The Budget screen

This is home. It answers one question: what job does each dollar have?

Your budget is a plan for money you already have. Not a forecast. Not a hope. You assign real dollars to real categories, and the screen keeps score.

Ready to Assign

The big number at the top. It's the money that has no job yet.

• Positive — you have dollars waiting for assignments. Give them jobs.
• Zero — every dollar has a job. This is the goal. It feels good.
• Negative — you assigned more than you have. Don't panic. Pull money back from a category that can spare it until the number reaches zero.

Income lands here automatically: any transaction you categorize as ＋ Income feeds Ready to Assign.

Show the math

A number you can't explain is a number you can't trust. So the banner shows its work: tap the big number and a panel breaks it down in plain words — money that came in, minus money you gave a job, minus overspending carried from earlier months. The three lines always add up to the banner. One tap closes it.

The start month

Inside that panel: Budget starts, with a month picker (editors and admins). Your budget counts from that month forward. Anything earlier stays visible in Transactions and Reports — it just doesn't create overspending debt in your plan.

This matters most once: you connect a bank, it back-fills months of history, and suddenly the banner says you're $23,000 in the red. The math was right — the data was incomplete. All that old spending was never spending against your plan; it's history you hadn't budgeted. Set the start month and the number tells the truth about your plan, not your past.

New households start at the month they signed up. Households from before this feature count all history until they pick a month — if your number looks crazy, this picker is the fix.

The bank check

For the current month, with banks connected, the panel ends with a comparison: what your bank says you have — cash minus what you owe on cards — next to what your budget says — Ready to Assign plus every envelope — and the difference between them.

Cards are subtracted from the bank side on purpose: the budget already counted every card purchase as spent, envelope by envelope. Loans and investment accounts sit out entirely — not budget money.

Record … as my starting balance books the difference as one honest transaction — "Starting balance," dated the first of your start month, visible in Transactions like anything else. Click it again later and it re-books that same transaction; it never stacks a second one.

After that, the two numbers should agree. When they don't, the panel says why — you don't have to work it out.

Pending charges get counted. Your bank has already subtracted them; your budget waits until they settle. The panel names that exact amount, so you can see how much of the gap closes on its own. That part asks nothing of you.

A quiet account gets named. When a connection hasn't refreshed in a day or so, the panel says which one and how long it's been — instead of leaving you to check five accounts one at a time. Banks run slow sometimes. Most come back on the next sync.

And if the gap is meaningfully wider than it was last week, the panel says so. That's the line to read twice. A gap you close once is ordinary; a gap that keeps growing usually means an account you never connected.

No per-account registers, no line-by-line reconciling: one comparison, one adjustment, and a sentence telling you which is which.

The month

Arrows at the top step one month at a time. To go further, click the month name itself — note the small ▾ — and a calendar opens: pick the year, tap the month, you're there. Last December is two clicks away, not twelve arrows. back to today snaps you home. Each month is its own plan.

Money you don't spend rolls forward. A category with $40 left in June starts July with $40. Saving is just a category that rolls for a long time.

The grid

Every row is an envelope. Four columns:

• Category — the job. Click the name to set a goal (look for the 🎯).
• Assigned — what you gave it this month. Click the number, type a new one, press Enter. That's budgeting. That's the whole move. Under it, on a wider screen, sits avg $X — what you typically spend here — and a ± reading, both explained below.
• Activity — what actually happened. Spending shows negative. This column comes from your transactions; you don't edit it here.
• Available — Assigned plus rollover minus spending. The number that matters at the store. Green means go. Red means that category overspent.

Budgets that carry themselves forward

Set an amount once and it keeps going. Assign the mortgage $1,700.80 in April and May shows $1,700.80 too, and June, and onward — no action, nothing to click. A budget that carries itself forward is a plan; one you rebuild twelve times a year is a chore.

Editing re-anchors from that month on. Change the grocery envelope in June and July inherits June, not April. The past stays as you left it; the future follows your latest word.

Set an amount to 0 — or clear it — and inheritance stops there. Zero is a decision too.

One thing to keep honest: inherited amounts are real commitments. They pull from Ready to Assign like any assignment, and they show up in the show-the-math panel. The plan repeats until you re-plan it — it doesn't quietly forgive itself.

The average, and the ±

On a wider screen, avg $X sits under each Assigned amount — what you typically spend in that envelope over the last few months — with a ± next to it:

• Green + — what you've assigned covers what you usually spend. Room to breathe.
• Red − — you typically spend more here than you've planned. Assign more or spend less; both are honest answers.

The average is of spending, not of what you assigned — the envelope telling you its real size. Red isn't a scold; it's the number you needed. Let the averages teach you what your life costs, then set amounts that match.

One-tap assigning

Next to the average sit three small buttons — default, avg, and ⚙. The budget learns your real numbers, then hands them back as one-tap suggestions. You stay the decider; it does the arithmetic.

• default — assigns this line's default amount to the month you're looking at. Set the default in ⚙; until you do, the button stays dimmed. Good for fixed bills — rent is rent.
• avg — assigns the running average, what you typically spend here. Dimmed until the line has some spending to average. Good for the envelopes that drift, like groceries.
• ⚙ — this line's settings: the default amount, how many months the average looks back (3, 6, or 12), and any months to leave out of the average. Cross out the vacation, the move, the three-paycheck month — anything that would skew the line — and it stops counting.

Building a fresh month goes quick: tap avg down the column, fix the few lines that need a human, done. And remember these sit on top of inheritance (above) — months already carry their amounts forward on their own. The buttons are for when you want to re-anchor a line on purpose.

These three live on wider screens for now; the phone grid stays lean.

Moving money

Plans meet reality. Reality usually wins. That's fine — move the money.

Click any Available amount to open Move money. Pick where it comes from, how much, where it goes. Ready to Assign works as either end. Overspent on Dining? Take it from Groceries. The plan bends so it doesn't break.

Nobody budgets perfectly. People who succeed just move money honestly.

Goals

Click a category name to set a goal:

• Monthly funding — "put $200 in every month." For rent, subscriptions, anything steady.
• Target balance — "keep $1,000 available." For an emergency fund.
• Target by date — "have $600 by December." For the trip, the tires, the gift season. The app tells you the monthly amount that gets you there.

A progress bar appears under the category. Green fill is progress. Funded ✓ means done. Overdue means the date passed — move the date or move money, either is allowed.

These are month-sized goals, one envelope each. The big things — a house, a car, years of saving across several envelopes — live on their own page. Set the big one there, fund it here. → Goals

Uncategorized spending

If money left your accounts without a category, a notice appears above the grid. Go to Transactions and give those dollars their jobs. An honest budget is only as honest as its categories.