Help chat

What the assistant is for

There is a help button in Tovari. Open it and you can ask how something works in your own words — “how do I add a transaction”, “what does uncleared mean”, “how do I set a budget” — and get an answer without leaving the screen you are on. Where that button sits differs by where you are running Tovari, and Asking a question below says where to find it in each.

It answers from this documentation. That is the whole basis of what it knows: it reads the pages you are reading now and explains what they say. It is not searching the web, and it is not making things up from general knowledge.

The assistant is available everywhere Tovari runs: on a PC or Mac, in a phone browser, and in the Tovari mobile app.

What it can and cannot see

It cannot see your money. The assistant has no access to your accounts, balances, transactions, budget figures or payees. It knows which screen you are on and it knows the documentation, and that is all. So it can tell you where your working balance is shown and what the number means, but it cannot tell you what your balance is.

That is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature. Your financial data never goes into the assistant.

It only talks about Tovari

The assistant is limited to Tovari and its documentation, on purpose. Ask it something outside that and it will say so plainly rather than attempting an answer:

I can only help with Tovari and its documentation. That one is outside what this assistant covers.

A refusal is the assistant working correctly, not failing. Three kinds are worth recognising:

Not about Tovari — general knowledge, other software, writing tasks. Declined as above.
Advice about your own money — whether to pay off a card first, whether to save or invest. The assistant will not weigh in on what you should do with your money. It will offer to explain how Tovari’s tools work instead — budget envelopes, Safe to Spend, and the reports that show where your money actually went.
A Tovari question the documentation does not cover — this one is not a refusal so much as an honest gap. The assistant says the documentation does not cover it and offers a Report this gap button underneath. Press it once and the question is filed for you — there is no form to fill in and nothing to write, because your question is the report. You get the issue number back in the chat, and the usual acknowledgement email.

The third case is the one worth taking it up on. It is how the gaps in these pages get found.

What changed recently

The assistant knows what has shipped in the three most recent releases, so you can ask whether something is new or was recently changed without going hunting:

what’s new in this release

has anything changed recently

what was fixed in the latest version

Answers about releases link to What’s New, where the full notes for every version live.

Two limits are worth knowing. It only goes back three releases — ask about something older and it will say so rather than guess. And release notes describe what changed, never how a feature works: ask how to do something and you get the documentation page for it, which is the right answer. A feature not appearing in the recent notes only means it did not change recently, not that Tovari lacks it.

Asking a question

Where the button is. On a PC or Mac it sits in the bottom-right corner of the screen, labelled Ask Tovari; in a phone browser it is the same corner button without the label. In the Tovari mobile app it is the help control in the header at the top of the screen, on Dashboard, Accounts, a register, Budget, Bills and Reports. Tapping it there offers two things — Ask about this screen, which opens the assistant, and Documentation, which opens the written guide for that screen in your browser. One control, because a phone’s header has room for one.

Open the assistant and it greets you with the screen you are on and two or three suggested questions relevant to that screen — tap one instead of typing if it matches what you wanted. The suggestions are tailored to the screen, so the ones on Budget differ from the ones on Accounts.

Type into Ask about how Tovari works and send. Answers take a few seconds; you will see a thinking indicator while it works. Nothing is streamed word by word — the answer arrives complete.

Every answer that comes from a documentation page links to that page, so you can read the full version if the short answer was not enough.

Take me there

When the answer is about something on a different screen, the assistant offers a Go to… button underneath it. Pressing it moves you to that screen inside Tovari.

This is separate from the documentation link on the same answer: the link opens the page that explains the feature, the button takes you to the feature itself.

Web
Mobile

On a PC or Mac the assistant opens as a panel above the help button, and the panel stays open when you navigate — so you can read the answer and land on the new screen at the same time.

Reporting a bug or a suggestion

The assistant is also how you tell Tovari something is wrong. Describe what happened — what you were doing, what you expected, what happened instead — and it writes the report for you, asking a follow-up question or two if it needs more detail.

It then shows you the draft exactly as it would be filed: the kind (bug, suggestion or question), a summary and a description. You can edit any of it, and nothing is sent until you press File it. Cancel discards the draft and files nothing. Your current screen, the browser or device you are using, and the app version are attached automatically, so you never have to describe those.

That review step is for reports you and the assistant wrote together, about something only you witnessed. A documentation gap is different — the report is your own question, which you just typed — so that one files on a single press with no draft to check. See It only talks about Tovari above.

If the assistant is unavailable, filing still works — the panel falls back to a plain form. That matters: reporting a problem must never depend on the assistant being up. Reporting is also never restricted by your plan.

The full picture of what happens after you file — the acknowledgement email, and the second email when a bug or suggestion is actually fixed and live — is on Getting help.

When the assistant is limited

Answering questions costs Tovari money, so there are limits. If you ask a great many questions in a short time, the assistant will tell you plainly that you have reached a limit and roughly when you can ask again. There are also occasions when it is briefly unavailable altogether.

In every one of those cases the assistant still points you at the documentation page for the screen you are on, and filing a bug or suggestion still works. You never lose the ability to reach the team.

Getting help — what happens after you file a report, and the emails you get.
Where each feature works — the platform map for every documented feature.
Data and privacy — what Tovari stores, exporting your data, and asking for erasure.