Learn - Concepts

The words you need before reading anything else here.

Concepts

Essential Budget is for planning your future finances. You set up accounts, categories, items, and schedules; the app turns that setup into planned events on the Planner. When a bill is paid, a paycheck arrives, or a grocery week ends, you resolve the event. Transaction Tracking is optional: turn it on only if you want to track each purchase or deposit inside events.

How the words fit together

You create an item for something you expect: rent, a paycheck, groceries, a transfer to savings. The item belongs to a category, uses an account, and has a schedule. The schedule puts dated events on the Planner.

The schedule creates an event for each date or date range it places on the Planner. A monthly Rent item creates a May rent event, a June rent event, and so on. A weekly Groceries item creates one grocery event for each week. For a fixed bill, paycheck, or transfer, you can use the event by itself: after the payment, deposit, or transfer appears in your bank account, resolve the event with Resolve Event from the Planner or a Reports chart. For groceries, gas, tips, commissions, or anything else that builds up across several purchases or deposits, the event can hold individual transactions. That difference is controlled by Transaction Tracking, an optional toggle on the item.

With Transaction Tracking off, the event is resolved as a whole. A matched payment, deposit, or transfer from a linked bank or uploaded file can resolve it, or you can tap Resolve Event and let the planned amount move the balance.

With Transaction Tracking on, the event can collect individual transactions. Each saved transaction moves the account balance right away. The event can stay open while the progress builds, and the Planner shows how much of the planned amount has been recorded.

Account

An account is one place your money sits. The app has two account types: Checking and Savings. The type is mostly a label and icon hint. It does not decide whether money is added or subtracted.

The important number on an account is Current Balance. You enter it when you add the account. After that, the app changes it when transactions are saved inside events, when matched payments, deposits, or transfers from a linked bank or uploaded file are confirmed, or when you resolve an event without any transaction detail. If the app’s balance stops matching your bank’s balance, edit Current Balance to match the bank. Your bank’s number is the number to trust.

An account can be manual, or it can be linked to a bank through Plaid, the third-party service that connects the app to your bank. For linked accounts, the app can fetch bank transactions when you tap Match Transactions on the Planner. Manual accounts rely on events you resolve yourself and optional transactions you enter or upload. A budget can use both kinds of accounts.

See Accounts for account setup and Bank Linking for Plaid.

Category

A category is the bucket an item lives in. Each category has a Type:

  • Income adds money to the account.
  • Expense subtracts money from the account.
  • Transfer moves money between two of your accounts.

The category type is what gives money its direction in the app. You enter amounts as positive numbers; the category decides the sign. A paycheck under an Income category raises the balance. The same amount under an Expense category lowers it. A Transfer item uses a From Account and a To Account, so one balance goes down and the other goes up.

Categories can nest under other categories. Housing might contain Rent and Utilities. Nesting changes organization only; it does not change the math. The app groups your categories under Income, Transfers, and Expenses in the Setup tab, but every category itself is one you created.

See Categories for category types, nesting, and the balance rule.

Item

An item is the template for something you expect to happen. It stores the name, amount, category, account, schedule, and optional settings such as Auto Pay and Transaction Tracking.

Items can be one-time or recurring. A one-time item produces one event, such as a tax refund or planned purchase. A recurring item produces a new event each time the schedule says it should happen, such as rent on the 1st, a paycheck every other Friday, or groceries every week.

Most items use one account. Transfer items use two accounts: a From Account and a To Account. Transfer items do not use Transaction Tracking.

See Items for the full item form and schedule options.

Schedule

A schedule is the rule that creates an item’s events. The schedule can be One-Time or Recurring.

Recurring schedules can repeat Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually, Annually, or on a custom Every … interval. A recurring schedule can also start at a specific Payment #, which is useful for a loan or any series where you want the events numbered.

For an item with Transaction Tracking on, the schedule also defines the transaction period for each event. A weekly grocery event, for example, can represent the whole week of grocery transactions rather than one single due-date payment.

See Items for schedule setup.

Event

An event is one occurrence of an item. Rent due May 1 is one event. Rent due June 1 is another event from the same item.

Events appear on the Planner. Grid view shows them as rows. Calendar view shows them on their scheduled dates. On items with Transaction Tracking on, the date can appear as a range because the event collects transactions for that period.

An event can be Scheduled, Paid, or Resolved.

  • Scheduled means it is still on the Planner.
  • Paid is a flag for your reference. The toolbar shows Mark Event as Paid for a Scheduled event and Mark Event as Unpaid for a Paid event. Neither action moves the event to History or changes a balance.
  • Resolved means the event has been filed to History. A resolved event leaves the Planner.

Each event also has a Payment #. The number counts forward from the schedule’s starting number, so recurring events appear as #1, #2, #3, and so on.

See Matching and Resolving for the event states.

Transaction Tracking

Transaction Tracking is an optional item setting for events where you want to track each purchase or deposit separately. You do not need it to use Essential Budget; many budgets work fine by resolving each planned event as a whole.

Turn it off for items that resolve all at once: rent, a subscription, a fixed paycheck, a transfer. These events do not show a Transactions section in Edit Item Event. If you match a payment, deposit, or transfer from a linked bank or uploaded file to the event, the app uses that amount to update the balance, resolve the event, and move it to History. If there is no bank or uploaded file to match, Resolve Event applies the planned amount and moves the event to History.

Turn it on for items where actual activity builds up over a period: groceries, gas, dining out, variable income, tips, commissions. These events show a Transactions section in Edit Item Event. You can add transactions by hand, or match several bank or uploaded transactions to the same event. Each saved transaction updates the account balance immediately.

During Match Transactions, an event with Transaction Tracking on resolves when its recorded transaction total reaches or exceeds the planned amount. If the total is still below the planned amount, the new transactions are saved and the event stays on the Planner with the remaining amount still projected. You can resolve it yourself when you are done with that period. If you try to resolve an event with Transaction Tracking on and no transactions, the No Transactions Recorded dialog lets you add one first or choose Resolve Anyway.

See Items for when to turn Transaction Tracking on.

Transaction

A transaction is one purchase, charge, or deposit saved inside an event whose item has Transaction Tracking on. A grocery event might hold five supermarket transactions. A gas event might hold two fuel purchases. A tips event might hold several deposits.

Transactions enter the app three ways:

  • You add one by hand inside Edit Item Event on an item with Transaction Tracking on.
  • You pull transactions from a linked bank through Plaid and match them to an event with Transaction Tracking on.
  • You upload a CSV, TSV, or TXT file and match its payments or deposits to an event with Transaction Tracking on.

When a transaction is saved, the account balance changes right away. Income adds and Expense subtracts. Resolving the event later does not move the balance a second time.

Events without Transaction Tracking do not collect transactions. They are represented as whole events: matched and resolved from a payment, deposit, or transfer in a linked bank or uploaded file, or resolved at the planned amount with Resolve Event.

See Transactions for manual transactions and Matching and Resolving for bank and file matching.

  • Budget. A workspace that holds one set of accounts, categories, items, planner, and history. See Budgets.
  • Auto Pay. A label saying your bank or biller pays the bill automatically. The app does not pay anything for you. See Items.
  • Match Transactions. The toolbar button and dialog for matching bank or uploaded payments, deposits, and transfers to events. It can pull them through Plaid or use uploaded files, then lets you confirm which events they belong to. See Matching and Resolving.
  • Resolve Event. The toolbar button that files the selected event to History. If the event has no transactions, resolving also moves the planned amount through the account balance.
  • History. The tab where resolved and deleted events are recorded. History rows have an Undo Action button when the action can be reversed. See History and Undo.
  • Pay period. A Planner grouping option. Pay Period Headers uses your income dates as boundaries. It changes how events are grouped on screen; it does not change event dates. See Planner.

Why “Match Transactions” and “Resolve Event,” not “Reconcile”? In many personal finance apps, reconcile means comparing the app’s balance with the bank’s balance and adjusting the gap. Essential Budget uses Match Transactions for connecting payments, deposits, or transfers from your bank or file to planned events, and Resolve Event for filing an event to History. If the app’s balance disagrees with the bank, edit the account’s Current Balance directly.

The day-to-day flow is described in Matching and Resolving.