How do I set up and track a budget?

Budgets can be set up in iBank to help you keep a better eye on your spending habits. iBank allows for the creation of multiple budgets so that you can, for example, track both a household and a personal budget at the same time. Budgeting is based on categories, so the key to budgeting effectively is to assign appropriate categories to each of your transactions.

Each budget you create is saved and displayed under the "Budgets" item in the "Manage" section of the source list:

Click the small disclosure triangle next to "Budgets" to reveal your saved budgets. If you don't see the "Budgets" item in your source list at all, you probably haven't created any budgets yet!

To view an overview of your budgets:

Click "Budgets" in the source list. Summary information about all of your saved budgets will be displayed to the right:

For more information about how to interpret the information displayed here, read about the Budget Monitor below. You can launch the Budget Monitor by clicking the "Budget Monitor" button on this screen.

To add a new budget:

Click the Budget button on the toolbar, or choose Manage>Add New Budget. A blank budget item will appear in the source list; type in a name for the new budget.

To delete a budget:

Select it in the source list, then press the 'Delete' key on your keyboard or choose Edit>Delete. iBank will ask for confirmation before deleting the budget.

To configure a budget:

To change the budget's name, double-click it in the source list. Click once to select a budget and view its configuration settings in the right side of the main window:

Decide which categories you want to track using this budget, then add each one to the budget setup. Click the button in the top half of the window to add income categories; click the one in the bottom half to add expense categories. Each time you click either button, a new category item will be added to the list above it.

If you are unable to add income categories, you may have forgotten to designate some of your categories for income. See Editing Category Properties for more information about differentiating income from expense categories.

To change the category used, click the item's category name and choose a new category from the drop-down list. Click the double-arrows in the "Frequency" column to choose a budget period for that item. Double-click in the "Amount" column and enter the amount you expect to spend or receive during the time period selected in the "Frequency" column. The "Average" column will display an estimate of how much is expected to be spent or received in the time frame selected next to "Display Average" at the bottom of the main window.

In addition to categories, you can also budget transfers into specified accounts, such as how much money you are putting into a savings account each month. To track account transfers, add a budget item and choose an account name from the bottom of the category list for that item.

To remove a budget item, select it and click the button below the list.

Below the category lists are three figures that you can use to help balance your budget:

Example budget configuration

If your monthly paycheck is $4,000.00, you would add an income budget item to the top table, set its category to "Salary," set its frequency to "Monthly," and enter 4000 in the amount column. If you spend approximately $200 every two weeks on groceries, you would add an expense budget item for $200.00, set its category to "Groceries," and set its frequency to "Two Weeks." To view the estimated monthly amounts for both items, set "Display Average" to "Monthly" and look at the amounts in the "Average" column.

To monitor your budgets:

Once you have finished setting up a budget (or several), continue adding and categorizing transactions in your accounts so that iBank can track your financial activity. Then, use the Budget Monitor window to check your progress against your budgets.

To open the Budget Monitor window, click the Budget Monitor button on the toolbar, or choose Manage>Show Budget Monitor.

budget monitor

Choose which budget to display from the pop-up button in the top left corner of the window. In the top right corner of the window, choose a time period to view. The following columns are displayed for each budget:

As with any table in iBank, you can click any of the column headers to sort the list according to the values in that column. Click twice to reverse the direction of the sort. To resize the columns, click and drag the dividers between column headers. Columns can be repositioned by clicking and dragging the column headers.

The "Summary" section displays two colored bars: one representing the proportion of actual spending for all expense categories to the total budgeted expenses, and another representing the proportion of actual earnings for all income categories to the total budgeted income. Actual amounts are displayed at the left side of each bar; budgeted amounts are displayed at the right side.