Annual Budgets

Some categories have a clear yearly total but unpredictable monthly amounts. Travel might mean nothing for nine months and then a large trip in July. Gifts cluster around birthdays and the holidays. Car maintenance shows up when something needs replacing, not on a fixed schedule. Annual budgets fit these patterns much better than a monthly cap, because the goal is the yearly total, not a flat per-month spend.

Common categories that benefit from an annual budget include travel, gifts, holidays, car maintenance, home repairs, professional development, and medical or dental costs. If you find yourself regularly blowing the monthly limit one month and barely touching it the next, that category is a good candidate to switch to annual.

To set up an annual budget:

1. Open the Budgets page and tap Add Budget.
2. Give the budget a name and choose an icon.
3. Set the Budget Type to Annual.
4. Enter the yearly limit you want to stay under.
5. Assign the categories whose spending should count toward the budget.

The budget activates immediately and starts counting all qualifying transactions for the current calendar year. You can edit the name, limit, and categories later without losing the spending you have already tracked. The Budget Type is fixed once the budget is created, though — to move a budget between monthly and annual, delete it and create a new one.

The two budget types serve different needs and you can mix them freely:

• Monthly - One bucket per month that resets on the first. Best for steady categories like groceries, dining, or subscriptions where you want a consistent monthly cap.
• Annual - One bucket for the whole year. Best for categories where the timing is irregular but you still want a total ceiling.

Most people end up with mostly monthly budgets and a handful of annual ones for the lumpy categories. The Budget Type is set when you create a budget and cannot be changed afterwards, so if you decide a category belongs on the other cadence, delete the budget and recreate it with the type you want.

Annual budgets show year-to-date progress instead of monthly progress. The progress bar fills based on how much of the yearly limit you have used, and the budget trend chart adapts to show the full year rather than a single month. This makes it easy to glance at the dashboard in October and see whether you are on pace for the year, even if a single month looks unusually high or low.

On the Budgets overview, annual and monthly budgets sit side by side and use the same colour coding. Drag them into whatever order works best for you - many people put their annual budgets at the bottom since they need less frequent attention.

You can adjust the yearly limit at any time. Spending you have already counted stays counted, and the progress bar simply recalculates against the new limit. If you raise the limit, you will see your remaining amount go up. If you lower it below what you have already spent, the budget will show as over and the progress bar turns red - that is intentional, so you can decide whether to rein in spending or accept that this year ran higher than planned.

Adding or removing categories mid-year is also safe. New categories start contributing from the date you add them, and existing transactions in those categories are pulled into the budget total retroactively for the current year.