Pro tips from 2+ years of daily use
Hard-won lessons from running our household finances on this system every single day.
Daily Habits
Tips for the Surplus page — your one daily interaction.
Open the Surplus page and update each card/account balance first thing. It takes 30 seconds and immediately tells you whether yesterday's spending was on track.
The amount shown recalculates automatically — you just need to type the new balance. Tap the field and the current value is selected immediately, so you just type the new number.
The longer you wait to tag a purchase as Paid Separately, the harder it is to remember which budget it came from. Make it a habit: if you bought something non-essential, tag it before you close the app.
The Auto-fill button handles Expenses Calendar items — you only need to manually enter actual discretionary purchases.
If you have freelance income or irregular payments, enter the expected amount in the Notes field of an Extra Income entry, not the Amount field. This keeps it out of the surplus calculation while you wait for it to actually arrive.
At month close, move the confirmed amount to the Amount field. This is the creator's personal method — it prevents counting income before it clears.
All amount fields in the app support Enter to save and Escape to cancel. On the expenses table, clicking a cell opens it for editing; pressing Enter moves you on. No need to reach for the mouse.
Budget Strategy
Tips for setting up and maintaining your budget envelopes.
This is the single most important budget to create. Set it as priority, give it a maximum of 1–2 months' income, and let it fill up during good months.
When an unexpected cost or just a big spending month happens, pull from Expensive Months via an Extra Income entry to zero the month without touching savings.
Without a maximum, a priority budget is a bottomless pit — it will absorb all available surplus every month. A maximum tells the distribution engine when to stop and move to standard budgets.
Set each priority budget's maximum to what "full" actually means: vacation fund = cost of the trip, auto = one major repair, etc.
Anything you'll get paid back for — work purchases, medical out-of-pocket before insurance — belongs in a dedicated no-fill budget.
Enter the spend as Paid Separately. Budget goes negative. When reimbursement arrives, enter it as a Manual Correction. Balance returns to zero. Your surplus is untouched throughout.
Each partner having their own budget envelope eliminates the "is it okay if I buy this?" conversation. Each month, a portion of surplus flows to each personal budget. Spend it however you want — no questions asked.
The creator's household uses a 50/50 split of the standard budget portion between two personal envelopes.
The temptation is to create a budget for every possible category. Resist. Start with 5–7 envelopes and only add more when you notice a genuine pattern of spending that doesn't fit anywhere.
Too many budgets means too many small balances that never accumulate enough to be useful.
Any budget can be marked as a Favorite by toggling the star in the Budgets screen. Favorites appear highlighted on the Dashboard and are pre-selected as the default view in Reports.
Use this for the budgets you actually care about watching — Vacation, Auto, Expensive Months. Everything else stays in the list but out of your daily view.
Month End
Tips for the monthly review and close process.
The month close is the most important thing you do. Make it a ritual, not a scramble. Schedule 15–30 minutes on the last day of the month:
Update all balances → review Paid Separately → handle any deficit → confirm variable income → close.
If you close with a deficit more than two months in a row, it's a signal: either income has dropped or needs have increased. Both are solvable, but the data only helps if you look at it.
Check the Reports screen — Net Spent and Surplus charts will show the trend clearly.
The month close is the best time to create a data export. Your finances are in a known-good state, and the backup will restore to exactly that point if needed.
Settings → Data Backup → Export. Takes 5 seconds. Store it in your password manager or encrypted cloud folder.
Quick View & Simple Mode
Tips for using the streamlined Quick View screen and Simple Mode setting.
Quick View is intentionally minimal: your surplus number, a spending entry field for each card, and a Paid Separately form. If all you want to do is update a card balance and log a purchase, this is the fastest path.
Access it via the ⚡ Quick View option in the hamburger menu, or set it as your home screen with Simple Mode.
Quick View spending fields accept the amount you've spent since last time, not the total running balance. If you spent $42 at the grocery store, type 42 — not the card's running total.
This is different from the full Surplus page, which takes absolute balances. Quick View is designed for quick on-the-go entries.
Go to Settings → App → View Mode → Simple. This hides the full Dashboard, Income, Expenses, and Surplus screens and makes Quick View the default home. Budgets, Reports, and Settings stay accessible from the menu.
The partner managing the finances stays on Normal mode. Each person's view mode is stored on their own device.
You don't need to send a formal invitation. Go to Settings → Partner Account, enter a name, email, and temporary password. Your partner will be added to the workspace automatically and prompted to set their own password on first login.
Then suggest they enable Simple Mode — they'll have everything they need and nothing they don't.
Power User
Advanced techniques for getting the most from the system.
Any Extra Income or Manual Correction entry can be flagged to persist into the next month. This is ideal for regular arrangements you don't want to re-enter monthly.
Example: a monthly personal-to-savings transfer. Enter it once, check Keep on Close, and it shows up automatically every month.
The CSV import is designed for annual updates. Keep your expenses template on your computer, update it each January with current prices, and re-import. Clear the existing expenses first, then import fresh.
This is faster than manually updating each cell when prices change.
The Net Spent chart in 5-year view shows a faded bar for the same month the previous year. Over time, you'll see seasonal patterns — heating costs in January, vacation spending in July — and can plan budgets accordingly.
The creator's recommendation: mark some income as "don't count on it." This builds a conservative base budget that can genuinely be met every month. Good months then generate real surplus.
It's the financial equivalent of not spending your entire paycheck — but the math is automatic.
On the Income screen, bank transactions can be configured to credit a specific budget directly. Use this to automatically fund a budget every month from a scheduled transfer — an allowance system that requires no manual entry.
Don't wait until you get a new phone to realize your encryption key isn't on it. After setting up encryption, immediately transfer the key to every device you use regularly. Settings → Encryption provides several transfer methods including QR code.
Household budget, personal slush fund, tracking a specific project — each can be its own workspace. Switch between them instantly. Your encryption key works across all workspaces you own.
If you notice data not syncing as expected, go to Settings → Debug Logs and toggle them on. Open your browser's console (F12). The app logs every sync event, op dispatch, and error with detailed context.
This is how the creator diagnoses issues. Logs are off by default and don't affect performance.
Open the app and start with just a few budgets and your income. The rest will follow naturally.