How the budget works

Accounts, categories and Ready to budget: the few ideas that the whole app uses.

The app helps you know what your money is for. You put money from your accounts into categories, such as Rent or Groceries. When you spend, the money comes out of a category. Each amount stays in its own currency.

Accounts hold your money

An account is a bank account, a card, a wallet or a cash box. Each account has one currency. You set the currency when you add the account, and you cannot change it later.

If one bank holds money in two currencies, add two accounts. For example, add Wise EUR and Wise HUF.

Categories show what the money is for

A category is a purpose, such as Rent, Groceries or Travel. You assign money to a category from one account. A category can hold money in more than one currency. For example, Groceries can hold forints from your everyday account and euros from your salary account.

Every category shows three amounts in each currency:

Assigned: The money that you put into the category.
Spent: The money that went out of the category, less any money that came back, such as a refund.
Available: Assigned minus Spent. This is the money that you can still spend from the category.

The Budget page. A totals table shows Cash, In categories and Ready to budget in HUF, EUR and GBP. Below it, categories show Assigned, Spent and Available.

Ready to budget is money with no purpose yet

Ready to budget is the money in an account that is not in a category. Each account has its own Ready to budget, in its own currency.

For each account, the app shows:

Balance (or Cash in the totals): all the money in the account.
In categories: the part of the balance that is available in categories.
Ready to budget: the balance minus In categories.

Income goes into Ready to budget. Then you assign it to categories. When Ready to budget is zero, you know what all of the money in the account is for.

Each currency stays separate

The app never adds euros to forints. Each total shows one currency. €100 and HUF 39,000 are different money, even when an exchange rate says that they have the same value.

When you change money from one currency to another, you record a conversion. A conversion records the amount that you sent and the amount that arrived. Thus the app knows the rate that you actually got.

The app can also show an estimate of a total in one currency. An estimate always starts with ≈. It does not change your money. See Currencies and estimates.

Words in the app

The app and this guide use these words with one meaning only:

Account: A place that holds money in one currency. It is not your sign-in: that is your profile.
Profile: You, after you sign in, and all the data in your budget.
Category: A purpose for money, such as Rent. Categories can be in groups, such as Bills.
Assign: Put money from an account into a category. The money stays in the account.
Uncategorized: A transaction with no category. Its money comes out of, or goes into, Ready to budget.
Expense, Income, Transfer, Conversion: The four types of transaction. A conversion is a transfer between two accounts that have different currencies.
Cleared: The bank shows the transaction. Uncleared means that it is not on a statement yet.
Reconcile: Compare the balance of an account with a bank statement and confirm it.
Reconciled: A transaction that is part of a confirmed balance.
Money in, Money out: The two directions of an amount in an imported file.