Why this order?

Home, countries, travelers, and vehicles are records: you create them once, and every trip draws on them. That way you maintain passport, vaccinations, or exchange rate in one place only, and budget and alerts calculate correctly from the start. So: the basics first, then the trip.

Phase 1

Set up the basics

Set home and currency

Getting started assistant · More › Settings

On first launch the assistant asks for your home country and your base currency, both preset from your device’s region. The home country determines the embassies, emergency numbers, and travel advice in the country data; costs, budget, and totals appear in the base currency. You can change both at any time under More › Settings.

Load countries

More › Records › Countries

Add the countries you travel to, fastest with the prefilled selection from etappe.app. Each country carries entry rules (ETA, visa), currency with exchange rate, embassy or emergency contact, and, if pets travel along, the required vaccinations and deworming treatment. These details later feed budget and alerts automatically.

Prefilled country selection: In the app under More › Records › Countries → “Import from etappe.app” you load around 40 European countries with one tap; the Getting started assistant offers this directly as well. The file is digitally signed: before importing, the app automatically verifies that it is genuine and unchanged from etappe.app. Right after the import, Etappe fetches the European Central Bank’s reference rates once and applies them to the countries; later you refresh them with “Refresh Rates”, only on your tap, never on its own. You can add or edit countries of your own at any time afterwards.

Please check all details yourself before importing; entry, visa, vaccination, and deworming requirements in particular change constantly. The data is a non-binding starting aid, without any guarantee of accuracy, completeness, or currency. The official bodies (e.g. foreign ministries, embassies) are authoritative.

Add travelers

“Travelers” tab

People with passport or ID card, and pets with EU pet passport, vaccinations, and deworming treatment. Every traveler gets a photo as a tile. You file the documents in the detail view of the respective traveler.

Add vehicles · optional

More › Records › Vehicles

For road trips: camper van or car with dimensions (important for ferries and tunnels), inspection, vignettes, and service dates. Vehicles you no longer use can be archived; they remain visible in past trips.

Packing list templates · optional

More › Records › Packing list templates

Create recurring lists such as “Camping” or “City break” once and later take them into any trip with a single tap.

Phase 2

Create & plan the trip

New trip & basics

“Trips” tab › +

The trip assistant asks for destination country, title, travelers, pets, dates, vehicle, budget (in your base currency), and cover photo. Only country and title are required; skip everything else with “Don’t know yet”. If you prefer to set everything yourself, choose “Add manually”. From now on, everything in the trip refers to exactly these countries and participants.

Sketch it roughly · optional

Trip › Sketch

Before dates are fixed: line up blocks such as accommodations, journeys, and ideas with a duration, sort them by dragging, and later turn them into real bookings with a swipe. Etappe calculates the dates automatically. If you like, give each travel day a day theme, a heading such as “North coast”, which also appears in the calendar, in “Today”, and in the itinerary.

Fill the trip

Trip › Accommodations · Journeys · Activities · Outdoor activities

Create concrete entries with date, place, and costs: type a place or address, tap a suggestion from Apple Maps, and name, address, and country are filled in, and every place automatically lands on the trip map. Journeys know car, ferry, flight, train, bicycle, and on foot (with time-zone offset and border note), import GPX files, can be recorded via GPS on the road, and can be duplicated or created as a return leg with a long press; outdoor activities, from hikes and mountain tours to bike tours, show GPX track, elevation profile, and walking time.

Set the budget

Trip › Budget

Set the available budget and record expenses in the local currency. Etappe converts them into your base currency using the stored rate and shows you at any time, with a status light, how much room is left.

Fill the packing list

Trip › Packing list

Take it from a template or create it freely, and tick it off per person so nothing important gets left behind.

Check alerts

“Alerts” tab

Etappe checks for every country and every participant: passport validity, ETA and visa, vaccinations, deworming treatment, and expiring documents. A red dot means: take care of it before departure.

Phase 3

On the road & looking back

Tick off “Today”

Trip › Today

On the road, the daily schedule shows today’s plan with day theme, times, and places, to tick off item by item.

Keep the journal

Trip › Journal

Capture days with photo and place. Etappe takes date and location from the photo automatically; you attach memory photos directly to the entry. Afterwards the whole journal can be printed or shared as a PDF.

Mark receipts & print the PDF

Press and hold an entry · Trip › Itinerary as PDF

Press and hold a document on an accommodation, journey, activity, or outdoor activity and choose “Mark as booking receipt”. When creating the itinerary as PDF, one page per day, you then choose whether the marked receipts are printed along with it.

Look back

Trip status › “Past”

After the trip, set the status to “Past”. The visited countries then appear on your “Where I’ve been” world map, like a scratch map that fills up with every trip.

Tip: photos & receipts only after saving

A new entry is only really created with “Save”, so “Cancel” leaves nothing behind and no orphaned files pile up. Once the entry is saved, you can attach as many receipts, scans, and photos as you like in its detail view.

Getting started with Etappe