Budgets

Monize includes a full-featured budget planner that analyzes your spending history to suggest realistic budgets, tracks spending in real time with velocity projections, supports rollover per category, groups categories into flexible spending pools, and alerts you before you overspend.

Overview#

Navigate to Budgets from the top navigation bar. The Budgets page lists every budget you have created with its Name, Strategy, Type, number of Categories, the date it Started, and its Status (Active or Inactive). Click a row to open that budget's dashboard, or click + New Budget to start the budget wizard. If you have no budgets yet, the page offers Create Your First Budget instead.

The budget system integrates with your transactions, scheduled bills, and categories to give you a complete picture of your financial plan.

Creating a Budget#

Monize includes a Budget Wizard that analyzes your historical spending to suggest realistic targets -- no manual data entry required. The wizard walks you through four steps, shown along the top as Analyze, Categories, Configure, and Review. Use Back at any step to return to the previous one.

Step 1: Analyze Spending#

1. Choose a Budget Strategy -- Select one of four strategies (see Budget Strategies below). Selecting a card opens a detail panel with its Pros, Cons, and who it is Best for.
2. Analysis Period -- Choose 3 months, 6 months (the default), or 12 months of transaction history to analyze. Longer periods smooth out anomalies; shorter periods reflect recent habits.
3. Budget Profile -- Pick how aggressive your targets should be:

4. Click Analyze My Spending to generate suggestions.

The analysis looks at how each category's spending is distributed month by month, spots fixed expenses (rent, subscriptions) as opposed to variable spending (dining, groceries), and estimates your monthly income.

Step 2: Review Categories#

This step lists every category found in your history, in three tables:

• Income -- your income categories
• Expenses -- your spending categories, largest first. Categories with a regular, unchanging amount carry a Fixed badge
• Transfers / Savings -- regular transfers to savings accounts and loan or card payments

Each row has:

Use the profile buttons (Comfortable, On Track, Aggressive) at the top to switch the suggested amounts for all categories at once. The totals at the bottom show Total Income, Total Expenses, Transfers, and Remaining.

For 50/30/20 budgets, each expense row also has a Need / Want / Saving picker, and a 50/30/20 Allocation box compares what you have assigned to each group against its target.

Only categories found in your history are listed here. To budget for a category you have never used, create the budget first and add it later. Click Next: Configure to continue.

Step 3: Configure Options#

Configure your budget settings, grouped into sections:

Click Next: Review to continue.

Step 4: Review and Create#

The review step shows a complete summary of your budget before it is created:

• Summary cards -- Est. Income, Total Expenses, Transfers, and Remaining
• Budget details -- Name, Type, Strategy, Start Date, Rollover, Alerts, Income Linked, and Excluded Accounts
• Category table -- every included category with its amount and type (Income, Expense, or Transfer)

On mobile, the Type column is hidden to give category names and amounts more room.

Click Create Budget to finish. The new budget appears on the Budgets page.

Budget Dashboard#

Click a budget on the Budgets page to open its dashboard, your main view for tracking the budget in real time. A Back to Budgets link returns to the list, and the arrow beside the budget's name (Switch to another budget) jumps straight to another budget. Under the name, a bar describes the budget's strategy. The Edit and Delete buttons are at the top right.

Summary Cards#

Four cards at the top provide an at-a-glance overview:

Health Score#

A circular gauge from 0 to 100 summarizing how well you are sticking to your budget.

The score starts at 100 and:

• loses points for every category over budget, more the further over it is
• loses a few points for every category above 95% of its budget
• gains a point for every category below half of its budget
• loses points when total spending is over the whole budget

The Budget Health Score report gives a more detailed version that weights essential (Needs) categories more heavily.

Spending Velocity#

Shows your spending pace and whether you will finish the period within budget:

• Daily burn rate -- How much you are spending per day
• Safe to spend -- How much you can spend per day and stay on track
• Projected month-end -- Where you will land at the current pace
• Pace status -- Under budget pace (green), On track (yellow), or Over budget pace (red)
• Budget total, Bills coming and Truly available -- your budget less the scheduled bills still to come this period
• A progress bar showing Day X of Y and the days remaining

Because the widget factors in upcoming bills from your scheduled transactions, "safe to spend" reflects your truly available discretionary budget.

Category List#

The Category Budgets list shows every expense category in the budget with a progress bar.

Each row shows:

• Category name -- including its parent category, for example "Food: Groceries"
• Progress bar -- Colour-coded by percentage used (green, yellow, red), with a marker showing where you should be today ("Expected pace")
• Amount spent of the budgeted amount, and the percentage used
• Pace status -- Under pace, On pace, or Over pace compared with how far through the period you are
• Amount left, or how much you are over

Use the Sort dropdown to sort by % Used (the default), Spent, Remaining, or Name, and the arrow beside it to reverse the order. On mobile, the sort controls stack below the heading.

Click a category row to open the Transactions page filtered to that category and the budget period.

Strategy Widgets#

Two widgets appear above the health score for specific strategies:

• Zero-Based Assignment (Zero-Based budgets) -- how much of your income is assigned (Assigned: x / y), marked Fully assigned, Under-assigned, or Over-assigned
• 50/30/20 Allocation (50/30/20 budgets) -- for Needs, Wants, and Savings, the target percentage against the percentage and amount actually budgeted

Flex Groups#

A flex group pools several related categories under one shared limit -- for example, "Fun Money" for Restaurants, Movies, and Hobbies. Individual categories within a group can go over budget, but as long as the group total is within its limit, you have stayed on plan.

You assign categories to flex groups in step 3 of the wizard (Flex Groups > Configure), or later from the budget's edit page (Flex Group (optional) in a category's settings). When at least one group exists, a Flex Groups card on the dashboard shows each group's combined spending against its combined budget.

Upcoming Bills#

Integrates with your scheduled transactions to show:

• Bills coming due this period with dates and amounts
• Total upcoming -- the sum of those bills
• Truly available -- remaining budget minus upcoming bills

This prevents a false sense of security when you have budget left but bills still to pay. When nothing is due, the card says "No bills due this period."

Spending Heatmap#

A calendar for the current month in which each day is shaded by how much you spent, from Less to More. Darker days are your heavier spending days, which helps you spot patterns such as weekend spending. Hover over or tap a day to see its total.

Budget vs Actual Trend#

A chart of your Budgeted amount against your Actual spending over recent periods, so you can see whether you are improving over time. It needs at least a couple of periods of history.

Scenario Planner#

The What-If Scenario Planner at the bottom of the dashboard lets you try budget changes without committing them. Drag a category's slider to change its amount and the planner immediately shows the Current Budget, the Proposed Budget, the Projected Savings, and the Savings Change. Each changed category shows its Original amount.

Nothing is saved: click Reset to put every slider back, or leave the page. To make a change permanent, edit the budget (see Editing a Budget).

Budget Strategies#

Monize supports four budget strategies, each suited to a different financial style:

You can change a budget's strategy later from its edit page.

Rollover Rules#

Each category can have its own rollover setting:

Whichever rolling type you choose, the unused amount carries into the next period when the current one closes. Overspending is not carried forward as a debt.

You can also set a Rollover Cap to limit how much accumulates. For example, a clothing category might roll over monthly with a $500 cap.

Common patterns:

• Groceries -- None (no point accumulating)
• Clothing -- Monthly with a cap (save for seasonal shopping)
• Travel -- Annual (vacation fund)
• Car Maintenance -- Annual with no cap (save for repairs)

Income-Linked Budgets#

For freelancers, gig workers, or anyone with variable income, you can tick Link budget to income in step 3 of the wizard. Category amounts then become percentages of your base income rather than fixed dollar amounts:

• If your income drops, your budget automatically tightens
• If your income rises, your budget grows proportionally

Set a Base Monthly Income to establish the baseline. The wizard suggests it from your historical income. An income-linked budget also raises an Income Shortfall alert when actual income falls well below the base (see Alerts).

Alerts#

Monize checks every active budget once a day and raises alerts before you overspend. Alerts appear under the notifications bell in the header, and the most serious ones can also be emailed to you.

Alert Types#

Each alert is raised once per period, so you are not reminded of the same overspend every day.

In-App Alerts#

The bell icon (Notifications) in the top navigation bar shows the number of unread notifications. Click it to open the notifications panel.

The panel lists budget alerts alongside Monize's other notifications:

• Severity filters -- chips for Critical, Warning, Good News, and Info (red, yellow, green, and blue badges), plus Financial and System to narrow the list
• Alert title and message -- What happened and the details
• Unread indicator -- A dot on unread alerts
• Mark all read -- Clears every unread indicator at once
• Delete all -- Removes every notification (or every one matching the current filter), after a confirmation
• Remind me about this -- Brings a notification back later, once or repeatedly until you stop it
• Dismiss -- An X button on each alert (see below)

Clicking an alert takes you to the relevant budget. Bill due alerts open the Bills & Deposits page instead.

Dismissing Alerts#

Each alert in the panel has an X button that appears on hover. Clicking it:

1. Immediately removes the alert from the list
2. Shows a toast notification with an Undo button for 5 seconds
3. If you don't undo, the alert is permanently deleted after 5 seconds
4. If you click Undo, the alert is restored to the list

Email Notifications#

Budget emails are set up in Settings > Notifications, under Budget Notifications. Email must be enabled for your account and your administrator must have configured email for the instance.

The Budgets row of the "How to notify me" grid in the same section controls whether budget reports and alerts are emailed at all.

Period Management#

Budgets are divided into periods (monthly for a monthly budget). Shortly after midnight on the 1st of each month, Monize automatically:

1. Closes the current period
2. Records the actual spending for each category
3. Calculates rollover amounts per category
4. Opens the next period, carrying the rollover balances forward

Viewing Historical Periods#

Once a budget has more than one period, a Period: selector appears at the top of the dashboard. Choose Current Period, or any past period by month. A closed period shows:

• Total Budgeted, Total Spent, and whether you finished Under Budget or Over Budget, plus Income
• A Rollover Summary of the amounts carried in and carried out
• Overall Budget Usage
• The final actual amount for every category, under Expense Categories and Income Categories

Budget Reports#

Nine budget-specific reports are available in the Budget category of the Reports page:

Additionally, a Budget Variance metric is available in the custom report builder, so you can create your own budget-related reports with flexible filters and groupings.

Editing a Budget#

To edit an existing budget:

1. Open the budget dashboard
2. Click Edit in the top right
3. Change the Budget Settings: Budget Name, Description (optional), Budget Type, Strategy, Base Income (optional), and Active
4. Click Save Changes

Below the settings, Category Allocations lists the budget's Income and Expenses categories with their amounts and rollover settings. Click a category to open its settings:

Click Save to keep the changes, or Remove from budget to take the category out of the budget. Removing a category also deletes its history in past budget periods (your transactions are not affected), so Monize asks you to confirm.

Unticking Active stops the daily alert checks for the budget without deleting it.

Deleting a Budget#

Click Delete on the budget dashboard and confirm. Deleting a budget removes all of its data, including its periods and alerts; your transactions and categories are not affected. This cannot be undone.