Track budget progress
Prerequisites
- A budget exists for the month you want to review (see Set up a monthly budget)
- Transactions are categorized so actuals match your spending
Steps
- Open Budgets and select the month to review.
- The tracking screen lists only categories you included when you set up the budget.
- Read each row:
- Badges — Recurring or Variable, plus Envelope when that category saves month to month
- Actual — month-to-date spending in that category
- Target — your budget amount
- Rollover — unused or overspent balance carried from last month (envelope categories only)
- Balance — remaining under a simple cap, or available in an envelope (including rollover)
- Read the progress bar:
- Recurring — green when you are at or under the expected amount; red if you exceed it
- Variable — green while more than 10% of the budget remains; yellow at 10% or less; red at or over the cap
- Click Edit on a row to change that category’s target without returning to the full setup table.
- Click Edit budget to return to the setup screen — add or remove categories, change simple/envelope, or change recurring/variable settings.
- Click a category row (when it has activity) to open the transaction register filtered to that category and month.
- When you have envelope categories, watch Ready to assign — negative means you allocated more than income received so far.
Over and under budget
| Budget type | Under | Over |
|---|---|---|
| Simple | Balance is positive (remaining under the cap) | Balance is negative |
| Envelope | Balance is positive (money still available) | Balance is negative |
Recurring categories are meant to hit a predictable amount each month — meeting the target is shown as on track (green), not as “under budget” in a warning sense.
Transfers between your own accounts do not count toward category budgets.
Expected result
- After grocery spending posts, Groceries shows updated Actual and a progress bar that reflects how much of the variable target remains.
- Rent (recurring) shows green when the payment matches your target.
- Car repair (envelope) shows rollover building up when you contribute monthly but spend less often.
- Categories you excluded on the setup screen do not appear on the tracking screen.
- Clicking a category opens transactions filtered to that category and the selected month.