← Budget Flow

Budget Flow Guide

Every capability in the app, what it does, and the exact path to it. This page is generated from the same source Ask Budget Flow reads, so the two cannot disagree.

Transactions

The list of everything you recorded

The second tab

Lists every transaction, newest first, with search, filters and saved views.

Filters narrow by account, card, category, tag or kind, and a set of filters you use often can be saved as a view.

The list shows the period chosen at the top. Search looks at merchants, notes, amounts and tags.

Money between you and somebody else

The People tab

Shows the running balance with each person and what it is made of.

Lending takes the money out of a real account, and being repaid puts it back into one, so the ledger and your balances stay in step.

A balance owed to you is not money in your accounts. It joins an account balance when it is actually repaid.

Edit a transaction

Transactions → tap the transaction → Edit

Opens the transaction, where every field can be changed and saved.

Tapping a row on Transactions opens its detail screen: amount, merchant, date, category, account or card, tags, note, receipt, splits and who it was paid for.

A transaction created by something else — a debt payment, a person-ledger entry, a goal transfer — is managed by that thing and is read-only here. Change it where it was created.

Delete one transaction

Transactions → tap the transaction → Delete, or swipe the row

Removes that one transaction and anything linked to it.

Deleting cascades: a refund, a split, a reimbursement and a person-ledger mirror attached to that transaction go with it, so nothing is left pointing at a row that is gone.

This deletes ONE transaction. It is not how you delete all your data — see data.reset-all.

Change many transactions at once

Transactions → Select → tick the rows → the action bar at the bottom

Changes category, payment source or tags across a selection, or deletes it.

Everything reversible offers an undo built from what the rows were before. Deleting is confirmed first, because its undo cannot restore the linked rows a delete cascade removes.

Rows managed by a debt payment, a person ledger or a goal transfer are skipped and reported as skipped, never changed silently.

Say which account a transaction moved through

Transactions → tap the transaction → the account or payment field

Names the account the money came out of or went into, which moves that account's balance.

A transaction that names no account is still counted in your spending and your budget. It is not counted in "in your accounts", because the app does not know which balance it should have moved.

An account holds one currency. A rupee transaction cannot be filed into a dollar account.

Split a transaction between categories or people

Transactions → tap the transaction → Split

Allocates parts of one amount to different categories, or records somebody else's share.

A share allocated to a person becomes an entry on their ledger, so "who owes me" stays true without you recording the same money twice.

A split is an allocation on the same transaction. It never creates a second transaction, so the total cannot drift.

Attach a receipt

Transactions → tap the transaction → Receipt

Stores a photo with the transaction, on this device.

Text is read from the image on the device to help match it to a transaction. No image leaves the phone.

Receipts stay on the device and in a backup that was exported with receipts. They are never sent to Ask Budget Flow.

Refunds, reimbursements and money back

Transactions → tap the transaction → Refund or Reimbursement

Records money coming back against the original spending.

This is why your spending total can fall without a transaction being deleted: the refund is attached to the original row rather than replacing it.

A refund reduces spending. A reimbursement is money in that is not earnings. Neither is ever counted as income.

Type a transaction as a sentence

The + button → the top field of Quick Add

Reads a sentence like "groceries 2400 card yesterday" and fills the fields.

It understands an amount with a k suffix, a date word like yesterday or last Friday, a merchant, a category name, a tag and a payment source.

It reads the sentence with rules on the device, not with a cloud model. Anything it cannot read is left for you to fill in, and nothing is saved until you confirm.

Categories

Home → your profile picture → Organize → Categories

Creates, renames, re-colours, groups and merges categories.

Categories can be grouped, and Insights can show either the group or the individual category.

Deleting a category leaves its transactions uncategorised rather than deleting them.

Automatic categorising

Home → your profile picture → Automation → Rules

Files anything matching a merchant pattern into a chosen category.

Budget Flow also learns from your own corrections on this device and suggests a category as you type. That learning never leaves the phone.

A rule applies to new transactions as you record them. It does not rewrite history.

Tags

Home → your profile picture → Automation → Tags

Creates labels that cut across categories.

A tag is for a thing that spans categories — a trip, a project, a person's birthday — where a category would be the wrong axis.

Accounts, cards and debt

Where your money is

Plan → Accounts, or tap the "In your accounts" card on Home

Lists every account with its balance and one total per currency.

The total at the top is money in your accounts plus money in accounts you archived. Archived means no new money goes in; it never meant the money stopped being yours.

Balances are worked out from your transactions and each account's opening balance. They are never typed in directly — correct them with a balance adjustment, not by editing the total.

Add another account

Plan → Accounts → + (top right), or Plan → Add → Account

Creates an account with a name, a currency, a type and an opening balance.

The opening balance is what was in that account on the day you created it. It already contains everything you earned and spent before that day, which is why older transactions are not added to it again.

An account holds ONE currency and it cannot be changed afterwards. Make a second account for a second currency.

Opening balance

Plan → Accounts → tap the account → Edit

Sets the figure every later movement is added to.

Opening balance answers "what was in here when I started tracking it".

Changing it moves the balance for the whole of history. If today's balance is wrong but the past was right, record a balance adjustment instead.

Correct a balance without inventing a transaction

Plan → Accounts → tap the account → Adjust balance

Records a one-sided adjustment for the difference, dated today.

Use this when the app and the bank disagree today and you do not want to rewrite the past to make them agree.

An adjustment is a real row in your history and it is labelled as an adjustment. It is not spending and not income.

Move money between your own accounts

Plan → Accounts → Transfer

Records one movement out of one account and into another.

A transfer between two currencies asks what actually arrived, because Budget Flow never invents an exchange rate.

A transfer is neither income nor spending, so it never changes your totals — only where the money sits.

Transactions that are not in any account

Plan → Accounts → Resolve unassigned history

Lists exactly those transactions and lets you name an account for one, or for all of them at once.

This is the fix for money that was recorded before you set your accounts up. The Accounts screen states the amount and offers this screen beside it. Once every transaction says which account it moved through, the figure disappears because there is nothing left to resolve.

It never guesses an account for you and it never creates a balancing entry. Assigning one changes a single field on a transaction that already exists.

Credit cards

Plan → Credit cards

Shows each card's current position, its limit, its utilisation and its minimum payment.

A positive figure is what you owe. A negative one means the card is in credit. A card purchase increases what you owe and takes nothing out of an account — paying the card is what moves cash.

A card's position is as of today. A charge dated tomorrow is not owed today.

Card utilisation

Plan → Credit cards → tap the card

States what fraction of the card's limit is currently used.

Utilisation is one of the signals Financial Health reads, which is why a card near its limit can move the whole score.

Pay a card or a debt

Plan → Credit cards → tap the card → Record card payment (or Plan → Debt payoff → tap the debt → Record payment)

Records money leaving an account and reducing what is owed, in one step.

One action, two effects, and they can never disagree because they are the same row.

The payment transaction it creates is managed by the card. Edit it on the card, not in the transaction list.

Loans and other debt

Plan → Debt payoff

Lists what is owed on each loan or debt goal, with a payoff plan.

Each debt keeps a running balance rebuilt from its own payments, so two stale screens cannot overwrite each other's figure.

"Debt owed" on Home combines cards and loans. A single card's balance is on the card.

The budget cycle

Change your budget

Plan → Budget

Sets a target for each category for the cycle, and shows how much of each is used.

Category budgets appear on Insights as well, with what is spent, what is left and what the cycle is on course to end at.

A category budget is a target, not a block. Budget Flow never refuses to record spending.

When your budget month starts

Home → your profile picture → Budget → Budget cycle

Sets when a new cycle begins — the day your pay arrives, or a fixed day.

Everything Home says about "this cycle" is measured between one start and the next. A monthly cycle that starts on the day your salary is expected already follows the pay: if the 10th's salary lands on the 6th, the cycle turns on the 6th. "When pay arrives" runs each cycle from one payday to the next: the cycle starts the day you confirm the pay and ends the day you confirm the next one. A salary that lands on the 5th instead of the 10th closes the cycle on the 5th and starts the new one there — 25 days, then a 35-day cycle to the next 10th — and the carry-over, next month's bills and "this month" all turn over with it. A salary that comes late keeps the cycle open until it arrives — until the next expected payday has passed too, when the month turns anyway. The cycle turns at the moment you confirm the pay: what you bought that morning stays in the old cycle, what you buy after it is the new one's. A fixed day (monthly, weekly, and so on) starts every cycle on that day regardless.

A start day past a short month's last day uses that month's final day. Under "When pay arrives", a payday that is overdue and unconfirmed keeps the current cycle open: Home says "Waiting for pay", and the cycle closes the day you confirm the pay.

Confirming a payday

Home → Has your pay arrived? · or Settings → Income sources → swipe an income

Records that a scheduled pay has landed, on the day it landed.

From ten days before the expected day, Home asks whether the pay has arrived; the card can be dismissed, and comes back once if the payday passes unconfirmed. "Received today" dates it today; "Received on another day" lets you pick the day it actually landed. Under "When pay arrives", the moment you confirm (or the start of the day you picked) opens the next cycle. Until it is confirmed, the pay shows as expected, not as money you have, and the cycle waits. If you are between jobs, skip the payday or switch the salary off, and the cycle goes back to turning on the expected day.

Paydays are confirmed in order; the next one is offered only once this one is confirmed or skipped.

Carry-over between cycles

Home → your profile picture → Budget → Positive balance rollover

Carries what is left at the end of a cycle into the next one.

With rollover on, a cycle that ended with money left starts the next one with that money added to what there is to spend. The breakdown sheet behind the "Remaining to spend" card names the carried-over amount as its own line, so you can always see how much of this cycle came from last cycle.

This switch controls a POSITIVE leftover. Overspending carries forward either way, because pretending it did not happen would make the next cycle wrong.

What is coming

Plan → What's coming

Projects your balance forward from scheduled income, bills and recurring items.

The curve shows where the balance dips. If it dips below zero, the screen names the date and the amount rather than only drawing it.

A forecast is built from what you have scheduled. Something you never told the app about cannot be in it.

What if

Plan → What's coming → What if

Works out the consequence of a purchase, a payment or a change of plan.

Asking Ask Budget Flow "what happens if I spend everything in my account" answers from the same calculation.

The consequence is calculated by the app from your own figures. Ask Budget Flow explains the result; it never works one out itself.

Bills, subscriptions and anything repeating

Plan → Recurring items, or Home → your profile picture → Organize → Recurring items

Lists everything that repeats, when it is next due, and what each charge is.

A bill the budget already counted as paid is not forecast a second time — there is one projector behind both screens.

A subscription amount is per charge, not per month. A yearly subscription shows its yearly amount.

Income sources

Home → your profile picture → Organize → Income sources

Records regular income, when it arrives and how often.

Income received early is marked as banked ahead on Home, with the date it belongs to, so a cycle is not credited twice.

Fixed income is what is scheduled. Money that actually arrived is counted separately as money in.

Savings goals

Plan → Savings goals, or Plan → Savings plan

Tracks money set aside towards a named target.

Each goal's total is rebuilt from its own movements, so it can never drift from the transactions behind it.

Money in a goal is still money in an account. A goal records intention, not a separate pot.

Insights and reports

Choose what Insights covers

Insights → the week / month / year / custom control at the top

Sets the range every card below it reads.

The arrows under the control page through the chosen range one step at a time, and the label between them says which one you are on.

"For you" always describes the current cycle, whatever the range is set to. Everything else follows the range.

Spending by day

Insights → Spending by day

Shows a month as a grid, with each day's total and how heavy it was.

Every day of the month is shown, including days with nothing on them, because a run of empty days is often the thing somebody is looking for. Tapping a day opens what was spent that day, and tapping a transaction there opens the same detail screen the Transactions tab uses.

The grid shows one month. Use its own arrows to move month to month inside the range you chose.

Choose which Insights cards you see

Insights → the sliders button in the top bar → Edit insights

Hides, shows and reorders the cards on Insights, and remembers it.

The arrangement is saved per person, the same way Home's is, so signing in as somebody else does not inherit it.

The range control at the top is never hidden — it decides what everything else is showing.

Category budgets on Insights

Insights → Category budgets

Shows spent, remaining and the projected end of cycle for each category with a budget.

The projection is this cycle's pace carried to the end of the cycle. It is a rate, not a promise.

Bills and subscriptions on Insights

Insights → Bills and subscriptions

Shows what repeated in the selected period and what it came to.

Amounts are per charge.

Export a report

Insights → the document button in the top bar

Builds a report of the selected range that can be shared or saved.

A report is for reading. Use Import & export for a file that can be read back in.

For you

Insights → For you

Points out anomalies, trends and recaps worked out on this device from your own history.

Cards you deal with can be snoozed, and snoozing is a preference of this device rather than a change to your data.

These are statistics computed on the phone, not a model's opinion, and they never leave the device.

Rearrange Home

Home → the sliders button beside your greeting → Edit home layout

Hides, shows, resizes and reorders the tiles and sections on Home.

Hiding is remembered per person and syncs to your other devices. Reset puts every tile back.

The "Remaining to spend" card at the top is always shown. Everything below it can be arranged.

Your data

Delete everything in Budget Flow

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Import & export → Reset all local data

Asks you to confirm, then removes every transaction, account, card, goal, person and setting from this device and stops sync here.

There are two ways in and they land on the same screen: Your data → Import & export, or Privacy → Privacy & data → "Delete everything on this device". The red row is called "Reset all local data".

Budget Flow writes a local safety backup before it removes anything, so a reset on a phone or a Mac can still be undone from Restore a safety backup. In a browser there is nowhere to write that backup, so a reset in a browser holds nothing back — export first.

Deleting only your transactions and keeping your accounts is not an option here. Select the transactions on the Transactions tab and delete the selection instead.

This is not the same as deleting one transaction. Copies on your other devices, or in a shared sync folder, are NOT removed by it — they remain until you delete them there or sign out.

Export your data

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Import & export → Export

Writes a full JSON backup, a password-protected backup, a backup with receipts, or a CSV of your transactions.

"Export a date range as CSV" lets you pick this month, last month, this year, last year or your own dates. "Share JSON backup" hands the file straight to another app.

A CSV is for reading elsewhere. Only the JSON backup can be read back in with everything intact.

Import data

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Import & export → Import

Reads a Budget Flow JSON backup, a CSV, or a bank file, with a preview before anything is saved.

A bank file goes through a mapping step where you say which column is the date, the amount and the description. The mapping is remembered for next time.

Duplicates are detected and skipped, and the preview says how many. Nothing is written until you confirm the preview.

What the import columns mean

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Import & export → Sample file → What the columns mean

Explains every column and lets you save or share a sample file to copy.

Safety backups

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Import & export → Restore a safety backup

Restores the copy Budget Flow made before a destructive operation.

A browser keeps no safety backup. Restoring replaces what is on the device now.

Sync across your devices

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Sync across devices

Signs you in and keeps your budget the same on every device using the same account.

Signing in does not merge somebody else's budget into yours: a device holding a different account's data keeps sync off until you say what should happen to it.

Budget Flow is local-first. Nothing leaves the device until you turn sync on.

Shared folder sync

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Shared folder sync

Keeps two devices in step through a folder you both can see, with no account.

A copy in the folder survives a reset on your device. Delete it there too.

Delete the cloud copy

Home → your profile picture → Account & cloud → Manage account & cloud

Signs out, and deletes the copy held for your account.

Resetting local data does not delete the cloud copy, and deleting the cloud copy does not reset this device. Do both if you want everything gone.

What Budget Flow knows about you

Home → your profile picture → Privacy → Privacy & data

States in plain words where your data lives and what does and does not leave the device.

Budget Flow does not connect to your bank, does not read your messages, shows no adverts, and has no analytics. Your records live in the app's own database on your device.

Lock the app

Home → your profile picture → Privacy → App lock

Requires your device biometric or passcode to open Budget Flow.

Appearance, language and format

Home → your profile picture → Appearance, and → Preferences → Region & format

Sets light or dark, the accent colour, the region used for dates and numbers, and the first day of the week.

Changing your currency does not convert historical values.

Budget preferences

Home → your profile picture → Budget

Sets your currency, the day your budget month starts, positive-balance rollover and spare-change round-up.

Reminders

Home → your profile picture → Automation → Reminders

Schedules local reminders for bills and for recording your spending.

Reminders are scheduled on the device. Nothing is sent from a server.

Activity and undo

Home → your profile picture → Your data → Activity

Lists recent bulk changes and imports, with an undo where one is possible.

What the figures mean

In your accounts

Plan → Accounts, and the card Home's hero opens

States the money you hold right now, per currency.

This is the balance of every account, worked out from its opening balance plus every transaction that named it. Home and Accounts read the same owner, so they cannot disagree.

It counts accounts you use and accounts you archived. It does NOT include credit available on a card, money owed to you, or money recorded without an account.

Remaining to spend

The accent card at the top of Home

States what this budget cycle has left of its plan.

It starts from what the cycle had to spend: money in, plus anything carried over, minus fixed expenses, minus what has already been spent. That is why it usually differs from "in your accounts", and the difference is not an error — the two answer different questions. The breakdown sheet behind the card lists every term.

It is not your bank balance. It already subtracts fixed expenses still to come and can be lower — or higher — than the cash you hold.

Why Home and Accounts show different numbers

Home

They are two different questions and both are right. "In your accounts" is cash that exists. "Remaining to spend" is what is left of a plan for a period, after the bills that have not been paid yet are set aside. Somebody with money in the bank and a large bill due can have plenty of the first and none of the second.

On a store where every transaction names the account its money moved through, and nothing is set aside, the two are often the same number.

Safe to spend per day

Under the "Remaining to spend" figure on Home

Divides what is left evenly across the days remaining in the cycle.

It is an allocation, not a prediction and not a target. Most people do not spend the same amount every day.

Money in

A Home tile, and Insights

Everything that arrived in the period.

Money in is also not the same as cash you hold: money that arrived last month and was spent is in money in for last month and in nobody's balance today.

Money in is not the same as fixed income. Fixed income is what is SCHEDULED; money in is what actually arrived, including one-off amounts. A reimbursement is money in and is not earnings.

Everyday spending

A Home tile

Spending that is not one of your fixed expenses.

It deliberately excludes bills, because "Fixed expenses" sits beside it and counting them twice would make the two tiles add up to more than you spent.

Total spending

Insights → the total at the top

Everything spent in the selected range, bills included.

This is a bigger figure than Home's "Everyday spending", on purpose. Insights includes fixed expenses; the Home tile does not.

Money recorded but not in any account

Plan → Accounts, under the total

A transaction that does not say which account it moved through cannot move an account balance, so it sits beside the total rather than inside it. It still counts towards your spending and your budget.

Transactions dated before your first account was created are not counted here at all: the opening balance you typed when you made that account already included them, and adding them again would count the same money twice.

Plan → Accounts → "Resolve unassigned history" lists exactly which transactions these are and lets you file them.

Net worth

Plan → Accounts → Net worth

What you have, minus what you owe.

Assets are your accounts and your savings. Liabilities are card balances and loans.

Debt owed

A Home tile, and Plan

Card balances and loan balances added together.

A single card's figure is on the card. This tile is the combined total.

Ask Budget Flow

Ask Budget Flow

The speech-bubble button at the top right of Home, or the same button on Insights

Answers questions about your own money and about how Budget Flow works.

Ask it what you have, what is left, what a purchase would cost you, where the money went, or how a part of the app works. It understands follow-ups, so "why" and "what do you mean" continue the previous answer. It understands Roman Urdu.

Amounts in an answer are drawn by the app, from the app's own figures, and each one opens the screen that owns it.

It can read and explain. It cannot add, change or delete anything, and it never does the arithmetic — every figure it quotes was computed by the app first.

Ask Budget Flow settings

Ask Budget Flow → the sliders button in the top bar. Also Home → your profile picture → Guidance → Ask Budget Flow

Turns Ask Budget Flow on or off, and explains what is sent when it is on.

With it off, the app still answers the questions it recognises from your own figures, on the device, and says that is where the answer came from.

The setting is remembered per person, so signing in as somebody else does not inherit it.

What Ask Budget Flow sends

Ask Budget Flow → the sliders button → Privacy

The question you typed, the last few turns of the conversation, and the summaries your question needs: amounts, dates and a currency. Your transaction rows, notes and receipts are never sent. People appear as "person 1", "person 2". Cards appear by position and utilisation, not by name.

Names you have saved — people, accounts, cards, savings goals and merchants — are swapped for placeholders like "merchant 1" before the question leaves the device, and the answer has the real names put back in here. The list of what each placeholder stands for never leaves the device. Email addresses, phone numbers, card and account numbers, street addresses, links and long identifiers are removed from your question and from the conversation whether or not they are saved here.

The model provider runs this on a free tier that does not permit personal information to be submitted, which is why identifying detail is taken out before anything is sent and why the feature ships turned off.

Budget Flow turns away requests that are clearly nothing to do with money before anything is sent. A sentence that could be a money question is sent, because a money question can be written in any language and a local keyword list would refuse most real ones. Ask Budget Flow itself answers only about your money and about this app, and refuses everything else once it arrives.

When Ask Budget Flow will not answer

There are four reasons and the screen says which one. It is turned off in settings; the device is offline; the daily allowance for written answers is used up, in which case the message says when it resets; or the question is not about your money in Budget Flow. In the first three, the app still answers with what it can work out on this device, and labels the answer as coming from here.

Ask Budget Flow cannot change anything

It has no ability to write. It cannot add a transaction, pay a card, set a budget or delete anything, and it will not claim to have done so. When you ask it how to do one of those, it tells you where the button is.