A Budget is the cap you set for an expense category in a month. You decide up front how much can go to groceries, leisure or transport and track, during the month, how much of it is already gone. The point is to notice the overspend while you can still hold back, not only at month end.
Marina decides that in October she can spend up to R$ 1,500 on Food and R$ 400 on Leisure.
Create a budget
In the menu, go to Planning › Budget and click New Budget:
- Category (required) — expense categories only. The budget covers the whole category: what you record in its subcategories also counts.
- Limit Amount (required) — the month's cap.
- Month and Year (required) — the period of the cap. You can create them from last year up to two years ahead.
- Notes — optional, to remember why you chose that amount.
Each category has one budget per month. For November, create another budget with November as the month.
What counts as spending
This is the rule that raises the most questions, so it is worth getting it right:
- Only what has been paid counts. A pending expense does not use the budget yet; a partial payment uses only the paid part.
- It counts by competence month, not by the day the money left. An October expense paid on November 2 weighs on October's budget. If you do not enter a competence date, the due date's month is used.
- A card purchase starts counting as the statement is paid, in the same proportion. If you paid half the statement, half of each purchase in it counts toward the budget.
- A canceled expense does not count.
If Marina has R$ 1,200 paid in Food with October competence and a R$ 300 purchase still pending, the budget shows R$ 1,200 of R$ 1,500. When she settles the R$ 300, it reaches 100%.
Track the month
Pick the month and year in the filters. The top sums up Total Budgeted, Total Spent, Remaining and the Exceeded Categories. The Budget Overview chart compares spent and remaining for each category.
Each budget has a bar with the share of the limit already used. When it goes past 100%, the bar is marked as Exceeded.
A budget's statement
In the row's menu, View statement lists every expense in the category for that month, with date, description, status and amount, plus the totals for paid, partial, pending and canceled. This is where Marina finds that three delivery orders add up to R$ 280. You can open the expense straight from the statement and download the list with Export PDF.
The statement also shows pending expenses, which do not count toward the budget yet. It is the list of what will weigh on it once paid.
Budget exceeded warning
Every day, late in the afternoon, the system checks the budgets and warns you when a category has gone over its limit. The warning arrives through the channels you chose for that type in Notifications.
Edit and delete
Edit changes the limit or the notes; spending is recalculated right away. Delete only removes the cap: the expenses stay where they were.
Where this shows up in the rest of the system
- Expenses — every payment uses up the category's budget in the competence month.
- Categories — a budget always belongs to an expense category, and a category with a budget cannot be deleted.
- Reports › Budget Analysis — compares budgeted and spent over the months.
- Notifications — delivers the exceeded warning.
Where to go next
- Categories — organize the categories that will get a cap.
- Expenses and income (personal) — record entries with the right competence date.
- Financial goals — turn what is left in the budget into savings.
- Notifications — choose where the exceeded warning arrives.
In short: create a cap per category and month. The budget counts what has been paid with competence in that month. Follow the bar, open the statement to understand where the money went, and let the daily warning tell you when a category is over.