modified in place, so a crash mid-conversion never leaves you stranded.

Unlocking and living with it: encrypted installs show a dedicated unlock screen at launch, translated into all 8 supported languages. You can change your password at any time (fast, no full re-encryption), rotate your recovery key, and optionally enable convenience features like unlocking automatically on your own trusted computer or auto-locking after a period of inactivity. All of those conveniences are off by default.

Multi-person households are handled properly. Each user gets their own key wrapped under their own login password, so there is no shared secret to pass around. Everyone unlocks with the password they already know.

Backups keep up. When your database is encrypted, backups are created in our new .spbk format, a consistent, encrypted snapshot that you can restore on any machine with your password or recovery key. A one-time reminder also makes clear that exported files (CSV, Excel, PDF) are never encrypted, since the whole point of an export is to open it elsewhere.

Smarter Auto-Categorization When You Import

When you import a bank or credit card file, SavePoint tries to suggest the right category for each transaction so you are not typing them in by hand. In v1.6.1 that engine got meaningfully smarter and more honest about what it knows.

• Your Merchant Mapping rules now power category suggestions. Previously, the merchant patterns you set up in Settings only influenced the later vendor-level step of the import. Now they also feed the earlier Category Mapping step, so a vendor you have already taught SavePoint about gets suggested right away. To keep it trustworthy, a suggestion only appears when every matching vendor in a group resolves to the same category. If there is any conflict, SavePoint leaves it unsuggested rather than guessing.
• Every suggestion is now a clickable button. SavePoint computes up to three ranked suggestions per row (from your history, from smart keyword matching, and from your merchant patterns). It used to only surface the top one and hide the rest behind a "+2 more" label. Now all of them are buttons; click the one you want and it applies instantly.
• A new "Historical Match Window" setting. Under Settings > Merchant Mapping, you can now choose how far back SavePoint looks when matching against your history (last 3, 6, 12, or 24 months; 12 is the default). Previously this was never a real choice: one step quietly rode on whatever date filter happened to be on your Transactions page, and another searched your entire history with no limit at all. Now it is a single, deliberate setting that both steps respect.

We also fixed several quiet accuracy problems in the matcher itself:

• No more false matches on tiny words. The historical matcher could match on incidental fragments. In testing, an imported "MCDONALDS #4521" was being suggested "Gasoline" because an unrelated old transaction, "FUEL 4 FREEDOM," happened to share the digit "4." Both sides of a match now require at least three characters, so distinctive words like "STARBUCKS" still match while stray digits no longer do.
• The smart-match keyword list now points at categories that actually exist. Several built-in keyword rules referenced category names that were never SavePoint's real defaults, so they silently produced nothing. They are now aligned to the real default categories (for example, gas maps to Gasoline, electric maps to Electricity), and guesswork entries that had no sensible target were removed rather than left to mis-categorize.
• Household data stays separated. The "Auto Map Similar Vendors" lookup is now correctly scoped to the person doing the import, so on a shared household database it can no longer draw suggestions from another member's transaction history.

Import Wizard: See More of Your File Before You Commit

A few small additions remove the need to keep flipping back to your spreadsheet during import:

• Header row now shows the following row too. The Column Mapping step already previewed your chosen header row. Now it also shows the row immediately after it, which is a real help when a bank's headers are ambiguous on their own (some banks use "Category" and "Description" to mean different things). You get the full context without opening the file.
• Amount Direction step shows your real data. When you tell SavePoint whether expenses are positive or negative in your file, it now shows your actual column headers plus the first few rows of your file, unmodified, so you can see the signs for yourself instead of guessing.
• Required fields are marked. The mapping step now flags the fields SavePoint needs (Date, Description, Category, Amount, and target Account) with a clear "Required" indicator.
• A heads-up before importing unmapped rows. If any transactions still have no category mapping when you hit Confirm Import, SavePoint now tells you up front and lets you go back and fix them, rather than skipping them silently mid-import.

New Transaction Filters

The Transactions page gets three practical new filters:

• "This Year" shows January 1 through December 31 of the current year.
• "Year to Date" shows January 1 through today.
• "Income & Expense" is a new type filter that shows income and expense transactions together while hiding internal transfers and card payments, which is the view most people want when reviewing what they actually earned and spent.

All three are localized across all 8 supported languages.

Backups, Windows, and Other Fixes

• Backups are now a consistent snapshot. All backups (manual, automatic, and the safety backup before risky operations) now use a proper consistent snapshot instead of copying a live database file, which quietly improves reliability for everyone, encrypted or not.
• "On Exit" backups now run reliably when you close with the window's X button, not only when logging out.
• Your backup frequency now saves. Choosing a frequency like "On Startup" previously reverted after a restart. Fixed.
• Ctrl or Shift clicking an in-app link no longer opens a second app window.
• On the Accounts page, External Account links now open up in your default web browser (not the SavePoint window). SavePoint itself has been and still is completely offline-only.
• "Require password on startup" now truly holds across closing and reopening the app, not just at the profile picker.

Looking Ahead

Encryption in this release is also a first step toward something bigger. It lays the groundwork for a future online-capable version of SavePoint, where local encryption will be part of the foundation. To be clear, Online-Capable will ALWAYS be completely optional. Users who own the offline-only version of the program will have access to the online-capable version as well. We will have more to share on that as it takes shape. This is a bit down the line for now...In the nearer term, we are continuing to refine the Offline-Only version of SavePoint and incrementing on what you tell us.

As always, if you run into any bugs or have ideas for how SavePoint can work better, we would love to hear from you. Drop a comment below, message us on Discord, or use the contact form on the website. We read everything and respond personally.

Thanks again for your support and for being part of this journey.

Talk soon,
The SavePoint Team