Income Refinery User Guide

Both versions share the same beautiful interface and all the core tracking features. Pro adds analytical depth — forecasting, scenario modelling, yield-on-cost tracking, and unlimited capacity — for investors who want to go further. See the Pro page for pricing.

These six steps are the same for both versions. You'll have your first income entry showing in just a few minutes.

Screenshot: Income Refinery Pro — full dashboard view

Income Refinery Pro

Stocks · Bonds · Real Estate · All streams · One view

Settings

Analyse ▾

＋ Add income ▾

This Month

Average

Expected This Month

$4,280.50

Annual: $51,366 · 12 income sources · USD

📈 Holdings: $2,840/mo

🏠 Property: $1,040/mo

💡 Other: $400.50/mo

FI Target

$6,000/mo

$1,719.50 to go

71% of target

Adjust ⚙

✦ FI Milestones

🌱

Lean FI (70%)

$4,200/mo ✓

Achieved today

🎯

Standard FI (100%)

$6,000/mo

~3.2 years · Aug 2029

🏆

Fat FI (150%)

$9,000/mo

~9.8 years · Mar 2035

JAN

$1,120

FEB

$480

MAR

$1,740

APR

no income

MAY

$920

JUN

$1,680

JUL

no income

AUG

$540

SEP

$1,680

OCT

no income

NOV

$480

DEC

$1,726

Screenshot: Income Refinery (Free) — header

Income Refinery

Stocks · Bonds · Real Estate · All streams · One view

⚙ Settings & FX Rates

🔄 Live FX

✦ Go Pro

The 🔍 Lookup button tries eight sources in priority order, stopping as soon as it gets a result. The key message upfront: Yahoo Finance is the last resort, not the first. Set up any one better source and lookups become fast and reliable.

Click Settings in the Pro header — or ⚙ Settings & FX Rates in the free header — to open the settings panel.

Your FI Target and US withholding settings are in the FI Target Drawer (Pro: click Adjust ⚙ in the hero) or directly on the hero panel (free).

Screenshot: Settings panel — Appearance & FX sections (free) + Branding section (Pro only)

Add any dividend-paying stock, REIT, ETF, closed-end fund, or investment trust here. Click ＋ Add Counter to enter a holding manually, or 📂 Import Holdings to bring in multiple at once from a spreadsheet.

Screenshot: The Add Counter form — Pro version (extra fields highlighted)

Dividend Counter Form Fields

Search, Sort & the ≡ Table View

Once holdings are added, a search and sort toolbar appears above the list. Type any part of a name or ticker to filter instantly, and use the sort dropdown to order by income, DPU, name, or units held.

Supported Stock Exchanges — 30 Global Markets

The Lookup dropdown includes all 30 exchanges below. For anything not in the list, simply enter the ticker manually, set the currency, and fill in DPU and payment months yourself — the app calculates income correctly regardless.

Click ＋ Add Property to track net rental income from any property in any currency. FX conversion to your base currency is handled automatically.

This section handles everything that isn't a stock or a property. Choose from 12 categories, then fill in the amount, currency, and payment schedule. The Capital Deployed field Pro lets you record the capital behind each stream so the app can calculate your yield on that capital.

Amount is the income you receive per payment event, not the annual total. The app calculates your annual figure by multiplying by the number of payments per year — so a bond paying $500 each June and December is entered as $500 Semi-annual, not $1,000 Annual. This is the same convention as the DPU field in Holdings.

Both versions include a 📤 Share your progress button in the hero panel, just below your monthly income total. Clicking it opens the Share Your Progress modal, which generates a branded PNG image of your income dashboard that you can download or post directly to social media.

A snapshot is a point-in-time record of your monthly income and portfolio value. Captured once a month, they build a historical record of your progress toward financial independence — and power the 📊 Income Over Time chart. Without snapshots the History chart has nothing to plot, so capturing your first one is worth doing on day one.

Click 📸 Capture Snapshot in Settings → Portfolio Snapshots to open the snapshot form. The app auto-fills monthly income and portfolio value from your current data — you can edit either field before saving.

The Income Over Time chart is a full-screen view that plots your portfolio snapshot history as a line chart — your passive income journey in one glance. It requires at least one saved snapshot to display data; two or more reveal the trend line.

The Forecast & Projection engine is Income Refinery Pro's answer to the most important question in passive income investing: "When will I reach financial independence?" It takes your current income as the baseline and projects it forward simultaneously under three scenario bands — Conservative (the floor), Base (your own assumptions), and Optimistic (the ceiling) — giving you a realistic range rather than a single optimistic line. Open it via Analyse ▾ → Forecast; it appears as an inline collapsible panel directly on the main dashboard.

Click Show assumptions to expand the inputs panel. Your settings are saved between sessions.

Forecast & Projection Assumptions

Financial Independence Tiers (Lean, Standard & Fat FI)

Within the assumptions panel, you can set the percentage thresholds for each FI tier — these feed directly into the FI Milestones strip on the main dashboard and the projected FI date in the Target Drawer. The defaults match most FIRE community conventions but are fully adjustable.

The What-If drawer is Income Refinery Pro's scenario planning tool — a side drawer that lets you model hypothetical changes to your portfolio before committing real capital. It has three interconnected parts: a Hypothetical Portfolio builder, two focused scenario cards (Capital Deployment and Distribution Change), and a live Scenario Calendar that shows the combined 12-month income impact visually. Open it via Analyse ▾ → What-If.

Hypothetical Portfolio Builder

The top section of the drawer lets you add fictional income sources to model "what if I bought this?" without touching your real portfolio. Nothing added here affects your actual data.

Each item you add appears in the list below the form buttons. The Scenario Calendar updates immediately to show how the hypothetical income stacks up against your actual portfolio month by month. Remove any item with its × button.

Capital Deployment & Distribution Change Scenarios

Two cards sit below the Hypothetical Portfolio, each modelling a different type of change to your existing income:

Scenario Calendar — 12-Month Income View

The Scenario Calendar at the bottom of the drawer is the most useful part for day-to-day planning. It renders a 12-month calendar showing your modelled total income per month — your real holdings plus all the hypothetical items you've added. Months with no income are highlighted. Use it to check for seasonal gaps before committing to a new position.

The FI Milestones strip appears automatically between the hero and the monthly calendar. It shows three financially independent income levels — calculated from your monthly target — and tells you how far away each one is, updated in real time every time you add or edit a holding.

The milestone percentages (70% for Lean, 150% for Fat) are configurable in the Forecast panel's assumptions section. Projected dates are driven by your Forecast assumptions, so they update as you adjust your monthly capital contributions and expected yield.

If you hold many positions, entering them one by one can be tedious. Use these ready-made prompts with your favourite LLM — tested on Claude and Gemini. Prompt 1 is all you need to get started — it generates one row per dividend event (with units and ex-dates) which the importer uses to bulk-add your holdings and populate the Pro Dividend Health Panel in a single operation. Prompt 2 is optional — use it if you want a dedicated Priority 1 Watchlist to power the Lookup button with a fast, offline cache.

Prompt 1 — Holdings Import (one row per event → 📂 Import Holdings + DPU trend)

Generates one row per dividend payment event per holding, with units on every row. Use this with the 📂 Import Holdings button in the Holdings section. The importer automatically groups rows by ticker — one counter is created per holding — and collects the dated events to populate the Pro Dividend Health Panel and DPU trend. No separate watchlist upload is needed. Provide 4–8 events per ticker for the most reliable trend signal; the first row for each ticker should include all fields.

Prompt 2 — Watchlist Pro (one row per event → Priority 1 Watchlist)

Generates one row per dividend payment event per holding, without units. Upload this in Settings → Dividend Lookup Sources → Priority 1 Watchlist so the 🔍 Lookup button resolves any ticker instantly from your own file — offline, no rate limits, no API key needed. It also feeds the Dividend Health Panel when you run Lookup on an existing counter. For initial dashboard setup, Prompt 1 covers both import and DPU trend in one step; Prompt 2 is most useful for keeping the Lookup cache fresh as you add new tickers over time. Ex-Date must be filled on every row — rows without one are excluded from trend analysis.

API keys are entered directly in ⚙ Settings → Dividend Lookup Sources. Paste a key in the relevant field, click Save Settings, and the Lookup button uses it automatically from that point on. All keys are stored locally on your device — never sent anywhere except directly to the API provider when you do a Lookup.

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