Budgets

A budget is a monthly spending limit for a category: “€500 a month on food”. Set it once and it keeps applying in the following months until you change it. The Budgets section shows what is already spent, what is left and whether you are spending faster than the month goes by.

Set a limit

1. Open Budgets and click + Limit.
2. Choose an expense category and the amount per month. Below the amount you see this category’s average over the last full months; Use it puts that number in the field.
3. Starting from is the month the limit starts to apply. The current month by default.
4. Click Save.

The limit is in your base currency. Spending in other currencies is converted at the rate of each entry’s date — the same as in reports.

Subcategories

A category’s limit includes its subcategories: a limit on Food counts both Groceries and Cafés. Subcategories without their own limit are listed under the parent, so you can see what each took.

A subcategory can have its own limit too — Cafés inside Food, say. Then Cafés gets its own bar, and the Total within limits does not count its limit twice: it is already inside the Food limit.

Reading the bars

• The fill — how much of the limit is spent.
• The line — how much of the month has gone by. If the fill is past the line, spending runs ahead of the month.
• Colour: green — within the limit; yellow — “close to the limit” (90% or more spent) or “ahead of pace” (more than half, and noticeably faster than the month); red — over the limit, with the rest shown with a minus.

At the top is the total across all limits: what is left, how much you can spend per day to month end, and how far ahead of or behind pace you are.

Click a row to change its limit. To see the entries themselves, open a category from the widget on the overview — it leads to the journal with that category’s entries for the month.

Carry the rest over

Turn on Carry the rest over to next month for costs that don’t happen every month — clothes, repairs, presents. What is left is added to next month’s limit; overspending is taken off. Under the limit you see how much came in carried over, and the limit panel has How it went: past months with their limit, spending and carry-over.

Change or remove

A new amount applies from the month chosen in Starting from onwards. Past months keep their own limit: use the arrows by the month name to look at any of them as it was.

Remove limit takes it off from the chosen month. Past months stay as they were, and so do your entries.

Outside the budget

At the bottom of the section, Outside the budget lists spending in categories without a limit, each with Set a limit. Below them is everything spent in the month.

Categories excluded from reports — a loan repayment, for example — are not part of the budget: they are neither in the limits nor outside the budget.

Who can change it

Limits belong to the household. The owner and members set and change them; viewers see the budgets but can’t change them — see members and roles.