Frequently asked questions

Yes, Ukelønn is 100% free to use. There are no in-app purchases, no premium version, no subscriptions and no ads in the app. Every feature — tasks, payouts, families, streaks, push notifications, magic login links — is available to all users at no cost.

How do we make it work? Ukelønn is developed and operated by CreatorsJourney AS, a Norwegian company that also runs other digital projects. We have no venture investors behind us and no expectation of “milking” the user base with subscription models or microtransactions. That means we can make the choices we believe are right for families — not the ones that maximise short-term revenue.

We’re exploring future partnerships with Norwegian banks that could add extra functionality (for example direct Vipps integration or savings accounts for children — Vipps is Norway’s mobile payment app). Any such partnership would be an optional add-on, and never something that makes the core app worse or more expensive. The principle is simple: the everyday use of Ukelønn — creating tasks, approving completed work and keeping track of allowance — will always be free.

If you have questions about how we’re funded or want to hear more about our roadmap, you can reach us at post@ukelonn.no.

This is one of the most important things to understand about Ukelønn: the app doesn’t handle money directly. Ukelønn is a bookkeeping tool, not a payment company.

Here’s how it works in practice:

1. The child completes a task and marks it as done.
2. You, the parent, approve the task. The amount is added to the child’s balance in the app.
3. When it’s time for a payout — weekly, monthly, or once the child has saved up enough for something special — you tap “Pay out” in the app. The balance is reset to zero (or reduced by the amount you chose).
4. You make the actual transfer outside the app. That can be via Vipps (Norway’s mobile payment app), a bank transfer, cash you put in the child’s piggy bank, or whatever your family has agreed on.

Why do we do it this way? Because moving money between accounts requires authorisation from the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway, strict anti-money-laundering routines, KYC checks and extensive regulatory follow-up. That’s necessary and right for payment companies — but it would make Ukelønn an entirely different product, with far higher operating costs that users would ultimately have to cover.

By sticking to bookkeeping and reporting, we can offer the app for free while parents keep full control over where the money actually sits. You decide whether the payout goes to a savings account, a Vipps balance or a piggy bank.

For questions about tax and savings related to allowance, see our blog article Tax and savings on allowance — a parent’s guide.

Not yet — but the solution still works well alongside Vipps today, and direct integration is on our roadmap. (Vipps is Norway’s mobile payment app, used by almost everyone in the country.)

Here’s how most families do it now: once the balance in Ukelønn has grown to the amount you’ve agreed on — whether that’s a fixed sum every Friday or a specific target — you Vipps the money directly to the child. You use Ukelønn as the source of truth for how much to transfer, and Vipps as the payment channel. Simple, quick and familiar to everyone.

For a child to be able to receive Vipps, they need a user tied to a bank account:

• Vipps under 15 is available from around age 10 through the child’s own bank, where the parent still has oversight. The bank usually requires a code device or BankID on mobile (BankID is Norway’s national electronic ID), and access can be limited by the parents.
• Full Vipps becomes available from age 15, when the child can have their own BankID and full control over their own account.

Children who are too young to have their own Vipps can still receive payouts from Ukelønn — via a bank transfer to a savings account you’ve opened in their name, or simply as cash in a piggy bank.

Direct Vipps integration is something we’re seriously considering. The challenge is that it requires a formal agreement with Vipps MobilePay and regulatory follow-up that is currently beyond our scale. If and when we build it, it will be an optional add-on that complements — not replaces — today’s manual flow. Feel free to send a request to post@ukelonn.no if this matters to your family.

We recommend Ukelønn for children between 6 and 15 years old. This is the age range where children are mature enough to grasp the connection between tasks, responsibility and reward — while parents still naturally hold the role of financial guide.

Under 6 years old the app becomes a little too abstract. Young children don’t yet have the grasp of numbers needed to watch a balance grow over time, and their motivation comes best from immediate, physical recognition. At that age, stickers on the fridge are often better than an app.

Between 6 and 10 years old Ukelønn is at its most useful. Children this age love fixed routines, streaks and visual confirmation that they’ve done something good. At the same time, they learn how to handle numbers, save and plan ahead.

From 10 to 15 years old Ukelønn works well as a bookkeeping tool alongside a child’s first bank card or Vipps under 15 (Vipps is Norway’s mobile payment app, with a supervised version available for children). Many parents use the app to keep track of what’s been earned and transfer money via Vipps based on the balance in Ukelønn.

After 15 years old most children are ready for their own bank account, full Vipps access and full independence with their money. At that point an allowance app is often redundant.

Parents always control the accounts, approve completed work and decide which tasks are available. You can tune the app to be simple for the youngest children or more advanced for teenagers.

Setting up your family in Ukelønn takes just a few minutes. Here are the steps:

1. Download the app from the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android).
2. Register as a parent with email and password. You confirm your email via a magic link we send you.
3. Create a family from the home screen. Give the family a name — for example “The Hansen Family”. You automatically become the family’s administrator.
4. Invite children from the family settings. You can send the invitation in three ways:
   • Email — we send the child a link they can open on their own phone.
   • SMS — share the link directly from the invitation page.
   • QR code — let the child scan the code on your screen with their own phone. This is the easiest method when you’re sitting together.
5. The child logs in with their own user. For younger children we use magic-link login, so they don’t have to remember a password.
6. Add the other parent (optional). Both parents can have full administrator access and approve tasks from their own phones.

Ukelønn also supports shared custody: a child can be a member of the family at their mother’s home and the family at their father’s home at the same time, with a separate task list in each. In that case, each parent sends their own invitation from their own family.

If you’re unsure how to get started, or need help along the way, send an email to post@ukelonn.no — we reply quickly.

Right now, a single user can be a member of one family at a time in Ukelønn. This is a deliberate simplification that makes the app faster and easier to understand for the vast majority — but we know it doesn’t suit every situation.

Where does this become a challenge?

• Shared custody, where the child lives half the time with each parent, and each home wants its own task list and finances.
• Grandparents who want to reward their own tasks when the grandchildren visit — a separate “grandma task” without it getting mixed into the main family.
• Foster families and extended families, where several adults are actively involved in raising the same child.

Today’s solution for shared custody is that each parent creates their own family, and the child logs in with separate users — often with “Mum” and “Dad” in the family name. It works, but it means balances and history don’t connect between the two homes.

We’re seriously considering building multi-family support, where a single user could belong to several families at once with separate balances, tasks and permissions in each. The technical challenges aren’t the biggest hurdle here — it’s the user interface, getting it right so it doesn’t become cluttered, that we want to nail before we release it.

What can you do? Send an email to post@ukelonn.no and tell us how your family is set up, and how the multi-family feature should work for you. We prioritise features based on how many real user requests we get, so your voice counts directly.

We hugely appreciate feedback. Ukelønn is built by a small Norwegian developer, and every single bug report and suggestion from parents and children makes the app better for everyone. Here’s how to reach us:

Email is the fastest route: post@ukelonn.no. Feel free to write briefly what happened, which phone you use (iPhone or Android), and whether the bug can be reproduced. Screenshots are gold.

The Report button in the app is found under Settings → Help → Report. This one has the advantage that we automatically receive technical information like the app version, operating system and your latest actions — that helps us find the bug quickly without you needing to provide anything technical yourself.

Response times:

• Within 2 business days for all enquiries.
• Same day for bugs that affect children’s data, finances or login. Those cases jump to the front of the queue.
• Immediately if something concerns security or privacy — in that case write to post@ukelonn.no and mark the message “URGENT”.

Have a suggestion for a new feature? Feel free to send a description of what you’d like and why. We collect every suggestion, and prioritise by how many people ask for the same thing and how well it fits the direction of the app. Larger, strategic suggestions are discussed openly in our upcoming community-shared roadmap — keep an eye on the newsletter and the in-app news for details on when it launches.

Thank you so much for taking the time to let us know. It means a lot.

Ukelønn supports several types of tasks so you can mirror how your family actually works — not force you into a rigid template.

One-off tasks are the classic: “Tidy the garage”, “Wash the car”, “Help carry in the shopping bags”. Created once, done once, paid out once.

Weekly tasks repeat on fixed days or over the course of the week. Typical examples: “Take out the rubbish every Monday”, “Vacuum the living room every Saturday”, “Tidy your room by Sunday evening”. The task automatically becomes available again when a new week starts.

Monthly tasks suit bigger jobs like cleaning the bathroom or dusting high shelves.

Must-be-done-X-times tasks are flexible volume tasks: “Walk the dog 5 times this week” or “Help with the dishes 3 times before Sunday”. The child ticks them off as they go, and the task is complete once the number is reached.

Shared tasks can be done by anyone in the family. Whoever does the job gets the money. This works well for siblings who “compete” over the same chores.

Individual tasks are assigned to a specific child. Useful when you want the eldest to take out the rubbish while the youngest sets the table.

The same principle applies to every task type: the child marks the task as done, the parent approves it (or asks for a small adjustment), and the amount is added to the balance. That’s how children learn that a job completed isn’t quite the same as a job approved — an important lesson in adult life too.

A streak is the number of consecutive days or weeks a child has completed at least one task. The longer the streak, the bigger the visual confirmation in the app — and the prouder the child tends to be.

The idea is built on simple habit psychology. Research suggests it takes roughly 21 days before a new behaviour starts to feel like a fixed habit, and around 60–90 days before it’s firmly established. By making the streak visible in the app — with numbers, symbols and small milestones — we help the child stick with it long enough that the daily effort becomes automatic.

How it works in practice:

• Every day the child completes at least one task, the streak goes up by one.
• If the child skips a day, the streak resets. (We’re discussing introducing “freeze days” for illness and holidays — let us know if you think that’s a good idea.)
• At 7, 14 and 30 days the child gets a special marker and a congratulations notification.
• In the family overview, siblings can see each other’s streaks, which often turns into a healthy, playful competition.

Streaks are not tied to the amount of money — they’re a pure motivation mechanism. A child with a 30-day streak who only does small tasks doesn’t get more money than the streak implies. But the experience of keeping the run unbroken is often a stronger driver than the amount itself.

For more tips on how to use streaks and other routines to teach children healthy money habits, take a look at our blog about habits that teach children about money and saving.

Privacy isn’t a plaster we stick on afterwards — it’s the starting point. Ukelønn is built to Norwegian and European rules (the GDPR), and we collect only what’s needed for the app to work.

What do we store? Names, email, family membership, the tasks you create, balances and payout history. For children we usually store only a first name and their tie to the family — no more contact information than necessary. We do not store national ID numbers, bank account details or payment card information, because the app doesn’t handle money directly.

Where is the data stored? All data sits with Microsoft Azure in Europe (a data centre in Amsterdam). We never send personal data outside the EU/EEA. Data traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest (at-rest encryption).

Is the data shared with anyone? No — we have no third-party advertisers, no ad networks, no marketing platforms. The only external services we use are:

• Apple Push (APNs) and Google Firebase (FCM) to deliver push notifications to your phones.
• Sentry for error reporting (without personally identifiable details).
• Azure as our hosting platform.

Who owns the data? You do. Parents are the “data controller” for their children’s data within their family. You can export all data at any time (GDPR portability) or delete the account (the right to be forgotten). See the separate FAQ on how to delete an account.

Read the full privacy policy at /personvern. If you have specific questions, write to post@ukelonn.no.

Yes. Ukelønn is built from the ground up as an app children can use without parents having to worry about who they meet or what gets shared. We’ve deliberately left out features that could create risk.

No chat. There is no messaging feature between users, neither within a family nor across families. A child therefore cannot be contacted by strangers through Ukelønn.

No public profile. A child’s name, age and activity are only visible to other members of the same family. There is no “discover others”, no friends list and no way to be found by strangers.

No photo or video sharing. The app never asks for access to the camera roll or your contacts. When a child confirms a task, it’s done with a single tap — not by uploading documentation that could end up in the wrong hands.

No third-party advertising. Children are not exposed to ads, sales tricks or manipulative “freemium” patterns designed to get them to buy something.

Full parental control. As a parent you see everything that happens in your child’s account: which tasks have been created, which have been completed, what’s been paid out and when the child last logged in. You can adjust tasks, change amounts or pause the account at any time.

PEGI 3 / “for all ages” — the app is rated suitable for all age groups on both the App Store and Google Play, with no content warnings.

If you spot anything that looks odd or that you think could be improved, write to post@ukelonn.no. Children’s safety is an area we take very seriously.

You can delete your Ukelønn account at any time — it’s your right under the GDPR, and we’ve made the process as simple and clear as possible.

How to delete your account from the app:

1. Open Ukelønn and go to Settings.
2. Select My account.
3. Tap Delete account at the bottom of the page.
4. Confirm your choice in an extra dialog, so we can be sure it isn’t an accident.

What happens after you confirm?

We use a 30-day deferred deletion. For 30 days after you confirm, the account is “closed” but can be reopened if you change your mind. This is an undo window we’ve deliberately built in, because deleting family data is irreversible. After 30 days all data is permanently removed from our databases. Backup copies are rolled off shortly afterwards.

What gets deleted? Your user, your email address, your password, the task history, balances, push tokens and all ties to the family. If you’re the family administrator, you’ll first be asked to transfer that role to another parent, so the family and the child’s history can be kept if desired.

Export before deleting: If you’d like a copy of all your data before deleting, you can request a GDPR export. Send an email to post@ukelonn.no with the name of the account, and we’ll send you a file with everything we have stored about you. This is free and usually takes 1–3 business days.

If you have questions about deletion or about privacy in general, get in touch — we answer everything.

Ukelønn sends a small and useful set of push notifications — not a constant stream of alerts. Here’s everything the app can send:

To the child:

• Daily reminder about open tasks. Sent around 4 p.m. local time, so it arrives after school but before dinner. Only if there are actually tasks waiting.
• Task approved when the parent has approved completed work and the money has been added to the balance.
• Streak milestones at 7, 14 and 30 days of continuous activity.
• Payout confirmation when the parent pays out the balance.

To parents:

• New task awaiting approval when the child has marked a chore as done.
• Weekly summary every Sunday — what got done, which tasks remain, how much has been earned.
• Confirmation of family changes (new member, changed role).

Everything is toggleable. Both you and the child can turn off notifications per category in the settings. Parents can also see an overview of which notifications the child has received over the last few days, so there are no surprises.

Quiet hours 10 p.m.–9 a.m. Between 10 p.m. and 9 a.m. Oslo time we never send notifications — not even reminders. This is fixed and cannot be overridden. We believe an allowance app should never disturb a child’s sleep.

Technical: Notifications are delivered via Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) on iOS and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) on Android. If notifications aren’t coming through, check that you’ve allowed notifications for Ukelønn in your phone’s settings.

No stress — you never have to lose access to your Ukelønn account. Here’s how:

1. Open the app and tap “Log in”.
2. Choose “Forgot password” beneath the login form.
3. Enter the email address you registered with.
4. We send a magic link to your email. Click the link and you’re logged straight in without a password.
5. Once you’re logged in, you can set a new password in the settings if you like — or keep using magic-link login going forward. It’s entirely up to you.

Magic links are time-limited and can only be used once, so they’re both secure and simple. If the email doesn’t show up in your inbox, check your junk/spam folder, or request a new link after 2 minutes.

For children using magic-link login: they need a parent’s help the first time, because the link is sent to the email the parent provided at invitation. After the first login the phone stores the child’s session locally, so they can open the app without logging in again for a long time.

Common errors and fixes:

• “The link has expired” — magic links last for 30 minutes. Request a new one.
• “I’m not getting any email” — check that the email address is spelled correctly, and look in the spam folder.
• “I don’t remember which email I used” — write to post@ukelonn.no with the name of the family, and we’ll help you identify the account.

All support enquiries about logging in are prioritised and answered as quickly as possible, usually the same day.

Yes. Ukelønn is built with the idea that the engine — tasks, families, balances, the approval flow, push notifications — can be offered as a white-label solution for Norwegian banks and financial players who want to strengthen their offering to families with children.

We’re already in dialogue with several players, and we strongly believe in non-exclusive partnerships. That means several banks can offer a Ukelønn-powered family-finance feature under their own brand, on their own terms, integrated with their own savings and payment products. That way, families with children in Norway get better tools whichever bank they choose — and no one is locked in.

What can we offer?

• Full API access to the task, family and bookkeeping engine.
• Custom UI in your app, with your visual identity, typography and voice.
• Norwegian operations and support, with servers in Azure Europe and GDPR compliance built in.
• Flexible integration — from a lightweight embedded solution to deep coupling with banking services, savings accounts and parent-controlled transfers.
• Pilot collaboration with a real user base (12,000+ active users), so you can test the product against real data and feedback.

What do the users get? The same core features found in Ukelønn today, supplemented by the bank’s own services: a real account, automatic transfers, savings with interest, possibly card products for the older children.

To start a conversation, contact post@ukelonn.no. Read more about the possibilities at /partnere.