One of MoneyWiz super powers is its flexibility. We work really hard to make our features allow for a wide range of uses, systems and solutions instead of enforcing a single way of finance management. Of course, sometimes you might need a guidance on how to achieve something and this guide aims to suggest a simple budgeting system that should work for customers who don't need too many related features. An alternative budgeting system would be envelope budgeting explained in more detail here.
To begin with this basic system, navigate to Budgets section by clicking on the coins icon in the menu. Then start creating your first expense budget -- we'll start with budget for food/grocery related expenses. First think about how often you'd like the budget to repeat. This would usually depend on how often you get paid -- if you're paid on monthly basis, you'll probably want the budget to renew monthly. If you're paid fortnightly, go for a biweekly schedule. Once you've made this decision, decide how much you'd like to spend on food-related items within that period (e.g. monthly). Please note that we're talking about maximum amount -- it's okay to spend less than you assign here but your goal is not to exceed this amount (if you do, there are ways to amend this, don't worry). Once you've made those decisions, fill out the budget fields:
Name: call it something like "Food".
Amount: enter the maximum amount you'd like to spend on those items within the budget period.
Put in Group: read more here.
Select icon: select some icon to help you recognize the budget.
Accounts to monitor: select all accounts which you use to pay for food-related items.
Select categories: select all food/grocery-related categories. However, you probably don't want to select "eating out"-related categories because the former are "needs", while the latter are "wants".
Select tags: you probably don't need to use this feature for your basic budgeting system. If you set any tags here, all your expenses will need to have them in order to appear in your budget.
Start date: set the date when you want the budgeting to start. It could be a date from the past.
Repeat: for the purpose of this guide, enable repeat.
Frequency: set here what you've decided for the budget repetition schedule.
Rollover: what should happen if you spend more than the amount you set earlier? Or spend less? If you'd like the next budget period amount to be affected, set this to enabled. Otherwise you can disable this and each budget will renew with exactly the same amount.
Once this budget is created, create more like this for other spending categories. Some ideas include: entertainment (eating out, bars/pubs, cinema, books), transportation (public transportation, petrol, rental), house (bills, rent). You probably can think of more once you understand the idea.
The total of your budget allowances should not exceed your salary. Ideally, you should also put some amount aside to transfer to your savings account regularly. When the next budget period comes over (e.g. next month), your budgets will renew with the amount you specified at the beginning.
That's it! That's the MoneyWiz budgeting system in broad strokes. Feel free to explore further how features such as tags or budget groups can improve it further.