How do I set and track budgets?
When you first log into Fina, you will notice the categories tab inside of your profile. You can set as many custom categories as you would like. These categories are what you will use to tag transactions with and track your spending over time. You will also notice we have categories for expenses, income, and transfers. When you tag a transaction with a category from expenses it will be an outflow, income an inflow, and transfers will be omitted from reporting.
When you navigate to Fina's "pages" and create a new one, this is where you will be able to create customizable budgeting experiences. By simply typing the "/" command on any Fina page, you can search for a block called "expense by category with budget" and add that scenario. Alternatively, you can use a budgeting template pre-made by our team.
Once you have a budgeting block created, notice that it's pulling in all of the categories for this relevant date range and allowing you to add a budget next to them. You may attach whatever budget number makes sense for that relevant time period so if it's a monthly budget you are looking to create and compare to your monthly spending, simply put a monthly budget value there.
Important Note: Please ensure that if you are creating a budget for an expense category, you make sure the value sign (-) is negative. For an income category pleasure ensure the value sign (+) is positive.
For advanced budgeting scenarios, you can create additional blocks and change the date ranges, values, and groupings of different categories to fit any flexible need. For example, if you want to lump a group of 5 categories together and call them "fixed" or "variable" expenses and give a combined budget for those items during a time range, you can do that. Please refer to our budgeting template to see more examples.