How do you track a monthly spending budget by category?

Why is one monthly limit not enough?

"I'll spend at most 30,000 this month" is a start, but halfway through the month it does not tell you where the money went. If you have spent 18,000 and cannot tell whether it went on rent and bills or on eating out, you cannot decide what to cut.

A category budget answers that question up front. If you set aside 5,000 for groceries, 2,500 for transport and 2,000 for eating out, on the 15th you can see at a glance which one is running fast. Fixed costs like rent rarely need a budget; limits help most on the items that move from month to month.

How should you set the limits?

Your past spending is the most reliable starting point. If you have two or three months of records, look at what each category averaged per month and set the first limit a little below that. If you have no records yet, spend the first month just entering expenses without limits; by the end of it you will have real numbers.

Keep the categories few. Twenty separate budgets are hard to watch, and five or six main ones are enough for most households. Where you want more detail, add subcategories, such as Fuel and Public transport under Transport. A budget on the main category also counts what its subcategories spend.

Missing a limit in the first month is not a failure, it is information. A limit you go over two months in a row is either unrealistic or a sign that you really need to cut back there. Decide which it is and update the limit.

Step by step: setting up category budgets in Wiozen Ledger

• On the Settings page, find the Categories and budget card and press Manage categories.
• In the Expense categories list, tap the row of the category you want to limit. In the panel that opens, enter the amount in your main currency under Monthly budget and save. You can fill in the same field when you create a new category under Add a category.
• If a main category has a budget, its subcategories do not need one. You can still give a subcategory its own limit; then the two are tracked separately.
• Enter your spending on the New entry screen with the right category. Budgets are calculated from expense entries only.

Where do you see it during the month?

The Budgets card on the dashboard shows a bar for every category that has a budget: the amount spent, the limit, and below it what is left or how far over you are. The list is sorted by how full each budget is, so the category closest to its limit sits at the top. On the Categories page, each row also shows that month's spending and the budget amount on the right.

The bar's colour tells three states apart. Below 80 percent of the limit it looks normal. At 80 percent it switches to the warning colour. As soon as spending goes past the limit, the category is marked as over and turns red. Spending exactly equal to the limit is still a warning; one cent more is over.

Budgets follow the calendar month. On the 1st every category starts from zero; money not spent in one month does not carry over, and an overspend is not taken off the next month's limit.

When do reminders appear?

When a category reaches 80 percent, the dashboard shows a reminder like "Groceries budget is 84% used", with what is left and the spent and limit amounts under it, for example "800 left · spent 4,200 / 5,000". Once the limit is passed, the reminder becomes "You went 300 over the Groceries budget" and shows spent against limit. Tapping the reminder opens the Categories page.

These reminders appear on the dashboard when you open the app; they do not arrive as email or phone notifications. Looking at the dashboard once in the middle of the month is enough to see where you need to slow down.

Which spending counts toward a budget?

Only expense entries count. Transfers between accounts, credit card payments and income do not affect a budget. For an installment purchase on a card, each month counts only that month's installment, so a phone bought in 12 installments does not fill one month's budget on its own.

When you paid the whole bill for a shared expense, only your own share counts toward the budget. An expense in a foreign currency counts at its value in your main currency, and budgets are always kept in the main currency.

A hidden category's budget is not tracked. The automatic categories the app creates cannot have a budget, and income categories have no budgets either.

Which plan includes this?

Pro includes category budgets and budget reminders. Every new account gets 14 days of Pro without a card; after that Pro is $39.99 a year or $6.99 a month. The free plan has 1 account and 30 records a month. Details are on the pricing page. The free plan has no budgets, and editing categories is not available there either.