Frequently asked questions

Does Finelly collect the fines?

No, and this is the first thing to understand: Finelly is a ledger, not a payment gateway. The app works out what each person owes and notes it on the event receipt, but the money never passes through it.

When someone settles up — cash, a transfer, buying the next round — it gets marked as settled on the receipt by hand and the collected total updates. That button is the only thing that happens inside the app; the money moves outside it, between you.

Is Finelly a gambling app?

No. Gambling involves chance and a prize somebody collects. Neither applies here: the outcome depends purely on what time each person arrives, and the pot is spent on whatever the group decided when creating the event. Finelly has no stake in those amounts, takes no cut and does not process them. It is spelled out in the house rules.

Who pays when several people are late?

When creating the event, the organiser sets how many penalty slots there are. Call it K. Among everyone who arrived late, only the last K to arrive pay, and each one pays their own minutes multiplied by the event rate.

That rule has two consequences, and both matter:

• Being late does not mean paying. With two slots, if you are third from the back you get away with it even if you were fifteen minutes late.
• If fewer people are late than there are slots, only those who were actually late pay. Spare slots are not filled with people who arrived on time.

There is a worked example in the full guide.

How exactly are the minutes counted?

From the event start time to the moment of your check-in, using server time — not your phone's clock, which everyone sets however they like.

Minutes are always rounded up: seven minutes and ten seconds counts as eight. That is deliberate, so nobody argues over seconds.

What is the pot?

It is the sum of all the fines from the event, with a purpose the organiser writes when creating it: a dinner, a trip, the first round, a good cause. It is printed on the receipt from the start, which heads off the argument afterwards when nobody remembers what was agreed.

The pot is informational: Finelly keeps track of what is owed and what has been settled, but the money moves outside the app.

Do I need to sign up?

Yes, a free account, and you can create it with an email and password or by signing in with your Google account. That is what makes it possible to keep your profile with the history and punctuality stats across every event you take part in. Opening an invite link asks you to log in, and as soon as you do you land straight in the event.

Do I have to install anything?

No. Finelly runs in the phone browser: open the event link and that is it. If you want it to behave like a normal app, you can add it to your home screen and it will open full-screen with its own icon. And if you would rather have it as an app, it is now on the App Store and Google Play.

What happens to my location?

It is read only at the moment you press the check-in button, to confirm you are at the meeting point. The coordinates of that specific arrival are stored against that event, because they are the proof the check-in was valid.

There is no background tracking, no access to your location outside that moment, and no history of your movements between events. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

What if someone fakes a check-in?

The button is only validated within the radius of the venue — 150 metres — so marking it from the sofa does not work. Even so, Finelly is a game between friends, not a clocking-in system: if there is any doubt, the group has the final say.

What if GPS will not let me check in even though I am there?

It happens, especially indoors, in underground car parks or between tall buildings, where the signal loses accuracy. In order:

1. Check that you have granted the browser location permission and that GPS is on.
2. Step outside for a moment and try again. That usually does it.
3. If it still fails, the organiser can mark your arrival manually.

Do I need an internet connection?

Yes. The check-in is recorded on the server at that moment, with the time and the location check, so you need data or wifi. In a basement with no signal you will not be able to complete it until you get coverage back.

Are events grouped together, or is each one on its own?

Each event is independent: they are not chained into a league or a season. What does persist is your profile, with punctuality history accumulated across every event you take part in, and your friends list. You can also save friend groups and invite a whole one in a single tap, without passing the code around again.

What happens if someone never shows up?

With no check-in there is no arrival time to measure, so the app assigns no fine: a no-show does not appear on the receipt with an amount. Finelly only counts recorded arrivals. What you do about whoever stayed home is up to you.

Can I edit an event after creating it?

Yes, whoever organised it can change it, and also close it once the group is all there so the results come out. If you need an event taken down entirely, email us at hola@finelly.app.

How many people fit in an event?

There is no cap on participants or events. That said, the mechanic shines with groups of three to ten: below three there is barely a queue of latecomers, and above ten it gets hard to make everyone check in.

What is the Finelly Score?

It is a score from 0 to 100 that sums up your punctuality in a single figure, and it is the criterion the leaderboards are ordered by.

It is not the same as your punctuality percentage: on top of how often you arrive on time, it takes how many events you have into account. That is what stops someone with a single perfect event from overtaking someone with twenty who is almost always on time — precisely what makes a ranking meaningless. The more events you accumulate, the closer your score gets to your real percentage.

It is calculated from group events only. Solo Mode events are a personal record of yours: they count neither towards the Score nor towards the leaderboards.

What is Solo Mode?

It is the part of Finelly you play against yourself, without inviting anyone: you create an event with the time you want to arrive at and check in with GPS when you get there. The penalty runs the other way round, and that is the whole idea: arriving early adds to your personal pot, arriving late subtracts from it.

There is no grace period, and the place has to come from the search box, because arrival is verified exactly as in a group event: with no coordinates there would be nothing to validate.

What is the Solo Mode pot for?

It is a symbolic balance with the goal you write on it — a trip, a treat, some savings — that goes up or down with every solo event you close. You can keep several pots at once and archive the ones you no longer use.

The balance is not blindly accumulated: the app recalculates it from your closed solo events, so fixing an event fixes the pot.

Does Solo Mode count towards the public profile and the leaderboards?

No, and that is deliberate. Solo events are a record of your own, with their own statistics and their own pot, separate from group ones. Your Finelly Score, your public punctuality percentage and the rankings are calculated from group events only, because those are the ones with other people watching the clock.

What is the punctuality streak?

The count of consecutive times you have arrived within the deadline. It goes up with every on-time check-in and breaks when you turn up late. It has no effect on fines: it is the personal scoreboard that builds up on your profile alongside your achievements.

Is the one-off payment a subscription?

No. It is a single payment that removes ads for good. It does not renew, does not expire, and there is nothing to cancel. The details are in pricing.

What languages is Finelly available in?

The app is translated into eleven languages: Spanish, Catalan, English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Greek and Turkish. These public pages are now available in all eleven.

How do I delete my account and my data?

From the delete account page. Deletion covers your profile and associated data, and it cannot be undone.

Can I use Finelly with my work team?

Nothing stops you and the mechanic works the same, but it is designed for groups of friends. Before putting money on the table in a work context, make sure everyone is genuinely fine with it: between colleagues, a fine stops being a joke very easily.

Got a question that is not here?

Email hola@finelly.app or drop by support. We reply.