Categories
Categories are the app's main instrument: both the buttons you record with and the axis every report is cut along.
10–12
The number that works
Fewer explains nothing, more does not get filled in
A monthly limit
On any category
The app warns when it is running away
Archive, not delete
For one you stopped using
Deleting takes the history with it
Order
Tiles can be dragged: press one for half a second and move it. Keep the ones you use daily first — it saves seconds on every entry.
A monthly limit
A category can carry a monthly limit. The app shows what is left of it and warns when a category is on course to blow through before the month ends.
Colour and icon
Twelve colours and a large set of icons. Colour is not decoration: on the charts, colour is how you recognise your own categories.
Subcategories
A category can have a parent. Fuel and Repairs inside Car are counted both separately and together — a report on the parent includes its children.
A default account
A category can be tied to an account: groceries always leave the card, say. Then the account is already right when you record.
Old categories
A category you have stopped using is better archived than deleted: deleting takes its transaction history with it. An archived category disappears from the home screen while past months stay intact.
Essential or not
Every category carries an "Essential?" mark with three values: unset, essential, optional. It is not decoration and not a judgement — two things run off it.
The home screen gains a line: "this month you spent X on categories marked optional". It is the only place in the app that tells you where your slack is, and it stays silent until the marks are set.
Transactions gain an "Essential" and "Optional" filter. The same row has other cuts — business, gifts, transport, health, food, clothes, beauty, entertainment — but those the app builds by itself from each category's icon; nothing needs marking.
A currency per category
A category can be given a currency of its own, and then its limit and its totals are counted in that one rather than the main one. It is for when part of life runs in one currency and part in another: rent in dollars, groceries in the local one.
Its own list, for any month
The "Transactions" button on a category's card opens everything recorded in it. The link "Spending by category in another month" shows the same breakdown for earlier months — that is how you tell a category that is growing from one expensive occasion.
Why archive rather than delete
Deleting takes the history with it: the month you were using that category becomes incomplete, and the yearly report becomes wrong. That is why the app says the category will be hidden and the history kept.
An archived category leaves the home screen and the picker, but stays exactly where it was in every past report.
How many categories to have and how to divide them is in how to make a personal budget. If you already have plenty and the monthly limits still do not hold, look at the envelope method.