Goals

1. Tap the + button and choose Goal. If you have no goals yet, Add Goal on the empty Goals tab does the same thing.
2. Tap one of the preset pills - Rainy Day Fund, Credit Card Payoff, Vacation, Downpayment, Retirement Savings, Renovations, Monthly Saving Rate or Yearly Donation Rate - to fill in the name, icon and type in one go. Or ignore them and set your own.
3. Enter a Goal Name and pick an Icon.
4. Choose the Goal Type. The rest of the form changes to suit it, so this is the field to get right first.
5. Fill in the amounts. A Saving Amount goal asks for a Current Amount and a Target Amount. A Paying Off goal asks for a Target Balance instead, where 0 means paid off. Start and target dates are optional.
6. Tap Add Goal.

The first two have a finish line. The last two do not.

This type asks for a Monthly Amount rather than a lifetime target, plus an optional Start Month and whatever you have already put aside. It measures pace: what you have saved against what you should have saved by now, with the expectation growing by your monthly amount each month.

Because there is no finish line, it never completes and never moves to Completed Goals. It reads Ahead, On Track or Behind, and the time label shows which month you are in rather than a countdown.

Two extra controls appear on this type. Record this month logs a contribution, and Adjust monthly target changes the amount from this month or next month onward. Adjusting is not rewriting history: months that have already passed keep the target they had at the time, and the goal shows a month-by-month history.

This one tracks your savings rate against a target you set. It asks for just two things: a Timeframe (Monthly or Yearly) and a Target Rate as a percentage.

It has no amount and no dates, and it is measured from your income and spending rather than anything you record by hand. So it cannot receive contributions, cannot be linked to a transaction, and cannot be linked to an account. Like Monthly Saving, it never completes: it simply reads On Track or Behind for the current period.

Saving Amount and Paying Off goals offer two tracking modes, and the choice decides what you can do with the goal afterwards:

• Manual - you update the amount yourself. This is also what unlocks Add Contribution and transaction linking.
• Account Linked - the goal reads its value from one or more accounts or assets. The amount becomes read-only and updates on its own.

A new goal of either type opens on Account Linked - including a Saving Amount goal, which is the one most people expect to open on Manual. Switch it on the form before you save if you want to record the amounts yourself, because Manual is what turns on Add Contribution and transaction linking. Monthly Saving and Ongoing Percentage are always manual.

For a Saving Amount, Paying Off or Monthly Saving goal that is on Manual:

1. Open Plan → Goals and tap the goal.
2. Tap Add Contribution. On a Monthly Saving goal the same button reads Record this month, and on a Paying Off goal it reads Record Payment.
3. Enter the amount and confirm. The progress bar moves straight away.

A Saving Amount goal with a target date shows a Suggested monthly figure: what is left, split across the months until the target date. Each month ends on the target’s day, so a goal due May 31 counts every month through May. Money added during a month counts toward it, so the figure holds steady until the next one.

Add Suggested Amount, under Add Contribution, adds whatever this month still needs in one tap. Once the month is covered, it says so.

Every contribution is listed under the goal’s Contributions tab, so you can check what made up the total and remove a row you added twice.

A payment on a Paying Off goal lowers the balance still owed, never below zero. Removing one adds it back.

An Ongoing Percentage goal has no Add Contribution button. It is manual in the sense that no account feeds it, but it is measured from your income and spending rather than from anything you record, so there is nothing to contribute to. A completed goal loses the button too.

A completed Saving Amount goal on Manual tracking offers Create a Goal Fund. A Goal Fund holds the money you saved and lets you spend it down over time: it stays out of your monthly spending, and unlike an annual budget it never resets at the end of a year, so a leftover balance is still there next January.

1. Open the finished goal and tap Create a Goal Fund.
2. Check the name and the amount. The amount starts at what the goal actually saved, which may be more or less than the target you set, and Use full Goal amount is ticked - untick it to move only part of the goal across.
3. Create it. The original goal is archived for you, with nothing to answer: it keeps its figures and moves into the Archived section at the foot of the Goals tab, where you can restore it if you want it back.

The fund appears under Goal Funds on the Budgets page. Paying Off goals and Account Linked goals do not offer this: a debt goal’s figure is the balance still owed, and a linked goal’s value keeps moving with the account behind it.

From there you either spend the fund down a transaction at a time, or use Add Remainder to a Budget to top up a budget you are already spending from for the current period - and take back whatever you did not use, from that budget’s own Details tab. Full detail in Goal Funds.

If you have already recorded the transfer that funded a goal, attach it rather than entering the amount a second time. Open the transaction and use Link to Goal, then pick the goal. Its progress goes up by the transaction’s amount. A transaction in a different currency from the goal is converted into the goal’s currency first, so a 50 USD transfer adds its value in Canadian dollars to a CAD goal, not 50. The same applies to automatic contributions.

The button only appears on transactions categorised as Transfer or Investments - money you moved rather than money you spent. On the goal side, the picker offers any goal with an amount that is on Manual tracking. Ongoing Percentage goals never appear, because they are measured rather than contributed to.

A goal that has reached its target drops out of the picker. Monthly Saving goals stay available indefinitely, since their amount is a monthly commitment rather than a finish line.

To undo it, use Unlink from goal on the transaction, or remove the row from the goal’s contributions list. Either way the goal drops back by that amount and the transaction stays in your history.

A transaction rule can do the same thing standingly. Among the actions a rule can carry is Link to goal, so everything the rule matches from then on is credited to that goal. See Transaction Rules.

A goal on Manual tracking can count qualifying transfers for you - the field only appears on that mode, so switch the goal to Manual first. It is called Count transfers automatically, and it is a single free-text box whose placeholder reads Only if the description matches (optional). Type part of a description and matching transfers and deposits are added to the goal without you tapping anything.

It matches on the description, not on an account. There is no account to pick: your pattern is compared against each transaction’s description and its merchant name, loosely rather than exactly, so a saved pattern of “Wealthsimple” still catches the longer descriptor your bank actually sends. Use at least three characters - anything shorter would match almost every description, so Cadence Money counts nothing at all until you lengthen it, and says so under the field.

It reaches every transaction, not only synced ones. The form says as much once your pattern is long enough: matches come from any account, including imported and manually added transactions.

Goals have their own tab on the Plan page. Goals that reach 100% move into a Completed Goals section automatically and drop off the dashboard widget. Monthly Saving and Ongoing Percentage goals never complete, so they stay in the active list indefinitely.

The Explore page also has an Imagine tab for exploring what setting money aside could grow into.

A goal you are finished with does not have to be deleted. Open it and the action row on the Details tab reads Edit, Archive, Delete. Archiving freezes the goal exactly where it stands - finished or not - and files it under Archived, a collapsed section at the foot of the Goals tab that only appears once you have one.

An archived goal keeps its progress bar and its saved-against-target figures, because that frozen number is the whole point of parking it. What it drops is every claim about a future: no status badge, no time left, no assessment and no suggested monthly amount. The card carries Archived and the date instead.

Archiving also takes the goal out of the running:

• Transactions stop being captured towards it, so the saved figure stops moving.
• An Account Linked goal stops following the account behind it. The link stays attached, so restoring it picks the tracking back up.
• Transaction rules that name it stop firing, and it drops out of new insights and reports. Anything already recorded is left alone.

Open an archived goal and the action row is Restore and Delete - there is no Edit, because a change saved to a parked goal has no effect you could see. Restore is immediate and asks nothing: it is simply Archive’s undo. Either way, transactions you already put towards the goal keep its name in their history, and Cadence Money will not suggest creating that goal again.