How to log an expense in Cashvelope — it takes 10 seconds

Tap +, pick a category, enter the amount, hit OK. The faster you log, the more accurate your budget stays.

Budgeting apps fail for one reason more than any other: logging transactions feels like too much work. You delay it, then delay it again, and by the end of the week you are reconstructing five days of spending from memory. The numbers get fuzzy, you lose confidence in the data, and you stop looking at it.

Cashvelope is built around the opposite idea: logging should be fast enough to do in the moment, every time, without thinking about it.

Opening the add transaction screen

Tap the yellow + button at the bottom center of any screen. It opens instantly — no navigation, no submenus. You land directly on the Add Transaction screen with the Expense tab selected by default.

Cashvelope Add Transaction screen showing Expense/Income tabs, amount field, category picker, notes, date and account selectors — The Add Transaction screen — amount at the top, category below, notes and date at the bottom.

Filling in the transaction

The screen has four fields, and you only need two of them for a basic log:

Amount. Tap the large $0 display and type the number. No decimal required for whole amounts.
Category. A scrollable row of categories appears below the amount. Tap the one that fits — Breakfast, Dining, Gifts, Groceries, and so on. The selected category gets a highlighted border.
Notes. Optional but useful. A short phrase like “Team lunch” or “Birthday gift” makes transactions recognizable when you review them later.
Date. Defaults to Today. Tap Yesterday for the previous day, or the calendar icon to pick any past date. This lets you log after the fact without losing accuracy.

When you are done, tap OK. The transaction is saved and you are back to whatever screen you came from.

Logging income

Tap the Income tab at the top of the Add Transaction screen. The interface is identical — amount, category, notes, date — but the entry records as a positive cash flow. Logging your salary, freelance payment, or any other income keeps your net balance accurate.

Reviewing what you logged

After a few entries, your recent transactions appear on the home screen and in the full transaction list. You can browse by month and filter by Expense or Income to check that everything was logged correctly.

Cashvelope transaction list for March 2026 showing expenses by date: Dining, Gifts, Groceries, Work, Beauty, Travel — The transactions list — filtered by month and transaction type, with every entry listed by date.

Future transactions

If you know about an upcoming expense — rent due next week, a subscription renewing on Friday — you can log it with a future date. It appears in your transaction list under Future Transactions and factors into your budget projections before the money actually leaves your account.

The habit that makes everything else work

Every other feature in Cashvelope — budgets, reports, the calendar — depends on having accurate transactions. Log expenses the moment they happen or within minutes. After a week of consistent logging, checking your budget and report starts to feel useful rather than aspirational.

Once you have transactions in, read about how budgets work to set spending limits per category. Or use the calendar view to see where each day’s money went.