How budgets work in Cashvelope — set limits, track spending, stay in control

Set a spending limit per category. Watch a progress bar fill up. Adjust before the month ends.

A budget is a spending limit you decide in advance. In Cashvelope, each budget is tied to one or more categories — Groceries, Dining, Travel, and so on — and fills up as you log transactions in those categories. The progress bar makes it visible at a glance: how much you planned, how much you have used, and how much is left.

The Budgets screen

Tap Budgets in the bottom navigation. Each budget card shows the category name, the budget period, the limit you set, what you have spent so far, and a progress bar that turns red when you go over.

Cashvelope Budgets screen showing Food & Dining at 100% over budget, Transportation at 0%, Personal Care at 62% — Three budgets at different stages — one over, one untouched, one on track.

In this example:

Food & Dining — $750 spent against a $600 limit. Over budget. The bar is full and red.
Transportation — $0 spent against $400. Nothing logged yet this month.
Personal Care — $93 spent against $150. At 62%, still on track.

Each budget also shows its linked categories as tags — Groceries and Dining under Food & Dining, Beauty and Health under Personal Care. This means any transaction in those categories counts toward the right budget automatically.

Creating a budget

Tap the + button at the top right of the Budgets screen. Give the budget a name, set a spending limit, choose the period (usually monthly), and link the categories it should track. Save, and the budget starts monitoring from that point forward.

Start with three or four budgets covering your main spending areas. Too many budgets create friction; too few miss the categories where overspending actually happens.

Organizing categories

Budgets work best when your categories are set up to match how you actually spend. You can customize your category list — add, rename, or reorder — from the More Actions menu under Categories.

Cashvelope Edit Categories screen showing Expense categories: Breakfast, Lunch, Groceries, Dining, Shopping, Transit, Entertainment, Bills & Fees, Gifts — The category list — drag handles let you reorder, and you can add custom categories at any time.

Cashvelope comes with a default set of categories. Keep the ones that match your life, remove the ones that do not, and add anything specific to your situation — a side business expense, a pet care category, or anything else you track regularly.

When a budget goes over

Going over a budget is information, not a failure. It tells you that the limit was set too low for how you actually live, or that something unexpected happened this month. Either way, you have three options:

Adjust the limit. If you consistently overspend a category, raise the limit to reflect reality rather than aspiration.
Shift spending. Cut from another category this month to compensate — move the slack from Transportation to Food & Dining.
Note it and move on. One overspent month does not break a budget system. Look at the report at month’s end and use it to set better limits next time.

Budgets as a feedback loop

The value of a budget is not the limit itself — it is the feedback. Seeing a bar at 80% mid-month changes behavior in a way that a number in a spreadsheet does not. After two or three months of tracking, your limits become accurate because they are calibrated to real spending rather than guesswork.

For the full picture of how a month went, pair your budgets with the monthly report. To see which days drove the most spending, use the calendar view.