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Sean Mandable

Debt Descent for coaches and counselors

A payoff planner you can hand a client without asking for a bank login.

If you’re an Accredited Financial Counselor, a counselor at an NFCC member agency, a Ramsey coach, or you coach people on money on your own, you’ve probably built the spreadsheet: balances, rates, minimums, a payoff order, a date. Debt Descent is that spreadsheet as a native app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, kept up by the client between sessions. This page is what I’d want to know before recommending it to someone.

Why hand it to a client

The client enters each debt’s real balance, APR, and minimum, and the app shows Snowball and Avalanche side by side: the debt-free date on each, and the interest each one costs. The payoff order is on the screen, so the conversation about which method to pick happens with the client’s own numbers instead of an example.

The Plan tab draws the descent to zero, and the extra payment is a field the client can change to watch the date move. Pro adds a what-if slider that redraws the plan as it’s dragged, which is the quickest way I know to answer “what if you found $50 more a month.”

There’s no account and no bank linking. The App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected,” and I run no servers of my own, so recommending it never means asking a client to hand over credentials, and nothing a client enters reaches me.

It’s one app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and a client’s data syncs between their devices through their own iCloud.

It tracks a debt management plan exactly

Payment groups live on the Payments tab. The client enters the one monthly draft, the plan fee, and the debts it covers, and the app splits the payment across them to the cent, following the servicer’s own schedule when every member has a fixed payment. The Upcoming card captions what goes out and what reaches the creditors, as in “$837.00 leaves your bank ($32.00 plan fee),” so the app matches the bank statement while the fee stays out of the payoff math. Payment groups are free.

The debts a plan leaves out keep their own place. A mortgage or a car payment goes in Income & bills, so the Left over card shows what the month has after debts and bills. Give it a due date and it’s listed with the debt payments under the payday that covers it. A student loan in deferment carries the switch “In deferment — nothing due yet” and a date, and it rejoins the plan on that date by itself. A card on a 0% promo takes the date the promo ends and the APR it reverts to, and the plan changes rates on schedule.

If a client is weighing a plan, the free DMP calculator runs the plan they’ve been quoted against paying on their own, and counts the fees.

What you can see

Whatever the client chooses to show you. The ••• menu has Export to JSON…, which writes the whole plan, every debt, payment, and setting, to a file the client can send you. History’s ••• on the Payments tab has Export to CSV…, which is free, and Export to PDF… with Pro. The PDF lists every payment, newest first, with the totals, and Just the payments keeps the rest of the plan out of it. The Progress tab has Share your progress, a card with the debt-free date, what’s left, and how far along they are, and screenshots work as they always have. There’s no coach login and no shared workspace. The app is built so that nobody but the client can see the data, and that includes me.

Free Pro for counselors

Debt Descent is free to use, and Pro is a one-time $14.99 purchase with no subscription, Family Sharing enabled. Pro adds five more payoff methods (one of them a custom order), the what-if slider and per-debt payoff tests, picking a debt-free date and seeing the extra it takes, planned windfalls, refinance and consolidation modeling, amortization schedules, PDF and calendar export, due-date, payday, and promo notifications, and the statement-day balance check.

If you work with clients, I’ll give you Pro free. Ask for a code:

I send each one by hand as an App Store offer code, which redeems in the app’s Settings.

Questions coaches ask

Do my clients need an account?
No. There’s nothing to sign up for, and nothing is collected. If a client is signed in to iCloud, the app syncs between their own devices; if not, it works fully on the one device.
Can I see a client’s plan?
Not through the app. A client can export the whole plan as JSON, send you their payment history as a CSV (or a PDF, with Pro), share the progress card, or send screenshots. There’s no coach dashboard and no shared workspace.
Does it recommend a debt management plan, or sell one?
No. It tracks whichever plan the client is on, a DMP included, and stays out of the choice. The DMP calculator on this site compares a quoted plan with paying on your own, fees counted.
Does it work on Android or the web?
No. It’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac only. The free calculators on this site run in any browser, so a client on Android can still use those.
What does it cost my client?
The app is free. Pro is $14.99, paid once, with no subscription, and if you work with clients you can ask me for a free code on this page.
Are you connected to a counseling agency?
Only as a client. I’m on Consolidated Credit’s debt management plan myself. No agency pays me, and none helped make the app.

Disclosure: I’m a current client of Consolidated Credit’s debt management plan, and I built Debt Descent to track it. Nobody pays me to recommend a DMP, and this page doesn’t sell one.

More free tools

All of them run in your browser and send nothing back to me. They come from Debt Descent, my debt-payoff app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. If you’re weighing it against another planner, I’ve written up Debt Descent vs Undebt.it, Debt Descent vs Debt Payoff Planner, and Debt Descent vs Debt Free.