When thinking about budgeting your money, there are typically two types of budgeting, Categorization and Envelopes. The idea behind categories is that you create separate categories for each expense over a monthly period and allocate from the entire monthly income how much you would like to spend during that month. With Envelopes, this usually is allocated based on each check so you know how much is available after each check instead of the whole month. With BudgetTracker, we offer both methods for budgeting your money.

• Categories – The way categories work is that you first need to setup your Bills and Income. By doing this, the budget categories will automatically get created for those expenses and income and will be calculated directly from the Bills or Income page. So if you have a Paycheck that occurs weekly, the budget amount will change depending on how many weeks are in the month. Once you see your Bills and Income on the My Budget page, then it’s time to start entering in your manual categories. For this you have 3 options:
  • Enter the categories directly on the My Categories page. You’ll also see categories that have already been created for you from the My Bills or My Income page. Once the categories are entered, go to the My Budget page and you’ll then see links next to each new category titled “Add to Budget”. This will allow you to determine how much you would like to allocate for that category. As you progress, you can see at the bottom how much is available from your Income.
  • The second method is to manually create your categories from the My Budget page. With this method, we give you some default categories to choose from or you can create your own. This works similar to setting up your categories on the My Categories page, only that you get more options and can enter the Budget Amount directly from the input section. Also note, your Categories and your Budget Categories are the same thing so that when you record a transaction against a category, you are updating your budget at the same time.
  • The third option for manual budget entry is to use the Setup Wizard by selecting “Setup Wizard” at the top of the page. This give you default category names with text-boxes to make it easy to enter in several new categories/budget items from a single page.

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When setting up your Income on the My Income page, we give you the flexibility to split the way your Income comes in. The easiest way to handle Income is record the Net Amount in the amount field but if you are one of those users that want to keep track of taxes withheld or taxes paid, here are a few options:

• The first option is to enter the Net Amount in the top Amount box, then enter your Gross Amount in the first split box. In the 2nd input box and on, you’ll want to enter in negative amounts to simulate your taxes. This is essentially how it will look on your paycheck. Gross – Social Security – Federal, etc. The tricky part comes when selecting a category. With this method you’ll want to choose the same category for all split amounts so that when viewing your chart by category, you see the total net amount for the month and not your gross. You can then further categorize your taxes by turning on Tags from the Settings page and tagging the split items as their appropriate tax category.
• The second option which is mainly for Small Businesses is to enter your net amount in the first split box, and taxes in the text boxes thereafter. If you have a small business this works well since in real life you are adding the full gross amount to your Checking Account and then spending it when tax time comes. For personal users however, this method will not work since the total amounts whether negative or positive will not add up to the actual amount you received.
• And the third option is to utilize the “Deposit To Multiple Accounts” feature. This will allow you to specify the net amount for your Checking account and assign the category as expected. You’ll then want to create a special account just for your taxes as a placeholder to keep track of so that they do not effect your Checking Account balance when recorded. You can then assign the additional split text boxes their own category and the Tax Account allowing you to graph them separately when needed.