Savings and Budgeting

If you want to manage your savings more professionally than simply keeping money in a savings account, you can use the Budgeting page.
Savings in budgeting are tracked using categories, not accounts.
This allows you to:
  • Track savings by goal
  • Allocate money intentionally
  • See how much you have set aside for each purpose


Creating Savings Categories

On the Budgeting page, you can create categories specifically for savings goals.
These are virtual categories — similar to digital envelopes — where you track how much money is reserved for each goal.
Since savings categories are not directly linked to bank accounts:
  • The allocated money can be in any of your accounts.
  • You do not need a separate savings account.
  • You can keep money in your checking account and still track savings by goal.
To set this up:
    Create a category group called Savings on the Budgeting page.
    Inside the Savings group, add categories such as:
  • New Car
  • New House
  • Vacation
  • Emergency Expenses
To learn how to add a category group and categories, see:  ⁠⁠Category Operations on the Budgeting Page⁠ .


Managing and Tracking Your Savings

Each month, you can allocate money to your savings categories using the Budget column.

Example

Let’s say this month you want to add $1,000 to the New Car savings:
    Make sure you are on the Budgeting page.
    Click the $0.00 amount in the Budget column in the row of the New Car category.
    Enter 1,000 and click Save.
You will now see $1,000 in the Available column:

Next month, enter $700 in the Budget column for the New Car category.
You will now see $1,700 in the Available column:

This is how you can continuously assign money to your savings categories and track progress toward your goals.


Important

Savings categories on the Budgeting page are technically expense categories (you can also see them on the Expense Categories page).
Because of this:
  • Do not use savings categories when recording an expense transaction.
  • Instead, first move the budget to the appropriate spending category before recording the expense.
Savings categories are used only for allocating and tracking reserved money, not for recording spending.
The reason they appear as expense categories is that budgeting (money allocation) works the same way for all categories.


Using Your Savings for a Purchase

When you want to use money from a savings category, first move it to the category where the expense will occur.

Example

You have $5,000 in Savings / Emergency Savings and need $1,500 for a dental visit.
Move $1,500 from Emergency Savings to Health / Dental:
    Click the Available field ($5,000) in the Emergency Savings row.
    In the popup panel, enter 1,500 in the Amount field.
    In the To field, start typing “Dental”.
    Select Health / Dental from the autocomplete list.
    Click Move.
This makes the budget available for your dental expense from your Emergency Savings.
Before the budget move:

After the budget move: