Start budgeting

A budget is a plan for your spending. You split it into lines, and each line covers one or more categories, such as Groceries or Rent. You give every line an amount for the period, and MoneyMatter shows how much of it you’ve spent and how much is left.

This page walks you through creating a budget and filling it for the first time.

How a budget works

• Periods. Your budget resets on a schedule: monthly, twice a month, every two weeks, every week, or every few days or months that you pick. Each reset starts a new period, and every period has its own numbers.
• Lines. A line groups one or more categories. Spending in those categories counts against the line.
• Assigned, Activity, Available. What you plan to spend on a line is its Assigned amount. What you actually spent is its Activity. What’s left is Available, and depending on your rollover rule it moves on to the next period.
• Accounts. A budget only watches the accounts you choose, for example your checking account and credit card, but not your savings.

You can have one budget at a time. It always uses your base currency.

Which plans include budgeting

Budgeting is part of the Essential and Plus plans, and of the 40-day free trial. See Plans and billing.

If your plan doesn’t include budgeting and you don’t have a budget yet, the Budget page shows Included in the Essential plan with a See plans button.

Early adopters

The Early Adopter plan doesn’t include budgeting, but you can try it for 40 days:

• The 40 days start when you create your first budget. Until then, nothing counts down.
• The countdown doesn’t restart. Deleting your budget and creating a new one doesn’t give you another 40 days.
• While the trial runs, the Budget page shows “Early adopter trial: X days of budgeting left” with a See plans button.
• When it ends, your budget becomes read-only: “Your budgeting trial has ended, so your budget is read-only.” You can still open it and look through every period, but you can’t change it. Early adopters get Essential at 50% off, and subscribing to Essential or Plus turns editing back on.

Create your budget

1. Click Budget in the sidebar.
2. On the Give your money a job card, click Start budgeting.
3. Under Resets, choose how often a new period starts: Monthly, Semi-monthly, Biweekly, Weekly or Custom.
4. Check Starts on, the first day of your first period.
5. Check Accounts. Every account that can be budgeted is already selected. Remove the ones you don’t want counted.
6. Pick a Rollover rule for money left in a line at the end of a period. Carry surplus is selected by default.
7. Leave Smart pre-fill on to get a first set of lines, or turn it off to start empty.
8. With Smart pre-fill on, Ask me a few questions first is on too. Leave it on to shape the lines with a few setup questions, or turn it off to skip them.
9. Click Next and answer the questions. If you turned the questions or Smart pre-fill off, the button reads Create budget instead. Building the lines takes a few seconds.

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Your new budget is called “Budget”. You can rename it in Budget settings.

Choosing the fields

• Resets. Semi-monthly has two periods a month: one from the start day and one about half a month later, for example the 1st and the 16th. Custom adds two fields: type a whole number under Every and pick Days (1 to 366) or Months (1 to 12) under Unit, for example every 10 days or every 3 months. You can’t change how often the budget resets once it’s created, so pick the schedule your income follows.
• Starts on. For Monthly, Semi-monthly and a custom number of months, it starts on the first day of this month. For Biweekly, Weekly and a custom number of days, it starts on the first day of this week. You can pick an earlier date, but not a future one. An earlier date adds the periods before today to your budget, and a line you add while one of them is open starts from that period.
• Accounts. A budget can hold current, savings, cash, credit card, overdraft and general accounts that you own. Accounts someone shared with you aren’t offered. If you have none, you’ll see No accounts to budget yet with a Go to accounts button. Add an account first (see Create an account).
• Rollover. See Rollover for what each rule does. You can change it later, and every line can have its own.

Suggested lines

With Smart pre-fill on, your budget starts with a first set of lines instead of an empty grid. Which lines you get depends on whether the budget’s accounts have spending history, and on your answers to the setup questions.

Setup questions

With Ask me a few questions first on, Next opens Shape your lines. Every question is optional: click Next to skip one, and Back to change an earlier answer. The last step’s button creates the budget.

If the budget’s accounts have spending history, there are two steps:

1. What do you want to watch closely? Pick any of your top spending categories. Each shows its monthly average over the last 3 months, and each one you pick gets more detailed lines.
2. How detailed should your budget be? Compact (6–8 lines), Balanced (10–12 lines, selected by default) or Detailed (up to 20 lines).

With no spending history, your answers stand in for it, so there are four steps:

1. What’s your housing situation? and How do you usually get around?
2. Do you have pets?, How often do you eat out or order food? and Paid subscriptions?
3. What else do you spend on? Pick from Kids, Active sport, fitness, Holiday, trips, hotels, Hobbies, Gifts, joy and Education, development. Each one you pick gets its own line.
4. How detailed should your budget be?

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To drop your answers, click Use defaults and confirm with Use defaults again. You get the same lines as with the questions turned off.

Answers need the AI step

Only the AI model reads your answers. Without it (self-hosted without an AI key, or when the model doesn’t answer), you get the default lines and only the detail level is kept. You’ll see “Smart suggestions weren’t available, so your answers weren’t used. You got the default lines.”

If you have spending history

MoneyMatter looks at the last 3 full calendar months of spending on the budget’s accounts. Refunds are subtracted, and income and the Other category are left out.

On MoneyMatter Cloud, an AI model then arranges those categories into named groups and lines: it merges categories that mean the same thing into one line, folds small ones into a related line, and names the groups and lines in your language. You get up to 15 lines, or as many as the detail level you picked in the setup questions allows. This takes a few seconds. The amounts never come from the model; they are calculated as described below.

Without the AI step (self-hosted without an AI key, or when the model doesn’t answer), MoneyMatter builds the lines itself:

• It picks up to 8 categories you spent the most on (up to 12 for Balanced and 20 for Detailed) and makes a line for each, named after the category. A category and its own subcategory never both get a line.
• It sets each line’s amount to your average monthly spending in that category and its subcategories, converted to your budget’s period length and rounded up to the next 10. For example, an average of 342.60 a month becomes 350 on a monthly budget.
• The amount is set From now on, starting with the current period, so it repeats every period until you change it. See This period only or from now on.
• Without the AI step, the lines are sorted into three groups by their top-level category:

Group	Top-level categories
Bills	Housing · Communication, PC · Financial expenses
Everyday	Food & Drinks · Transportation · Vehicle · Shopping
Life	Life & Entertainment · Investments

A line whose top-level category is one you created yourself stays outside these groups. If your budget already has a group with one of these names, the lines go into it.

If you have no spending history

On MoneyMatter Cloud, if you answered the setup questions, the AI model builds your lines from those answers and the essentials most households pay for. Every line starts at 0, so you fill in the amounts yourself.

Otherwise you get a starter set of 8 lines, also at 0:

Group	Lines
Bills	Rent · Energy, utilities · Phone, cell phone
Everyday	Groceries · Restaurant, fast-food · Transportation
Life	Health care, doctor · Free time

Each line uses your own category, with the name it has in your account. If you renamed a category, the line uses the new name. If you deleted one, its line is skipped. The Transportation line covers the whole category, with all its subcategories.

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Nothing is set in stone

Suggested lines are ordinary lines. Rename them, change their categories or amounts, move them between groups, or archive the ones you don’t need. See Budget lines and groups.

Add suggested lines later

If you started empty, or removed every line and group, the empty grid of the current period shows an Add suggested lines button. It opens the same setup questions, then adds the lines, skipping any category that a line already covers. The new lines start in the current period.

When it’s done, you’ll see how many lines were added. If every suggested category already has a line, you’ll see “Nothing to suggest: the suggested categories already have lines.”

Assign your first amounts

Every line needs an amount to spend. To set one:

1. Click the amount in the line’s Assigned column.
2. Type the amount for the period.
3. Keep From now on so the amount repeats in every later period, or choose This period only for a one-off.
4. Press Enter or click Save.

For everything the assign window can do, see Assigning and rollover.

Each period

Amounts you set From now on repeat by themselves, so a period that goes to plan needs no work. A quick check-in looks like this:

1. Open Budget. It always opens on the current period.
2. Look for lines with a red Available. They’re overspent. Move money to them from a line that has some left.
3. Open Spending outside your lines below the grid, if it’s there, and add a line or a category for anything that should be budgeted.
4. Check your goals in the side panel. See The side panel.

Budget settings

Click Budget settings at the top right of the budget to change:

• Name of the budget. It saves when you leave the field or press Enter.
• Accounts on budget. Keep at least one. Turn on Add new accounts automatically to add accounts you create later.
• Rollover default. See Rollover.

Period shows how often the budget resets and when it started. It can’t be changed.

Changes save as soon as you make them.

Move your budget to trash

In Budget settings, under Danger zone, click Move to trash and confirm. The budget is kept for 30 days, then deleted.

Until then, the Budget page shows “Your budget is in the trash” with a Restore button. Restoring brings it back as it was. You can’t restore it after changing your base currency.

Good to know

• Only real transactions count. Planned transactions don’t add to a line’s activity until they happen, but they appear under Scheduled in the side panel.
• Accounts excluded from statistics are ignored, even if they’re on your budget. See Exclude an account from statistics.
• A split transaction counts per part. Each part counts toward the line that covers its category. See Split a transaction.
• Transfers between your own accounts aren’t spending. See how transfers work.
• Your base currency is locked while you have a budget. To change it, move the budget to trash first. See Base currency and currencies.

Related

• Budget lines and groups
• Assigning and rollover
• Goals
• The side panel