Budgeting

Budgeting lives on Plan › Budget. You choose one of two methods:

Zero-Based — every dollar of cash gets a job. You assign money to envelopes (Rent, Groceries, Vacation…) until nothing is left in Ready to Assign, then spend from them. This is the YNAB-style method, and the one with the most control.
50/30/20 — a quick health check. Your income is split into shares for each group (for example Needs, Wants, Savings) and the app shows how your month is tracking. Nothing to assign.

Both use the same envelopes and categories, so you can switch at any time without losing anything.

Your budget is built from your Cash and Credit accounts only — see Accounts. Add those accounts first.

Choose your method (first time)

Open Plan. It opens on the Budget tab.
Under How do you want to budget?, click the 50/30/20 or Zero-Based card. Not sure? Use the picker beside the heading (Just check my shape / Account for every dollar), or click Help me choose to talk it through with Lucius.
Click Start with 50/30/20 or Start with Zero-Based, then follow the matching section below.

To change method later, use the method button on the Budget tab row (it shows the current method’s name) → pick the other one → Switch. On a phone it’s in the ⋯ menu at the top of Plan. Compare methods… in the same menu shows them side by side.

Set up Zero-Based

A new book starts with envelopes in three groups — Bills, Needs and Wants — each linked to a matching category (Rent/Mortgage, Groceries, Dining out…). Change them as you like.

1. Give each envelope a monthly target

On the Budget tab, click Set up Zero-Based in the banner at the top.
Choose how to start:
- Set up with Lucius — Lucius looks at your spending and proposes a target for each envelope, explaining why.
- Suggest from my spending — the app proposes each target from your recent spending (the typical amount you spent). Envelopes with too little history are flagged check amount.
- Set up manually — the same list with nothing ticked, so you choose each one.
Tick the envelopes you want a target for, adjust the amounts, and click Apply.

You can skip targets, but they’re what makes Underfunded and Auto-assign useful.

2. Assign your money

Ready to Assign at the top is cash in your Cash accounts that no envelope holds yet.

Click an envelope’s Assigned amount and type how much to put in it.
Repeat until Ready to Assign reaches zero — or use Auto-assign → Underfunded to fill every target in one go.
Every Auto-assign option shows a preview of each envelope’s change first. Nothing changes until you confirm.

Each envelope shows Assigned (put in this month), Activity (spent or refunded this month) and Available (what’s left). Available carries into next month.

3. Shape your envelopes (optional)

Add an envelope — the + on a group’s header (or the group’s menu → Add envelope). Tick the categories it should fund, enter an Envelope name, and click Create. Pick none to Create empty envelope.
Envelope menu (the ⋯ on its row) — Add categories…, Add target… / Edit target…, Rename envelope, Move to group, Merge into…, Hide, Delete envelope….
Add a group — + Add group in the table header. Deleting a group moves its envelopes to Others, so nothing is lost.
Targets — Monthly, Weekly, Yearly or Custom, either “set aside” a fixed amount or “fill up to” / “have a balance of” an amount by a date.
To add, rename, hide or delete the categories themselves, use Manage categories — see Categories and payees.

Day to day with Zero-Based

Move money between envelopes — click a green Available amount, choose where to send it (including back to Ready to Assign), and click Move.

Cover overspending — an envelope that spent more than it had turns red. Click its red Available amount, pick an envelope (or Ready to Assign) under Cover overspending from, and confirm. Or use Auto-assign → Underfunded.

Filter the table — All, Underfunded, Overspent, Overfunded, Money available.

See where Ready to Assign comes from — click the Ready to Assign figure. Ready to Assign Breakdown lists each part: cash added, what envelopes hold, spending held outside envelopes, and so on.

How overspending and Ready to Assign behave

Overspending doesn’t change Ready to Assign during the month. A red envelope holds its own hole until the month ends. Cover it before then and the money comes from wherever you choose. If it’s still red when the month rolls over, the hole is taken from next month’s Ready to Assign, once, and the envelope starts the new month at zero.
Cash spending with no envelope is held the same way. A transaction with no category, or in a category not linked to any envelope, appears under Outside envelopes at the bottom of the table. Ready to Assign doesn’t move; if you categorize it (or click Add to envelope…) before the month ends, the hold simply disappears. Otherwise it’s charged to next month’s Ready to Assign.
Income with no category goes straight to Ready to Assign — that’s how new money arrives.
Ready to Assign can shift as exchange rates move if you hold cash in more than one currency.

Credit cards

Each Credit account gets its own payment envelope, named after the card, in the Credit Card Payments group.

When you buy something on the card from an envelope that has money, that money is set aside for the card: the payment envelope’s Available for payment goes up.
If the envelope didn’t have enough, the card row shows “$X more needed for this bill”. Assign money to the payment envelope to cover it — Auto-assign → Underfunded includes card shortfalls too.
Card spending never changes Ready to Assign by itself — card debt isn’t cash you’ve spent yet.
Paying the card (a transfer from a Cash account) uses the payment envelope. Paying more than it holds turns it red, like any overspent envelope.

Start fresh

If your book has years of imported history you don’t want to budget around, open the ⋯ beside the method button on the Budget tab (on a phone: the ⋯ at the top of Plan) and choose Start fresh from ‹this month›….

Envelopes stop carrying balances from earlier months, and this month’s Assigned amounts are cleared so you can budget the month again from scratch.
No transactions or envelopes change. This month’s spending still shows, so some envelopes will look overspent until you assign to them.
The dialog shows your new Ready to Assign with the full sum written out before you confirm.
Budget won’t page back past that month. A small Fresh start · since ‹month› line under Ready to Assign reminds you.

Click Undo right after confirming to put everything back, including the cleared assignments. Later, the same menu item offers Resume earlier history, which goes back to carrying everything but does not restore assignments the fresh start cleared.

Set up 50/30/20

Pick 50/30/20 (see Choose your method) — or click Set up 50/30/20 if you switched to it later.
What’s your monthly net income? — enter your usual monthly take-home pay. It’s filled in from your profile if you’ve set one. Click Continue.
How much should each group get? — each budget group (Bills, Needs, Wants…) starts at what it spent over the last three months. Use − / + to change its share of income, or untick it to leave it out of the split. Whatever isn’t given to a group is Savings. A group left without a target reads no target set, and its spending reduces what you save. Spending in a category that is in no envelope is listed under Not in an envelope; it is not planned for, so it reduces your savings too.
Click Start budgeting.

Or click Let Lucius set it up in the same window.

Using it: the top of the page shows how your month is tracking against your usual income (On pace to spend / On pace to save during the month, You spent / You saved for a finished one). The line names its basis underneath: a running month is measured against your usual monthly income (hover for how much of this month’s has arrived), a closed month against the income that actually arrived. The spending vs Sep by the 14th chip says what it compares: spending so far against last month by the same day. A group is called “over” in the headline only when it spent past its caps, or past its share with no caps to judge it by; one that spent exactly its caps (S$0.00 left) is not. The headline never says On track while an envelope is past its own cap: it names the envelopes that are over, with how far (for example “Rent (S$600) and Entertainment (S$150) are over their caps”), even when other envelopes in the same group have room to spare. Each envelope row can have a monthly Cap. Overspending is reported, not blocked — there’s nothing to cover. Use Configure to change your income, each group’s share, or which income categories count (deleting or merging one of them carries the choice to the category its transactions move to). Let Lucius suggest shares and Let Lucius suggest caps ask Lucius to propose figures from your spending.

Credit card payment envelopes don’t appear in 50/30/20: the purchases already count in their own envelopes.

Cash Flow

The Cash Flow tab projects your cash month by month: actual months first, then a projection built from your regular income and bills.

What-if tries a scenario — Pay raise, Lose income, Lean spending, High inflation, or your own adjustments — without changing anything real.
Projection settings sets which assets count and your Safety floor: the minimum cash cushion to keep. Months below it are marked tight. The same floor drives the shortfall warning on Commitments.
Savings rate here is the average over the projected months ahead (net change divided by projected income). It is a different period from the Dashboard’s last-month rate and 3-month average and the Budget screen’s month-in-progress pace; hover the label to see which.
A credit card with no purchases in the period shows Card spending not included yet under the hero: the runway and the projection don’t see that spending, so they read better than your real situation.
Export CSV downloads the projection.
Money flow opens a diagram of one month: income flowing to spending groups and savings, with a Flow / Table switch (on a phone, tap Breakdown under the diagram for the table) and a month stepper. It starts on the current month, which shows what has happened so far (“to date”); step back for a full month. Each actual month’s row, and the current month’s, has its own money-flow button. Within a group, several categories under 2% are folded into one “Other” row; a single small category, or a group where every category is small, is shown by name. Spending on categories with no envelope sits under Not in budget, each category named. An overspent month adds a “From savings” source.

A bill counts as recurring once it has arrived on a steady rhythm a few times, even if the amount changes each month. One-off expenses you haven’t entered won’t be in the projection.

Lucius cannot add a recurring payment by hand, so a new salary or a raise shows up once it has arrived on a steady rhythm a few times. If one has only arrived twice, you can ask Lucius to confirm it so the projection counts it now, or to dismiss a payment that only looked regular. To see a change before it happens, such as a raise, ask Lucius to simulate it.

In and Out are gross: a refund or reimbursement counts as money in, and the purchase it undoes still counts as money out. Reports nets refunds against their categories instead, so the same month can look smaller there, by about the refunds on each side. A past month before any of your cash accounts was tracked (before the first account’s starting balance) shows its flow but Before tracking in place of a balance, because nothing was counted yet.

The Outlook tab (long-term net worth and FIRE) is covered in Retirement and FIRE outlook.

What Lucius can do here

Assign or move money between envelopes, run auto-assign and explain what it proposes.
Create, rename, merge or delete envelopes and groups; set or change targets.
Explain why Ready to Assign changed or an envelope is red.
Set up 50/30/20 shares or caps from your spending.
Talk through a what-if cash flow scenario.

Troubleshooting

Ready to Assign is negative — you’ve assigned more than the cash you have. Lower some Assigned amounts, or move money from an envelope back to Ready to Assign.

Ready to Assign looks far too high or low — check that every bank account is a Cash account and every card a Credit account; other types aren’t in the budget. If years of old history are distorting it, use Start fresh.

Total available seems bigger than what’s really free — look at Outside envelopes: spending there hasn’t been taken from any envelope yet. Categorize it or add its category to an envelope.

“No envelopes to target yet — create one in your budget first.” — every envelope was deleted. Add one with the + on a group header, then try again.

I can’t page back to earlier months — a fresh start is active. Use Resume earlier history from the same menu.