Budgeting each month

Guides

At the start of the month, decide what your money is for. During the month, adjust the plan when life happens. Here's the budget editor, part by part.

The idea behind the budget is in Zero-based budgeting: you assign the money you have to your categories until nothing is left to assign. This page shows where to do it and how to read what Balanced tells you.

Open the budget editor

In the journal overview, tap Adjust next to Budget, or tap the Ready to assign row.
Or touch and hold the chart in the Budget section and tap Adjust budget.

The Budget section appears once the current month has a transaction.

The editor opens on the current month. To look at another one, tap Month (📅) at the top right and pick it. The list goes up to next month, as soon as next month has a transaction, such as an upcoming repeat.

The month at a glance

Available: the money you have this month. Income counts once it’s cleared and its date has come; opening balances, corrections and loans paid into your accounts count too. The line below shows what last month passed on: Remaining last month, or Overspent last month if you overspent. See Month to month.
Spent: what you spent from your categories this month, dated today or earlier. Planned spending: the same, dated after today. Payments to cards and loans don’t count here; their own rows show them.
To assign: what still has no category. It’s Available plus what last month passed on, minus Assigned, the total you’ve given your categories this month.

Your categories

Below the overview, the editor lists your Liabilities, if you have any, in a folder of their own, and then your Expenses. Categories that share a Parent Group sit together in a folder that shows how much the group has been assigned. See Accounts.

The category, and 📊 Details on the right.
On the left, the amount you assign this month. Tap it and type. Balanced saves it when you leave the field; clear the field to remove the assignment. The keypad has the same +/-, Clear and Done buttons as in the transaction editor. On the right, the status tag: what’s still available.
The bar: gray is spent, yellow is planned, green is what’s left. If you’ve overspent, red shows what’s missing.
One sentence that sums it up. When a category is overspent, a red Overspent badge appears next to it.
At the bottom, To assign shows what’s still to assign, or Overassigned with a red amount if you’ve assigned more than you have.

When To assign reaches exactly zero in the current month, confetti falls. 🎉

The status tag uses four colors:

Color	Means
Green	Money is available, after subtracting planned spending.
Orange	Planned spending is more than what’s left. Assign more before it’s due.
Red	Overspent: you’ve spent more than the category had.
Gray	Nothing left over once planned spending is covered, for example when nothing was assigned.

Planned spending explains how planned transactions count.

Details. Tap 📊 Details to open a page for the category. Type the amount in Budget this month and save. The chart below shows what you spent in each month; a dashed line marks this month’s budget. Touch and hold a category for two more shortcuts: Show transactions and Edit assignment, which opens the same page.

Liabilities. Assign money to a credit card or loan to pay off debt you had before. Its row then shows how much you’ve repaid this month. Credit cards explains when that’s needed.

The Budget section in the overview

Back in the journal overview, the Budget section sums up the current month:

The Ready to assign row, or Overassigned, as long as the amount isn’t zero. Tap it to open the editor.
A bar chart of what’s available in each category, and below it a ring for each category with an emoji. Tap a ring to see that category’s transactions.
Touch and hold the chart and tap Displayed accounts to choose which categories it shows. Tick them under Show these accounts and tap Done.

A monthly routine

When your salary arrives, turn on Cleared for it. Then open the budget editor and assign until To assign is zero. Rent and bills you’ve set up as repeats already show up as planned spending, so you can see what they need.
During the month, record and clear your transactions. When a tag turns orange or red, lower a category that has money to spare and raise the one that’s short. To assign stays the same; only the plan changes.
When the new month starts, leftovers stay in their categories, and overspending you didn’t pay by credit card comes off the new month’s money to assign. Month to month has the details.