When things go wrong

Most of the time keel just works. When it doesn't — an import stalls, a statement turns out to be all duplicates, a month has no income — keel is designed to tell you what happened and give you a clear way forward. This page covers the situations you're most likely to meet.

How it works

Categorisation takes too long or fails

When you import a large statement, keel categorises transactions in the background. If that background job gets stuck, it times out after 10 minutes and your dashboard shows an amber card explaining what happened, with a "Re-run categorisation" button. Tapping it submits a fresh run and abandons the stuck one. keel only ever runs one categorisation job per household at a time, so retrying is always safe.

Every transaction in your import is a duplicate

If you upload a statement keel has already seen, the import completes immediately with a clear message: "No new transactions found — these transactions are already in your account." No error, no broken state. See duplicate transactions for how keel spots them.

A month with no income

If keel has no income recorded for the current month, the month card says so and offers an "Import a statement" shortcut. Daily spending pace is hidden — it can't be calculated without income — and any score components that depend on income score zero until income data arrives.

Brand new account, score not unlocked yet

Before you've closed your first month, the dashboard shows an onboarding home instead of charts — a guided path through importing your statements and closing your first month. Your score is shown locked, with an explanation of what unlocks as data arrives, and coaching stays out of the way — there's nothing to coach on yet. Once your score unlocks, you always get the full dashboard.

Leaving the budgets screen with unsaved changes

Budget edits aren't saved until you explicitly save them. If you try to navigate away — or close the tab — with unsaved changes, keel warns you first so you can save or discard deliberately.

Your data is getting old

If keel hasn't seen a fresh import in over 45 days, a quiet informational card appears on the dashboard with a count of how long it's been. It's a nudge, not an alarm — and it stays out of sight entirely while your data is recent.

PDF statements that don't extract cleanly

Complex multi-page PDF statements can occasionally miss transactions during extraction. After a PDF import, it's worth glancing at the transaction count against your statement. If something's missing, you can re-import the affected pages. See importing statements for more.

FAQ

My import seems stuck. After 60 seconds, a "Go to dashboard" link appears. You can leave and come back — categorisation carries on in the background.

I see "categorisation failed" on my dashboard. Tap "Re-run categorisation" to try again. This usually resolves it.