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Frequently Asked Questions

Can't find your answer here? Email us at hello@rokada.app or visit Getting Started.

What is Rokada and who is it for?​

Rokada is a money management app built specifically for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). It helps you track cross-border finances — US wire transfers, Indian NRE/NRO bank accounts, UPI payments, and cash disbursements — all in one reconciled view. If you own property in India, support family from the US, or manage farmland, Rokada is for you.

Is my data safe? Where is it stored?​

Yes. Rokada uses AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. Your Indian bank data is stored in AWS Mumbai (ap-south-1) and your US data is stored in AWS Oregon (us-west-2) — following data residency best practices. Authentication is handled by AWS Cognito with MFA support. Rokada is read-only: we never move money and never store raw bank credentials.

What's the difference between a Remittance and a Transfer?​

Rokada records every transaction as one of five types: Income, Expense, Remittance, Distribution, or Transfer.

  • Remittance is the cross-border event — money you send from the US to India. It's recorded as an Expense on the US side and an Income (Inward Remittance) on the India side, together with the USD amount, the INR received, and the effective exchange rate. Remittances power the reconciliation panel (see below).
  • Transfer is money moved between accounts you own — for example, moving funds from one of your own India bank accounts to another. Rokada uses account-ownership rules to detect these automatically (an India account and a US account you both own belong to the same ownership pool), not geography. A transfer needs a matching counterpart account you own; if Rokada can't find one, it's flagged as an unmatched transfer for you to review.
  • Crossing the US–India border is always treated as a Remittance, never a Transfer — even between accounts you own — because it needs to track the exchange rate and fees involved.

How does reconciliation work? Why do my USD and INR numbers not match?​

When you send money from the US, you lose some to bank fees and the exchange rate spread. Rokada reconciles this using your actual remittance rate — the rupees that landed in your account divided by the dollars you sent. The reconciliation panel on each project shows:

  • USD Funded — total of all Remittance transactions sent to this project
  • INR Received — rupees that actually arrived, at your effective (weighted average) rate
  • INR Spent — confirmed expenses logged in the project
  • Float — the unaccounted gap between INR Received and INR Spent

If the float is large and positive, it means you have cash in India that hasn't been entered yet. If it's negative, you've logged more expenses than you funded — check for a missing Remittance entry.

Can I use Rokada for multiple properties or projects?​

Yes. Rokada doesn't limit the number of projects you can create. Each project is a separate accounting bucket — transactions, imports, and reconciliation are all project-scoped. The dashboard gives you a cross-project portfolio view.

What file formats are supported for import?​

  • CSV — Google Pay, Paytm, ICICI NRE/NRO, HDFC, SBI, PhonePe UPI, or any custom CSV
  • Excel (.xlsx / .xls) — any spreadsheet, including password-protected SBI exports
  • Maximum file size: 10 MB per upload

PDF statement upload isn't supported. If your bank only gives you a PDF, export a CSV or Excel statement from net banking instead.

What Indian banks are supported for statement import?​

The following formats are auto-detected — just upload the file, no column mapping needed:

  • ICICI Bank (NRE and NRO accounts)
  • HDFC Bank
  • SBI (YONO export, Account Statement, and password-protected Savings XLSX)
  • PhonePe UPI (CSV)

For any other bank — Google Pay, Paytm, or a bank we don't auto-detect yet — use the CSV/Excel wizard to map your columns manually.

Can I connect my Indian bank account directly?​

Not yet. A direct connection to Indian banks (via Account Aggregator) is on the roadmap but depends on a pending RBI entity registration, so we can't commit to a date. For now, import Indian bank statements manually as CSV or Excel files. US bank connections via Plaid are available to all users during the pilot.

What happens when I delete a transaction?​

Deleting a transaction in Rokada is a soft delete — the record is hidden from all your views but the underlying data is retained for audit purposes. Deleted transactions do not appear in your Inbox, Review, Classified, or project views, and don't count toward any totals.

For Plaid-synced transactions: if your bank connection stays active, a deleted transaction will not reappear on future syncs — Rokada tracks a sync cursor per connection, so only new transactions from the bank are fetched.

There is no "undo delete" button. The only way to restore a deleted Plaid transaction is to disconnect and reconnect your bank account (see the next question). For manually entered transactions, email hello@rokada.app.

Will a deleted Plaid transaction come back if I reconnect my bank?​

Yes, if you disconnect and reconnect your bank account. Disconnecting resets the Plaid sync cursor, which triggers a full history re-sync. During that re-sync, any previously deleted transactions that Plaid returns again are automatically restored — un-deleted and updated with the latest data from Plaid.

Your edits are preserved on restore: if you had already categorized, assigned a payee, or linked the transaction to a project before deleting it, those edits are kept. Only the raw fields from the bank — amount, date, merchant name — are refreshed.

If you keep your bank connected (the normal case), deleted transactions stay deleted indefinitely — the sync never re-processes them. See Deleting and Re-Syncing Transactions for the full picture.

What is a Cash Distribution (sometimes called a "cash chain") and when should I use it?​

A Cash Distribution lets you track the lifecycle of a cash withdrawal — how it was split across multiple payments. For example: you withdraw ₹1,00,000. You pay the contractor ₹40,000, buy supplies for ₹15,000, and give a worker ₹10,000. Instead of creating four separate transactions, you create one parent cash withdrawal and three child disbursements. The chain shows the amount still unaccounted for (₹35,000 in this example) so nothing slips through.

Use it whenever you withdraw cash and hand it out to multiple people or purposes. See Cash Distributions for the full walkthrough.

How do I invite a family member or agent in India?​

From a project's Settings → Members panel, an Owner can invite someone by email and assign them a role — Contributor or Viewer. During the pilot, invite delivery isn't fully wired up yet, so also email hello@rokada.app with the project name, the person's email, and the role you want, and we'll make sure they get access. See Contributor Roles for what each role can do.

Can I export my data?​

Yes. Every project's transaction list has an Export button. You can download your transactions as:

  • CSV — for spreadsheet apps or accounting software
  • Excel (.xlsx) — formatted workbook with headers

The export includes date, description, amount, currency, category, payee, type, and notes.

Does my access ever expire?​

No. Rokada is currently in a free pilot beta — there's no free-trial countdown, no read-only mode, and no paid plan to upgrade to. Pilot users have full access to all features for as long as the pilot runs. If we introduce paid plans in the future, we'll notify you by email well before any billing begins.

How do I change the exchange rate for a project?​

Rokada uses your weighted average exchange rate — automatically computed from the actual rates of all your Remittance transactions. You don't set a project-level rate manually.

When you log a Remittance, enter the USD amount and the INR amount received (from your bank's confirmation message). Rokada derives the effective rate for that remittance and updates the weighted average used for reconciliation.

This approach is more accurate than a fixed rate because it reflects your real cost of funds — including bank fees, conversion charges, and timing differences.