Getting Started

Welcome to On Budget! If this is the first time you've logged into the app, it will be set up with defaults allowing you to start using the app right away. Please read the section below, and then refer to the Settings section of this guide to customize the app to your specific needs.

At its core, the On Budget! app does two things. It allows you to setup categorized budgets, and it allows you to track actual expense transactions. Once you have budgets and actuals, there are multiple ways of comparing these two, to help you live within your budget.

App highlights are:

• You can use this app either alone, or you can share the data with one other person.

• Budgets are set within Settings.

• Expense transactions are added from either the Home page or the Transactions page.

• After transactions have been entered, they can be reviewed, edited, or deleted on the Transactions page.

• Viewing comparisons of budgets to actuals can be done by the Tracker (visible, and further accessed on the Home page), or on the Dashboard pages.

• For users sharing their app data with a partner, the Accounting page tracks whether anyone owes anyone else.

• The app tracks when users transfer money to each other to cover the amounts owing, and this is reflected in the totals on the Accounting page.

• Retirement planning can be done on the Retirement page!

Home Page

How to get there

Click the house icon (bottom left) to return to the home page.

Layout

There is an expandable area at the top of the home page which can be made visible either by swiping down on the home page, or by clicking the down chevron at the top of the home page. Once expanded, you'll see:

• Settings - used to configure the app
• Loan Calculator - a simple loan calculator that can also track your existing loans/mortgage.
• Help - support for the app, including a link to this page.

Below the On Budget! icon is a Quote of the Day. This is purely motivational and can be turned on or off on the Settings Preferences page.

The home page provides a quick view of how you're tracking to budget on the Tracker bar chart. Clicking on the bar chart takes you to the Tracker page.

At the bottom of the page is an Add button. Clicking this will take you to the Add Transaction page.

Settings

How to get there

There are two ways to get to Settings:

• From the home page, swipe down to open the top menu area, and then swipe down again. This will open the Settings area.

• Or, click the down chevron at the top of the home page to open the top menu area. Then, click Settings to open the Settings area.

Layout

There are 4 tabs on the Settings page, accessible by clicking on one of the Preferences / Categories / Budgets / Scheduled Payments tabs at the top of the page.

Preferences:

Configuring users - The On Budget! app allows you to use the app as a single user, or to share the data with a partner.  There are 4 typical user setups:

User style # 1 - You're a single user and will not be sharing your data with someone else and also will not be budgeting for anyone else

• This is the default setup so no further setup action required by you.

User style # 2 - You are using the On Budget! app to manage your budget, but your partner is not. You will be creating budgets that you share (e.g. you may both share your housing costs), but really you just care about how you're tracking to your own budget.

• In this case, you will switch Authorize Second User to "on". Enter the second person's name and an email address. Since you're not expecting the second person to login, any email address will do (e.g. you could re-enter your own).

• The app is now set up to allow you to enter data that applies to just you, just your partner, or a combination of both of you.

User style # 3 - Both you and your partner will use the On Budget! app to manage your budgets. You will both contribute to and view the same data. You have different email addresses.

• In this case, one of you will be the Primary user and one will be the Secondary user. These are just setup terms, they don't suggest any "priority" within the app beyond this setup.

• Both users must install the app.

• The primary user will switch Authorize Second User to "on". Enter the second person's name and valid email address. Click the copy icon to copy the authorization key to your clipboard, and then send it to your partner. Click Save.

• The secondary user will switch Join Other User to "on" and then enter the authorization key that was sent to him/her in the field that appears. Click Save.

• The app is now set up to allow both you and your partner to login with your own email addresses, and to share your data. You can enter data that applies to just you, just your partner, or a combination of both of you.

User style # 4 - Both you and your partner will use the On Budget! app to manage your budgets. You will both contribute to and view the same data. You have the same email address.

• In this case, one of you will be the Primary user and one will be the Secondary user. These are just setup terms, they don't suggest any "priority" within the app beyond this setup.

• Both users must install the app.

• The primary user will switch Authorize Second User to "on". Enter the second person's name and your shared email address. Click Save.

• The app is now set up to allow both you and your partner to login with your shared email address, and to share your data. You can enter data that applies to just you, just your partner, or a combination of both of you.

• NOTE: the limitation of this setup style is that since you'll both be logging in with the same email address, the app won't be able to tell you apart. This means you'll both have the same default settings. If one of you changes a setting, it will affect both of you.

Other Preferences - The other default settings on the Preferences tab are:

• Default Spender - Note that this field does not appear in Single User mode.  Note that you'll have 3 choices for this settings. Both of the user names, and "Joint". Joint represents the two of you together.  This setting is used by the app when you create new transactions or budgets as the default name. It can be changed at time of data entry.

• Default Split - Note that this field does not appear in Single User mode.  This represents the default financial responsibility that you have for Joint items. E.g. if you and your partner generally have agreed that you'll share expenses 50/50, then the Default Split will be set to this.  This setting is used by the app when you create new transactions or budgets for Joint user. It can be changed for individual budgets/transactions at time of data entry.

• Default Category for New Expenses - This represents the default category that will be selected when you first enter the Add Transaction page. It can be changed at time of data entry.

• Integration With TD MySpend - This setting is only useful for users that use TD MySpend on their phone.  If turned on, the On Budget! app will recognize when you have a TD MySpend notification about a recent purchase. A "Load Transaction" button will appear on the Add Transaction page to load the details of this TD MySpend notification on to the Add Transaction page. You will have the chance to edit all fields before you click Save.

• Sound Effects - If turned on, the On Budget! app will play audible notifications when data is modified.

• Show Quote of the Day - If turned on, a daily inspirational quote will appear on the Home Page.

• Show Currency Symbol - If turned on, the locale-specific (e.g. $) currency symbol will appear with each amount in the app.  It may be helpful to turn this off if screens get crowded.

• Show Red - Various places in the App will compare your actual expenditures to your budget. If you're under budget, you'll be green. If you're over budget but by less than the Show Red percentage, you'll be yellow. If you're over budget by more than the Show Red percentage, you'll be red.

Categories:

The Categories tab is where you manage the categories that will be used for your budget.

Create new category:

Click on the pencil icon, and then click Add New Category. You'll then be presented with a page to fill in the following fields:

• Category name (e.g. Housing)

• Sub-category within that major category (e.g. Rent, or Mortgage)

• Type - this is either Discretionary or Non-Discretionary. Discretionary categories are used for expenses that may go up and down from month-to-month, according to your wants and needs for that month (e.g. Life-Entertainment). Non-Discretionary categories are those that are fixed each month, that you can't decide to not pay (e.g. Housing-Rent).

• Private - Categories marked as private will only be visible to yourself, not to the other user. This might be desirable for a category such as "Life - Christmas" where you want to track your spending, but don't want to share the details. Note that this field is only visible if there are two users defined with different email addresses.

• In Use - Categories will be created as In Use by default, meaning that the user(s) will be able to create new budgets for them, and assign new transactions to them. If a category is used to track data for a while but then is no longer required (e.g. you are using Housing-Rent, but then you buy a house and create Housing-Mortgage), you should mark it as not in use by switching it to off. The existing data will remain visible in the app, but you won't be able to add new transactions to the category. Note that you are not allowed to delete a category if there is any data (e.g. budget, transactions) associated with it.

When you are creating a new category, the last field shown is "Enter budget for this new category?". If you leave this switched on, when you click Save your new category will be saved and you'll be taken to the Create Budget page to create a new budget for the new category.

Edit or delete an existing category

To edit an existing category, go to the Categories tab of Settings. Click on the category that you wish to edit/delete. In the pop-up, click Edit or Delete.

Colouring Categories

Some pages in the app group data by categories for viewing. Colour-coding categories make the presentation both more visually appealing, and also make the category groupings more obvious. To assign colours to your major categories from the Categories tab of Settings, click the pencil icon and then click "Colour or sort".

Click the paint icon to assign a colour to a category. Click the reset icon to reset the colour to white.

Sorting Categories

You can select the order that the major categories should appear in the various app pages (e.g. you may want to see Life first, followed by Housing, etc). To sort your major categories from the Categories tab of Settings, click the pencil icon and then click "Colour or sort".

Now, just click and drag the categories into the desired viewing order.

Budgets:

The Budgets tab is where you manage your budgets. Budgets can be (and should be!) created per category.

Create new budget:

Click on the add icon. You'll then be presented with a page to fill in the following fields:

• Category - click the major category for which you want to create a budget

• Sub-category - choose the sub-category for which you want to create a budget

• Monthly or annual budget - choose Monthly or Annual.

Monthly budgets have an amount set for each individual month. Most of your budgets will be set as Monthly. Note that the amounts do not carry over from month to month. (e.g. if your budget for Entertainment is $100 for January but you only spend $80, the remaining $20 does not carry over into your February budget.)

Annual budgets are set for an entire year. This type of budget is useful for expenses that come in at various times in the year in a more unpredictable manner. This budget is allocated only to months that actually have expenses for the specific category. (e.g. You set your Property Taxes budget to $1000 for the year. In January you spend nothing on this category, so the reports will show the January budget amount for Property Taxes to be zero. In February you spend $550 on Property Taxes, and the February budget amount will show as $550. In March you spend another $500, and the reports will now show the budget for March as $450. Note that the total budget for the year is spread across February and March, but the total budget allocated does not go above the $1000.)

• Year / Month - if the budget is Monthly, specify the Year and Month that the budget applies. If the budget is Annual, you'll only specify the Year.

• Budget For - this field only appears if multiple users are defined. This field allows you to set different category budgets per user. (e.g User1 has an Entertainment budget of $100 per month, and User 2 has an Entertainment budget of $200 per month. In this case you'll create 2 different budget entries, one for User 1 and one for User 2. Alternatively, if both users share an Entertainment budget then just create one budget entry and assign Budget For field to Joint.)

• Occurs - If you choose Recurring (the default), then the budget that you setup will continue for each future period, until it is reset. (e.g. You set a recurring Entertainment budget of $100 for January 2022. You then add a recurring Entertainment budget of $150 for June 2022. This means that you now have a $100 Entertainment budget of $100 for Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, and May. In June (and beyond) it is $150.)

• Enter budget amount - enter the monthly/annual budget amount for the specified category.

• OR add % to current budget amount - this field is only visible if there is already a budget amount in effect. If you add a percentage value here, it will add that percentage to the current budget amount in effect for the specified period.

You'll notice below the Cancel/Save buttons some information about current budget amounts and actual amounts spent for the category. If you're a new user, everything will be zero. But as you start adding data to the system, this area will summarize how much you're budgeting and spending so that you can more easily adjust budgets (or not...) to your spending habits.

Edit or delete an existing budget

To edit an existing budget, go to the Budgets tab of Settings.

Click on View by Category if you want to see all budgets entered (for different users, or different dates) for a specific category, and then choose the desired category from the selection at the top.

Click on View by Date if you want to see all budgets in effect for a specific date, and then choose the desired date from the selection at the top.

Navigation

When you're on the Budgets tab of Settings, there are a backwards and forwards navigation arrow at the bottom left. Clicking the backwards arrow will move you back one category (if you're in View by Category mode), or back one month (if you're in View by Date mode). Clicking forwards moves you forward one category/month.

Scheduled Payments:

The Scheduled Payment tab is where you manage transactions that recur every month on a specific day, for a specific amount. Defining scheduled transactions in the app will cause the app to create the Transactions on the specific days, saving you the work of doing it yourself.

Create new transaction schedule:

Click on the add icon. You'll then be presented with a page to fill in the following fields:

• Name - give this recurring transaction a unique name (e.g. HydroOne might be the name for your monthly hydro payment)

• Amount - the amount of the recurring payment

• Next Date - this is the date that the next payment will be made

• Regularity - this field works in conjunction with the Period field. This would be set to 1 (and Period would be set to Month) for payments that are made every month. Setting it to 2 (and setting Period to Month) would tell the app that the payment is made every 2 months.

• Period - see Regularity above

• Category / Sub-category - specify the category for which this transaction will be generated

• Paid By - this is the user that will pay this payment. (e.g. User1 pays the invoice with his/her own money, so set Paid By to User1.) This field will only be visible for multi-user setup.

• Bought For - this is the user for which the payment will be made. (e.g. if both users are responsible for a portion of the cost, set the user to Joint.) This field will only be visible for multi-user setup.

• Split - use this field to set the intended split of the invoice (e.g. User1 is responsible for 30% of the cost, and User 2 70%, so set the split slider to 30/70). This field will only be visible for multi-user setup.

• Is this a loan? - Setting this switch "on" will cause more fields to appear to track loan details. Adding this information into the app will enable the app to show you details about how much interest/principal you're paying in each period, how much is left to pay, etc.

Transactions

How to get there:

Click the Transactions icon (bottom, second from the left) to go to the Transactions page.

Layout

This page simply lists all transactions that you have entered into the app. Clicking on a transaction will take you to a view page, where you can also edit/delete that transaction.

The Add button will take you to the Add Transaction page.

At the bottom of the list there are 4 menu areas:

• Navigate - clicking on navigate will show you navigation options for this page. These options allow you to quickly scroll through the list (e.g. "-MO" will take you to the start of the previous month's transactions. "Today" will take you to today's transactions.)

• View - this will allow you to make columns visible/invisible. Note that your choices will be "sticky" from session to session, ie they will be remembered until you again change them.

• Filter - this will allow you to filter the visible transactions to the desired criteria (e.g. filtering to a specific Category will only show the Transactions made against that category).

• Search - this will allow you to search for a specific text string.

Dashboards

How to get there:

Click the Dashboards icon (bottom, third from the left) to go to the Dashboards page.

Layout

There are 2 tabs within the Dashboards area.

The Dashboard tab compares your actuals against the budget that you set.  

The Year Over Year tab compiles all the data in your database and shows totals for every year, and overall averages across all your data.

At the bottom of the dashboard pages there are navigation options and a Settings option:

• Navigate - clicking on the forward and backward arrows will move you to the previous/next month (if you're viewing months), or the previous/next year (if you're viewing entire years).

• Settings - clicking on Settings opens up a menu with various options:

•     View By - this allows you to choose whether you want to see a specific Month, Year, Year-to-Date, or All-Time report. Also, it allows you to make certain columns visible/invisible. Note that your view choices will be "sticky" from session to session, ie they will be remembered until you again change them.

•     Filter By - this will allow you to filter the dashboard to the desired criteria (e.g. filtering to Discretionary will only show actuals and budgets for categories that are set as Discretionary). Note that your filter choices will be "sticky" from session to session, ie they will be remembered until you again change them.

•     Other Options - other options include showing the delta as a percentage or numeric value, and choosing whether to round the amounts to the nearest whole amount.

Accounting

How to get there:

Click the Accounting icon (bottom, second from the right) to go to the Accounting page. Note that this page is only visible to setups with a second user defined.

The main intent of this page is to calculate either user owes the other anything. (e.g. you are 2 users that share many expenses, but still manage your own separate finances. If User1 enters a transaction where s/he has purchased a $10 product for User2 using User1's money, User2 now owes User1 $10. In the app, the transaction would be entered with "Paid By" set to User1, and "Bought For" set to User2. The Accounting page would now indicate that User2 owes User1 $10.

Layout

• The top Summary indicates whether a user owes the other user anything. Clicking on the blue link icon will take you to the Transactions page, filtered to show you only those transactions that contribute to an amount being owed.

This filtered view will show the total amount of the purchase, the amounts allocated to each person (as per the Split indicated in the actual transaction), and a running tally of what user 1 owes user 2. (If the amount that user 1 owes user 2 is negative, that means user 2 owes user 1. )

• The Calculations section shows the amounts that go into the amount owing calculation.

• The details section provides a more detailed summary of the overall transactions in the app.

• Clicking the Add icon at the bottom brings you to the Add Transfer page. This is used when one user gives money to the other to cover the amount owing, and this amount is then factored into the overall calculations. (e.g. If User1 owes User2 $50, and then you use the Add Transfer page to indicate that User1 has now paid User2 that $50, the Accounting summary would then indicate that nobody owes anyone.)

Retirement Planning

How to get there:

Click the Retirement icon (bottom, second from the right) to go to the Retirement Planning page.  

Layout

• Set defaults for each user, or for scenarios that you create, by clicking into the Settings page (top right corner).  In that page, choose the scenario that you want to update.  Enter the new information and click Save.
• On the main Retirement Calculations page, choose the scenario that you want to run.  Click the Calculate button to see the results. You can change any values on this page but they won't be saved unless you click the Save button to save a new scenario.  (For scenarios that you want to keep "forever" as defaults, you should set them up as defaults as per bullet 1 above.)
• After you calculate a scenario, you can click the List button to view the annual details of the scenario.
• When you click Calculate, a message will indicate whether the scenario is achievable or not.

Help

How to get there:

There are two ways to get to Help:

• From the home page, swipe down to open the top menu area, and then click Help.

• Or, click the down chevron at the top of the home page to open the top menu area. Then click Help.

Layout

• Under the app name, you'll see the app version name and version code that indicate what app version you're running.

• Next is a link to the app's online help page (i.e. this page).

• Next is a button that can be used to restart the playing of the hints.  The app has a number of hints relevant to various pages that will show sequentially when you start using the app.  Once they've shown once, they will not re-show unless you click the Restart button.  We suggest you do this once you've used the app for a few days, as the hints may become more relevant.  Note that at any time you can restart the hints, and then as they appear you can use the backwards/forwards buttons as the hints display to quickly review them.  Once you've reviewed to the last hint, they will stop showing.