Most AI tools give you two choices about your financial data: share it, or do not use the tool. LocoLedger gives you five, plus control over which accounts, how far back and for how long.
First, the limit: LocoLedger guards what your AI is sent, not what programs on your computer can open. Everything below is about what reaches an AI app you connect, like Claude over MCP. None of it hides your files from other software on your machine.
Why levels at all?
Different questions need different amounts of detail.
- “Am I saving more than last year?” needs monthly totals.
- “How much do I spend on eating out?” needs transactions, but not who they were with.
- “Which subscriptions am I still paying for?” needs payee names.
If the only setting is everything, every question costs you everything. Levels let you share what the question needs.
The five levels
Each level includes everything in the levels before it. The descriptions below are the app’s own words, from the Sharing screen.
1. Nothing
It knows you have statements. Nothing in them.
The default. An AI app can connect, and it learns nothing about your money.
2. Monthly summaries
How much went in and out each month, and the closing balance. No individual transactions.
Enough for questions about trends: are you spending more, saving less, ending each month higher or lower.
3. Transactions, no descriptions
Every date and amount, with nothing naming what they were for.
Enough to spot patterns, large one-off payments and regular charges, without saying who any of them went to.
Between this level and the next, the screen has one more row: Transactions, with your categories. A category is your own filing, so nothing sends one until you pick that row or a higher one, and only the categories you marked as shareable go.
4. Transactions, names replaced
Every date and amount, plus your categories, and the shared-as names you gave, like “Contact 3”, never the real name. Anything you have not named goes without one.
The AI can tell that several payments went to the same place without learning what the place is. You decide which payees get a shared-as name, and the real name stays with you.
5. Transactions, real names
The full thing, plus your categories.
Every line as the bank printed it. Useful when the question is about specific merchants, and the level to choose deliberately rather than by default.
What names replaced still gives away
The app says this on the same screen, and it bears repeating: replacing a name hides who you paid, not what or when. The same amount on the same day each month is recognisable with no name on it at all.
Dates and amounts are personal. Names replaced is a real reduction in what the AI learns, and it is not the same as the AI learning nothing.
Which accounts, how far back, and for how long
The level is one of four choices.
Which accounts: all of them, including any you add later, or only the ones you pick.
How far back: the last 3 months, the last 12 months, everything, or a custom window.
How long the permission lasts:
- Ask me each time
- This session
- 7 days
- Until I turn it off
A permission given for one question does not have to stay open after it.
Every request is written down
Whatever level you choose, LocoLedger keeps a record of everything the AI has tried to access from it, even the rejected requests. In the app’s words, the record is written as it happens, and never edited. Refusals are here too.
That record is how you check the levels are doing what they say: you can see what was asked for, how much was sent, and at which level.
Read next
How LocoLedger reads a bank statement explains where the figures come from. If you are weighing this against connecting your bank to an AI directly, Should you let ChatGPT see your bank account? compares the two.
LocoLedger runs on Windows 10 and 11. Download it and start at Nothing: you can move up one level at a time, as a question needs it.