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Envelopes and budgeting

Your budget lives on Plan › Budget. This page explains how it thinks. For click-by-click setup, see Budgeting.

Two methods, one set of envelopes

The first time you open Plan, you choose a method. You can switch at any time without losing anything — both use the same envelopes and categories.

  • Zero-Based — every dollar of cash gets a job. You assign money to envelopes until Ready to Assign reaches zero, then spend from them. If you’ve used YNAB, this is the same idea. Most of this page is about Zero-Based.
  • 50/30/20 — a quick check of your shape. Your monthly income is split into shares for each group (for example Needs, Wants, Savings), and the app shows how the month is tracking against them. You can give envelopes a monthly cap. There’s nothing to assign and nothing to cover — overspending is reported, not blocked.

Only your Cash and Credit accounts are part of the budget. Savings in a fixed deposit, investments and retirement accounts sit outside it.

Envelopes and categories

A category is a label on a transaction. An envelope is a pot of budgeted money. One or more categories link to an envelope, and their spending comes out of it: Coffee, Takeout and Restaurants can all draw on one “Dining out” envelope without merging the categories.

Envelopes sit in groups (Bills, Needs, Wants and your own). Two groups are managed for you: Credit Card Payments and Commitments (see below).

Each envelope row shows three numbers for the month:

  • Assigned — what you put in this month.
  • Activity — what was spent from it (or refunded into it).
  • Available — what’s left: last month’s leftover, plus assigned, plus activity. Red means overspent.

Ready to Assign

Ready to Assign is cash in your budget that hasn’t been given to an envelope yet.

  • Income raises it. New money coming into a Cash account lands here.
  • Assigning lowers it, dollar for dollar.
  • Spending from an envelope doesn’t touch it — the envelope pays.
  • It can go negative if you assign more than you have. That means you’ve promised money you don’t have; take some back from an envelope.

Click the Ready to Assign figure to see the Ready to Assign Breakdown — what was carried in from last month, what came in, what you assigned, and any overspending charged.

Spending outside envelopes

Cash spending that no envelope covers — a transaction with no category, or a category you haven’t linked to an envelope — shows under Outside envelopes on the Budget tab, as Uncategorized or as the category’s own row with Add to envelope….

It doesn’t lower Ready to Assign straight away. It’s held there until the month ends, so you have time to label it:

  • Give it a category with an envelope before the month ends and it moves into that envelope like any other spending. Nothing is charged to Ready to Assign.
  • If it’s still outside an envelope when the month rolls over, the amount is taken from next month’s Ready to Assign, once.

Income on an unlinked category still raises Ready to Assign.

Assigning, moving and covering

  • Assign — type an amount in an envelope’s Assigned cell. It comes out of Ready to Assign.
  • Move money — click a positive Available amount to move some of it to another envelope or back to Ready to Assign. You can’t move more than the envelope has available.
  • Cover overspending — click a red Available amount and choose where to take the money from: another envelope, or Ready to Assign.
  • Auto-assign — fills envelopes from their targets in one step (for example Underfunded), with a preview before anything changes.

Overspending

Spend more than an envelope holds and its Available goes red. Nothing is quietly borrowed from another envelope.

  • During the month, Ready to Assign doesn’t change — the envelope holds its own shortfall.
  • To fix it now, cover it from another envelope or from Ready to Assign. Covering from Ready to Assign costs exactly the amount you cover.
  • If it’s still red when the month ends, the envelope resets to zero and the shortfall is taken from next month’s Ready to Assign.

A positive leftover always rolls forward into next month’s Available.

Targets

A target tells the app how much an envelope needs, so it can show what’s Underfunded and fill it with Auto-assign. Pick how often (Weekly, Monthly, Yearly or Custom), enter the amount under I need, and choose one of:

TargetUse it forHow progress is measured
Set asideBills, subscriptions, saving a fixed amount each periodWhat you’ve assigned this period. Spending it doesn’t undo the target.
Fill up toGroceries, fuel, fun moneyLeftover plus this period’s assignment, up to the amount.
Have a balance of (Custom only)Long-term savings toward a dateThe envelope’s balance. Spending sets you back.

With Custom, a Set aside target can have a date: progress then counts everything you’ve put in across months, and spending doesn’t set it back.

Credit cards

Every Credit account gets its own envelope in Credit Card Payments, created for you. When you buy something on the card from a funded envelope — say $50 of groceries — $50 moves from Groceries into the card’s payment envelope. By the time the bill comes, the money to pay it is already set aside. Paying the card (a transfer from Cash to the card) spends from that envelope.

Card spending never changes Ready to Assign. Spending in a category without a funded envelope, or debt you already had before you started, isn’t covered automatically — the card’s row shows “$X more needed for this bill” so you can assign money to its payment envelope.

Commitments

A commitment — a purchase plan, an installment schedule, a loan repayment — gets its own envelope in the Commitments group while money is still owed. Set its target yourself to save toward the next payment.

Starting over

If you’d rather not budget around years of old history, the ⋯ menu beside the method button offers Start fresh from ‹this month›…. Envelopes stop carrying balances from earlier months and this month’s assignments are cleared, so you budget the month again from scratch. No transactions or envelopes change, and Undo right after puts everything back. See Budgeting.