Budgets¶

Budgets let you define how much you expect to spend or earn across different categories, then compare those targets against what actually happened. Tally Up can build a budget for you from your transaction history, or you can set one up manually.

Creating a budget¶

Go to Settings → Budgets and tap Add. A setup wizard guides you through:

1. Name¶

Give the budget a name. Names must be unique within a plan.

2. Scope¶

Choose which parts of your plan the budget covers:

Assets — All assets, or a specific selection
Expenses — All expenses, or a specific selection
Incomes — All incomes, or a specific selection

Narrowing the scope is useful if you want separate budgets for different parts of your finances — for example, one budget for day-to-day spending and another for a specific project.

3. Category lines¶

Set a target amount for each category you want to track:

Enable the toggle next to a category to include it
Enter an amount and choose a frequency: weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly
Tally Up normalises all amounts to an annual figure for consistent comparison

Parent and child categories — you can set a budget at either the parent or child level, but not both. If a parent category has a budget, its immediate children cannot also have individual budgets, and vice versa.

Creating a budget from history¶

Rather than setting amounts manually, Tally Up can analyse your recent transactions and propose a budget based on what you have actually spent and earned.

Tap Create from History and choose:

A name for the budget
The date range to analyse (last 3, 6, or 12 months, or a custom range)
The default frequency for generated budget lines
Which assets to include

Tally Up processes your transactions in the background and generates a budget with one line per category found in your history. Amounts are averaged across the period and converted to your base currency. You can review and edit the result before using it.

Budget vs actual report¶

Tap any budget to open its report. The report shows:

Planned — your budget target for the period
Actual — what was actually spent or earned
Variance — the difference, as an amount and a percentage

Drill down¶

The report starts at a yearly view. Tap any bar to drill into quarters, then months. Tap Zoom Out to return to the previous level.

Time range¶

Switch between Calendar mode (aligned to calendar years) and Rolling mode (a rolling 36-month window) using the range selector.

Category breakdown¶

Below the chart, a table shows the budget vs actual breakdown by category for the selected period.

Tips¶

Start with "Create from History" — even a rough budget from past spending is a better starting point than a blank sheet.
Uncategorised transactions appear under an "Uncategorised" line in inferred budgets. Improving your categorisation before running inference gives better results.
You can have multiple budgets in one plan — useful for tracking different areas of spending independently.