Budgets

A budget caps what you spend in a calendar month or a calendar year. You can set one for all your expenses, one for each expense category, or both — and each of them can have a monthly cap, a yearly cap, or both.

Yearly budgets suit spending that doesn't happen every month: travel, gifts, insurance, car repairs.

How to set a budget

1. Open Settings → Categories and pick the Expenses tab (the dashboard's Set a monthly budget link takes you straight there).
2. In the Budgets card at the top, choose Month or Year. Every budget field on the page switches to that period.
3. Type an amount in Total monthly budget / Total yearly budget for a cap on all your expenses, or in the Budget field on a category's row for a cap on that category alone.
4. Leave the field to save it. Clear the field to remove the budget.

Under a total, the card shows what it means in the other period — for example a yearly budget of 6,000 shows ≈ 500 per month — so you can check the two agree.

Budgets are for expense categories only. The kinds are independent: category budgets don't have to add up to the total, and a yearly budget doesn't have to be twelve times the monthly one. If category budgets add up to more than the total for the same period, the card points it out in amber, but nothing stops you.

Budgets work offline. A total budget changed without a connection says will sync when online until it reaches your other devices.

On the dashboard

• Categories tab → Expenses: a category with a monthly budget shows a bar measuring what you've spent against its budget (green, amber from 80%, red from 100%), plus how much you're over once you pass it. A budget on a category with subcategories counts the parent and all its subcategories; a budget on a subcategory counts that subcategory alone.
• Spent so far: with a monthly total, the pace card judges the month against your budget instead of a typical month, and the daily allowance tells you what's left to spend per day.
• Yearly budgets: when you have at least one yearly budget, a card under Spent so far lists them for the current year — the total first, then the categories furthest through their cap. Each bar has a small marker showing where an even pace through the year would be today, and says in words how you're doing:
  • On track — you've spent no more than an even pace allows so far;
  • … above pace — still under the cap, but spending faster than the year is passing;
  • Over by … — the cap is already exceeded.

A past month is always compared with your current monthly budget — budgets have no history. Yearly budgets are shown for the current year only.

Alerts

You get one alert when a budget reaches 80% and one when it reaches 100% — per budget, per month for monthly budgets and per year for yearly budgets. The alert says which period it's about (for example Yearly budget exceeded).

If a single movement crosses several budgets at once — say a category and the total, or a category's monthly and yearly budget — you get one alert showing the most serious crossing for the category and for the total. The others count as notified and won't alert later.

• With the app open, the alert shows as an in-app message.
• If the app is in the background and you allow push notifications (Settings → Notifications), it shows as a system notification; tapping it opens the dashboard.

Raising a budget after an alert doesn't re-arm it for that month (or, for a yearly budget, that year).

Privacy

With encryption turned on, every budget amount — monthly and yearly — is encrypted on your device before it's uploaded, like your movement amounts. Budgets are included in the full account export and restored from it; a restore never overwrites a budget you've already set.