Getting started
Caudal needs no setup before you can use it — but four things are worth doing on day one, or the numbers will be incomplete.
4 steps
On the first day
Accounts, categories, a first expense, income
5 accounts
On the free plan
Cash, a card, a currency, a savings pot
2–3 weeks
Until the reports mean anything
Before that there is nothing to calculate from
1. Add your accounts
An account is wherever money actually sits: cash, a card, a savings pot, crypto. Every expense leaves some account, so without accounts there is nothing to record against. More → Accounts.
If you hold several currencies, create an account for each. The app converts everything into your main currency and shows one total.
2. Check the categories
Signing up creates a dozen typical categories. Delete the ones you do not use and add your own — categories are the tiles on the home screen, and they are what you will tap every day.
3. Record your first expense
Tap a category on the home screen, type the amount, save. That is all. The first entry matters more than perfect setup: until there are transactions, no report can show anything.
4. Add your income
The Income section. Without it the app cannot say what you have left or how long it lasts.
After that
After that, simply record what you spend on the day you spend it. Two or three weeks in, the charts and the forecast start telling the truth about your budget. That habit is the only thing this app asks of you.
If you already kept accounts in a spreadsheet
Nothing needs copying by hand. "Settings" → "Tables" → "Import transactions": a CSV with the columns date, type, amount, currency, account, category, note.
One condition: an account with that name has to exist already — the app does not create accounts from the file, because it cannot know their currency or opening balance. Categories do get created, and the app tells you how many it made.
Up to two thousand rows and two megabytes at a time. If a row does not go in, you see its number and the reason: a date it cannot read, an amount it cannot read, or no account by that name.
What not to do on the first day
Create thirty categories. You will revise them in a month anyway, once it is visible where the money actually goes, and the extra tiles only make it harder to hit the one you want.
Reconstruct last year. The reports are built from what is recorded; the meaning comes from the regularity of the future rather than the volume of the past.
If the balance does not match
It happens in the first week: something went unrecorded. Do not hunt for it one transaction at a time — the account card has "Set the actual balance". Enter what is really in the account today and the difference is recorded as a single line dated today.
Past months do not change, and the correction does not count as spending — if it did, it would ruin the month's report.
If you have never kept a budget, start by finding out where your money goes: the first month is for measuring rather than controlling, and any limit set before measuring is invented.