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

Open Budgets, select Budgets in the section picker, then choose New Budget from the add menu. A setup form 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 compares your planned amounts against actual transactions for the selected period, with several chart views to explore your data from different angles.

Budget vs actual report showing planned and actual income and expenses for the year.

Status summary

The Expense and Income cards at the top summarise the selected period. They update whenever you change or drill into the period.

Each card shows:

• Actual and Planned totals
• How much of the period has elapsed
• Budget Used for expenses or Received for income
• The amount under or over budget, or ahead of or behind plan
• Goal to Date — the planned amount expected by this point in the period
• Projected — the estimated total by the end of the selected period if the current pace continues

The status label indicates whether expenses are on pace, trending over, or over budget, and whether income is on track, ahead, or behind.

Time range

Switch between Calendar mode (aligned to calendar years) and Rolling mode (the latest 12 months) using the range selector at the top of the report. Use the arrow buttons to move to the previous or next year, quarter, or month at the current level.

Tap a quarter pill (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) to drill into that quarter. The pills then change to its three months; tap a month to drill down again. Use Zoom Out to return to the parent period. The status cards, chart, and category breakdown all update to the selected period.

In Rolling mode, the period controls follow the same drill-down pattern while keeping the selected rolling range anchored to its dates.

Chart views

Use the Pace / Cumulative / Variance / Categories selector to switch between chart types.

Pace

The pace chart shows, for each visible period bucket, how your actual spending or income compares with the goal to date. At year level it shows quarters, at quarter level it shows months, and at month level it shows the selected month.

The Pace view compares actual results with the expected progress for each period.

• The grey bar is the goal to date
• Green means expenses are on or under pace, or income is on or ahead of pace
• Red means expenses are over pace, or income is behind pace

Use the Expense / Income toggle to switch between the two views.

Cumulative

The cumulative chart shows planned and actual expense and income as running totals, so you can see how each gap grows or narrows across the period. It shows 12 monthly points at year level, three monthly points at quarter level, and one point at month level.

Variance

The variance chart shows the net over- or under-budget position for each period bucket as a single signed bar:

The Variance view highlights periods that are over or under budget.

• A positive bar means you spent less than planned (for expenses) or earned more than planned (for income) — shown in green
• A negative bar means you overspent (for expenses) or underearned (for income) — shown in red

Periods that have not yet started are shown at zero so the axis labels are visible without implying any result.

Use the Expense / Income toggle to switch between the two views.

Turn on Compare Previous Period to add muted bars for the equivalent previous year, quarter, month, or rolling period. This comparison is available only in the Variance view.

Categories

The categories view shows a donut chart of your actual spending or income broken down by category for the selected period.

The Categories view shows where spending or income is concentrated.

• Select a segment to highlight it and show its amount and percentage in the centre
• Select a named category in the legend to open its transactions
• The chart shows up to nine categories at once. If more categories remain, select Other to show the next group; use Previous to return

Use the Expense / Income toggle to switch between expense and income breakdowns.

Tip

The Expense/Income selection is shared by Pace, Variance, Categories, and the category breakdown. The Cumulative chart displays expense and income together.

Category breakdown

Below the charts, a table shows the budget vs actual breakdown by category for the selected period. Each row shows:

The category drill-down compares actual, planned, and variance amounts.

• Actual — what was actually spent or earned
• Planned — your budget target for the period
• Variance — the difference between planned and actual

Select a category name or its › disclosure indicator to see the individual transactions that make up the actual amount.

By default, categories that need attention appear first. Use the sort control to switch to alphabetical order.

Selecting a category opens the transactions included in its actual amount.

---

Adjusting planned amounts

From the category breakdown, you can update a category’s planned amount without leaving the report. Select the Actual / Planned / Variance area of a category row to open Adjust Planned Amount. Selecting the category name or › opens its transactions instead.

Adjust a category manually, from its projection, or from its historical average.

The adjustment sheet offers three modes:

Manual

Enter an amount and choose a frequency directly. A Period Equivalent figure shows what that per-frequency amount translates to over the current report period, so you can compare it directly against the Actual and Planned figures above.

Set to Projected

Tally Up calculates a projected total for the selected report period based on how much has been spent so far and how much of the period has elapsed. It then back-calculates an amount at your chosen frequency that would match that projection. Use this mode to align your budget with your current spending trajectory.

Historical average

Choose a date range from your transaction history and tap Compute from History. Tally Up calculates the average spend or income for that category over the chosen range and proposes a frequency amount. Useful for setting targets based on a typical past period rather than the current one.

Note

When a category has both a budget line and scheduled income or expense records in your plan, the planned amount shown in the report is the sum of both. The adjustment sheet breaks these out separately, showing the fixed plan contribution alongside the budget line, so you can see exactly what the delta will be before saving.

---

Using a budget in the forecast

You can mark a budget as included in the forecast. When enabled, Tally Up uses the budget’s category lines as additional income and expense inputs for the 30-year projection — complementing any standalone income and expense entries in your plan.

To enable this, open the budget settings and turn on Include in forecast.

Interest and dividends in a forecast budget

If your budget includes Interest Earned or Dividends income categories, those lines are automatically excluded from the forecast contribution. These returns are already projected by the forecast engine from the interest and dividend rates set on each asset — including them as budget income lines would cause double-counting in the cash flow and forecast graphs.

When a budget is marked as included in the forecast, you will see an explanatory note alongside those category rows in the budget report.

---

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.
• Use Set to Projected mid-period to quickly reforecast a category based on your actual run rate.