In this article we're creating an expense budget which is used to track expense transactions. If you want to create an income budget instead, please see this article.
You can start creating new budget by switching to the Budget section (coins icon in the menu) and then click on the "New Budget" button (if you don't have any budgets yet) or + button at the bottom of the budget list (if you have some already).
After selecting to create an Expense budget, you'll see the following window asking you to fill out the budget details:
Name: the name for your budget, helping you to identify the budget.
Amount: the allowance for the budget. If the budget is non-repeating (e.g. wedding), this amount is the total budget allowance. If the budget is repeating (e.g. monthly bill allowance), this is the budget allowance until the budget renews (for monthly budget, this is the monthly allowance).
Put in Group: select which group to put the budget inside. You can only group budgets of the same type (expense-expense, income-income) and you can't mix budgets and accounts in the same group.
Accounts: accounts to monitor. In order for transaction to appear in the budget, the expense must be originating from one of the accounts you select here. You need to select at least one account.
Categories: categories to monitor. Just like with accounts, in order for the transaction to appear in the budget, the expense must be allocated to one of the categories you select here. You need to select at least one category.
Tags: tags to monitor. You can leave this field empty if needed. If you specify any tags here, the budget will only display transactions that contain at least one of the specified tags. If you enter multiple tags here, MoneyWiz will not require that your transactions contain all of them - just one will suffice. In other words, the condition for multiple tags is OR, not AND.
Icon: in addition to the name, you can choose an icon for the budget to make it easier to identify.
Start date: when the budget should start analyzing transactions. You can set this date to be in the past and MoneyWiz will automatically populate earlier budget periods as needed.
Repeat: whether the budget should repeat. For one-off budgets, keep this unchecked.
End date: if the budget is non-repeating, you need to specify when it ends.
Frequency: if the budget is repeating, you can specify how often it repeats since the Start date. By default it's set to 1 Month. You can modify the "1" part by typing in the field. To change the "Month" part, click on that button to choose from days, weeks, months and years.
Rollover: if the budget is repeating, you can decide whether outstanding balance at the end of the budget period (positive or negative) will be included in the next budget period's balance. If disabled, on each budget renewal date, the budget allowance will be equal to "Amount".
Carried balance: sometimes you might want to note that you've already spent some amount of the budget allowance (or have bit more). If you leave this at zero, the budget will be created with the "Amount" field in mind. If you enter here a positive or negative amount, MoneyWiz will sum it with the "Amount" field. This setting requires the rollover to be enabled.
Once you create a budget, MoneyWiz will scan existing transactions if they fit the budget criteria (start date, account, category, tags, etc). If yes, it'll apply them to the budget.
Make sure to learn more about budget register presentation and how to review your budget!