Categories

Overview#

Categories are the foundation of budgeting in the Budget app. Every transaction belongs to a category, and categories are divided into two types:

• Expense categories -- money going out (groceries, rent, entertainment)
• Income categories -- money coming in (salary, freelance, dividends)

Categories can be nested to any depth, letting you organize spending as broadly or granularly as you need. For example, you might have a top-level Food category with children Groceries, Restaurants, and Coffee.

Creating Categories#

To create a new category:

1. Navigate to Categories
2. Click Add Category
3. Fill in the details:

The dialog puts the naming fields under Details on the left and the two exclusion options under Options on the right, with everything visible at once. On a saved category, Tag Sets spans the full width below both columns. The columns stack into one on narrow windows and phones.

Tip: Assign distinct colors to your top-level categories. Child categories inherit their parent's color in charts, so setting colors at the top level keeps your reports visually consistent.

Category Hierarchy#

Categories support unlimited nesting depth. Child categories roll up into their parent for reporting purposes -- when you view spending on Food, you see the combined total of Groceries, Restaurants, and any other children.

Common hierarchy patterns:

Housing
  Rent / Mortgage
  Utilities
  Insurance
  Maintenance

Food
  Groceries
  Restaurants
  Coffee

Transportation
  Fuel
  Public Transit
  Parking

Note: A category's type (expense or income) is determined by its top-level ancestor. All children under an expense category are expense categories; the same applies for income.

Drag-and-Drop Reordering#

You can reorder categories by dragging them within the category tree:

• Reorder within the same level -- Drag a category up or down among its siblings to change the display order
• Move to a different parent -- Drag a category onto another category to make it a child of that category
• Promote to top level -- Drag a child category to the root level to make it a top-level category

Changes are saved automatically as you drop.

Default Categories#

When you first set up the Budget app, the Setup Wizard offers to create a default set of categories based on the 50/30/20 budgeting rule:

Needs (50%)

• Housing
• Food
• Transportation
• Healthcare
• Subscriptions

Wants (30%)

• Entertainment
• Shopping
• Personal

Savings (20%)

• Savings

Income

• Salary
• Freelance
• Investments
• Other Income

Tip: The defaults are a starting point. Rename, reorganize, or delete them to match your actual spending patterns. You can always create new categories later.

Category Details#

Click any category to open its detail view, which shows:

• Total spending -- Lifetime total for this category
• Average -- Average monthly spending
• This month -- Spending in the current month
• Trend -- Whether spending is increasing, decreasing, or stable compared to recent months
• Monthly spending chart -- A bar chart showing spending over time
• Recent transactions -- The most recent transactions assigned to this category

This view helps you quickly understand your spending patterns for any category without navigating to the full reports.

Excluding a Category#

Two checkboxes on a category control how far it reaches. Both are set when you create or edit a category, and both apply to the category and all of its subcategories.

Exclude from budgeting is for spending you want to see but never budget against -- irregular one-offs, a "Gifts" category that swings wildly month to month, or anything you'd rather not have skewing a budget you can't realistically set. The transactions still show up in reports and totals exactly as before; you just stop being told you're over budget on something you never budgeted.

Note: Excluding a parent excludes its whole subtree. If you want to budget a child of an excluded parent, put that child somewhere else in the tree.

Both options are owner-only on a shared category: a recipient with Edit permission can rename it and change its colour, but cannot change what it counts toward for its owner.

Shared Categories#

If another user shares categories with you, they appear in your category tree with a badge naming the owner:

• "Shared · <owner>" -- read-only. You can classify transactions with it but cannot change the category itself.
• "Shared (editable) · <owner>" -- shared with Edit permission. You can rename it and change its colour.

A shared category's type, parent, budget, report visibility and deletion always remain with its owner. See Sharing for the full details.

Deleting Categories#

To delete a category, open it and click Delete.

Warning: You cannot delete a category that has transactions assigned to it. Reassign or delete those transactions first, then delete the category.

When you delete a parent category, all of its child categories are also deleted (cascade delete). Make sure none of the children have transactions assigned before deleting a parent.

Tip: If you want to stop using a category without deleting it, consider moving it under a "Retired" parent category instead. This preserves your historical data while keeping your active category list clean.

Transaction Counts#

Each category in the tree displays a count of how many transactions are assigned to it. This count includes only direct transactions -- it does not roll up transactions from child categories.

The count helps you quickly identify:

• Categories that are heavily used and might benefit from being split into subcategories
• Categories with zero transactions that could be cleaned up or removed

Related Features#

• Budget -- Set monthly spending targets for each category
• Tags -- Add additional classification dimensions to categories with tag sets
• Transactions -- Assign categories to individual transactions
• Import Rules -- Automatically categorize imported transactions based on patterns

Settings#

There are no dedicated settings for categories. Category behavior is managed directly through the category tree interface.