How the budget works

The budget screen shows one month at a time. At the top is Ready to Assign; below it, your categories in their groups, each with three numbers: Assigned, Activity and Available. Use the arrows beside the month, or tap its name, to move between months.

Give every unit of money a job

Moneta budgets the money you have now, not money you expect. When income arrives in an account that is on the budget, it adds to Ready to Assign. You then assign it to categories, which work like envelopes: what is in Groceries is for groceries. The goal is a Ready to Assign of zero, with every unit of money in a category.

Ready to Assign

Ready to Assign is the money that has no job yet. Tap it to see how it is worked out:

• Positive: money waiting for a job. Assign it.
• Zero: every unit of money has a job.
• Negative: you assigned more than you have. Take some back from a category, or record the income you're missing.

Ready to Assign is never stored: Moneta works it out from your transactions and what you assigned, every time. Income counts in the month of its date, so a paycheck dated the 30th adds to that month.

Assigning money

Tap a category to open its sheet, and type how much it gets this month in Assigned this month. Amounts accept simple math: 120+35 or 400/2. Saved from the sheet, the change can be undone right after.

On a wide screen, the budget is a table and you can also type straight into a category's Assigned column. There, Enter saves and moves to the next category (Shift+Enter to the one before), the ↑ and ↓ arrows move too, and Esc cancels what you typed. Changes made in the column aren't offered for undo.

• Activity is what was spent (or received) in the category this month, from your transactions.
• Available is what is left: what carried over from last month, plus Assigned, plus Activity.

You can assign ahead into future months, for a bill that comes later. If assigning ahead pushes a future month's Ready to Assign below zero, Moneta warns you with the month it happens in.

Moving money between categories

Plans change. Open a category and use Move money: pick another category and an amount, and it moves from one to the other in this month. The list shows how much each category has available. If the move would leave the category it comes from below zero, Moneta says by how much before you confirm. Each move can be undone right after (see Undo).

Overspending

When a category spends more than it had, its Available goes negative and shows in red, and a notice at the top says how much was overspent; Review opens the first overspent category. You can cover it in two ways:

• Cover from Ready to Assign, when there is unassigned money.
• Take from another category that has money to spare.

If you leave it uncovered, the month closes with that category below zero. Next month, the category starts again from zero, and the amount comes out of next month's Ready to Assign as Overspent last month. The money was spent; the budget has to account for it somewhere.

Carrying overspending over

For some categories you'd rather keep the debt in the category itself, for example a category you fill a little every month and sometimes spend ahead of. Turn on Roll overspending over in the category's sheet: a negative Available then stays in the category next month, and Ready to Assign is left alone. You refill the category by assigning to it.

What is left in a category always carries over to the next month, whatever this setting.

Quick assign

Quick assign sets what is assigned this month for a whole group (tap the group's name) or for one category (tap the category):

• Same as last month: what each category got last month.
• Average spent (3, 6 or 12 months): what each category spent on average.
• Cover overspending: just enough to bring overspent categories back to zero.
• Fund goals: what each category's goal asks for this month.
• Clear: assign nothing.

Options that wouldn't change anything are left out. Quick assign can be undone right after.

Goals

A category can have a goal: tap the category, then Goal. There are two kinds:

• Every month: assign this amount every month. For bills and everyday spending.
• Save up: build the category's balance up to an amount, for savings and bigger expenses. Optionally by a month: Moneta spreads what is left over the months until then, rounded up so the last month never falls short.

The category shows how much is still needed this month, or Goal met. A save-up goal counts from the balance the month started with, so what it asks for doesn't shift while you assign during the month. Fund goals in Quick assign assigns what the goals ask for at once; it only ever raises an amount, and leaves categories without a goal as they are.

Groups, order and hiding

• Groups gather categories (Bills, Everyday…). Add one with Add group; tap a group's name to add a category to it, run Quick assign on it, or delete it, and open Group settings to rename or hide it. Tap the arrow to collapse it.
• Icons: give a group or a category an emoji in its settings (Icon), shown before its name. Search the emoji by name, browse them by group, and pick a skin tone with the hand beside the search; the ones you picked last come first. The × beside the field takes the icon away.
• Edit order lets you drag groups and categories, or move them with the arrows.
• Hiding a category or a group keeps its history and money but takes it off the budget screen. Both wait at the bottom, under Hidden: to bring one back, tap it, open Category settings (or Group settings) and turn off Hidden. Hiding a group hides all its categories.
• Deleting a category that was used asks where its transactions and assigned money should go. For spending categories, the destination options show their available amounts in the month you are viewing. These amounts help you choose; deletion reassigns the category's history and assigned money across all months. Deleting a group moves its categories to the group you choose.
• Names are unique: two groups can't share one (nor take the Income group's), and neither can two categories in the same group.

The Income group is managed by Moneta: income categories send their money straight to Ready to Assign instead of holding it themselves.