Currently in your Dashboard you can see your current Safe-to-Spend transactions by category.  It can useful though to “zoom out” and see your spending by category over a month’s time.  To give our Weekly users that view, we have launched Monthly Reporting for your Safe-to-Spend categories!

With the new Monthly Safe-to-Spend category report you can tap on the month you want and then view your spending in each category over a month’s time.

Where Do I Find My Monthly Reports

To find new monthly reports, tap your navigation bar, then tap “Reports”.

What Is In the Monthly Reports

Tapping on a month to show the spending in different categories for that month.  You can also tap an individual category and see the transactions that are in that category.  If you want to edit any transactions, you can also tap any transaction to bring up the individual transaction and change the category from there if you’d like.

How Do I Switch Months

At the top of the screen you can switch months and scroll left and right to change the month you want to see.

Conclusion

Enjoy the new monthly report and please let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback by emailing support@weeklybudgeting.com.

We are excited to announce that we have just added category tracking for your Safe-to-Spend purchases.  You can now see how much you are spending in for items like “Gas” and “Groceries” (and any other category you’d like) inside of your Safe-to-Spend and also see how your current week’s spending compares to your averages.

In addition we have added new suggestion rules and a transaction review list to make confirming transactions a breeze.  And you can add and create your own custom categories.  Read on for a brief description of the new features and you can check out our knowledge base for in-depth details.

Categorizing Safe-to-Spend transactions

On the individual transaction review screen, you can categorize transactions.  When you tap on “Safe-to-Spend” then a list of categories will appear in the dropdown.  To assign a category to a transaction, tap on the category you’d like to associated with your Safe-to-Spend transaction and tap “Confirm”.

To make the confirmation process as fast as possible, Weekly may offer you suggested categorization.  These suggestion are based on Vendor-to-Category rules you set or the category of the transaction that comes from the bank.  You can quickly accept the suggestions by tapping on them.

Transaction Review List

In addition to categories for Safe-to-Spend transactions, we have also added a transaction review list screen that allows users to quickly review and approve transactions with a single tap using new square icons.  This screen not only allows you to approve Safe-to-Spend transaction and their categories, you can also quick approve Recurring and Fund transactions.

Spending by Category Chart

You can see your Safe-to-Spend spending by category on the main dashboard by tapping the arrow on the main Safe-to-Spend card.

Under this view you will see category, the current amount of spending in that category and the average spend in the category over the past weeks.

You can also see the transactions that are in each category by tapping on the category name and the list of transactions that are in that category will drop down.

Each user starts off with the following five active categories:

• Eating out
• Entertainment
• Gas
• Groceries
• Shopping

You can tap into any of these default categories and adjust the emojis or the category name.  Pro users can also add new categories by tapping the (+) button on the top right of the screen.

Conclusion

Categorizing your Safe-to-Spend transactions allows you to see how much you are spending in different areas of your life (like “Gas” and “Groceries”) and also how your current behavior compares with your past behavior so you can adjust in real-time if need be.  Weekly will suggest categories based on your personal Vendor-to-Category rules or bank rules to make confirming transactions quick and fun.  We have also launched a new Transaction Review List screen so you can quickly tap many transactions to review and accept them.

We have just launched a new feature in Weekly that allows you to split transactions so that separate parts of the transactions can be “mapped” to different destinations.  This allows for more accuracy in how you manage the information that comes into Weekly to help you manage your spending and savings.

Use Case Scenarios

Here are some typical use cases that split transactions allows you handle:

1. Divide one transaction between Safe-to-Spend and a Fund (or multiple Funds).
2. Handle the difference between actual irregular income amounts and budgeted income amounts.
3. Handle charges from companies that bundle them, like for example Apple.
4. Divide a charge between two different Safe-to-Spend categories. (What?!  Safe-to-Spend categories?  More on this down below.)

For full explanation on how to use split transactions in each of these scenarios, please see our knowledge base article “Splitting Transactions“.

How To Split a Transaction

The split transaction icon looks like a set of divergent arrows and it shows up for a transaction at the top right of the “Confirm Transaction” screen.

When you tap that it will bring you to the screen to create your first split.

When you set the amount, you can then select a Destination and then tap “Create Split”.

Then you will be brought to create your next split.  You go through the same process of setting a name, the amount and picking the destination.  You can create as many splits as you need until the total amount of the transaction is used up at which point you will be brought back to the Confirm Transaction screen.

When you finish splitting a transaction, you will see them listed below the transaction on the Confirm Transaction page.

Safe-to-Spend Categories?

We are planning a release allowing you to map your Safe-to-Spend categories so you can track spending trends. (Safe-to-Spend categories can be applied to any transactions not just split transactions but it will fit nicely into splitting transaction.)  If you would like to test out the new functionality, please reach out to support@weeklybudgeting.com.

Conclusion

Split transaction helps you deal with real-life transaction scenarios and sort them in Weekly in ways to keep you on budget.

Read More at our knowledge base article titled “Splitting Transactions“.

Weekly budgeting is about staying in touch with your budget in a mindful way. This requires monitoring your day-to-day transactions to keep track of your Safe-to-Spend.  

To make this seamless, Weekly PRO users can download their transactions from their bank so that they don’t have to manually type in their transactions.  Each time we connect your bank in an attempt to download new transactions, we call this a “sync”.

Your linked financial institutions will sync periodically to pull in your latest transaction and the frequency of syncing is set by the bank.  Usually background syncs run a few times a day for most banks. However, there are times where you’d like to be able to sync transactions more frequently than your bank allows by default. Now you can.

Announcing On-Demand Syncing

On-demand syncing allows you to pull your latest transactions when it’s most convenient for you.  When you trigger an On-demand sync, Weekly will connect at that moment and pull down all your latest transactions so that you can review them.

• Get latest transactions with a few taps – With a fedw taps get the latest transactions from your bank.
• See a history of your syncs – We will show you the last time your banks synced
• See number of transactions that were downloaded – After each sync, we show you the number of transactions that are downloaded.
• Sync multiple accounts at once – You can choose multiple banks to sync and sync them all at once.
• Sync (free) if bank has not refreshed in 24 hours – If you institution has not synced in last 24 hours, you can sync without using a credit (see more about sync credits).

How to Use On-Demand Syncing

To get started just tap the sync button at the top of the Transactions card in the dashboard.

You will then be presented with a list of your connected banks. Below the name of the institution you will see the last time it was synced. 

Then select the institutions you’d like to sync and press “Sync”.  You will see a dialog that shows the bank is connecting.

Once the sync finishes you’ll see the status of each institution. 

To review you new transactions you can return to the dashboard and review them in the normal review process. 

Sync Credits

On demand sync is an add-on feature and requires having sync credits. You can acquire sync credits in several ways.

• If your bank has not synced in the last 24 hours, we will provide a free sync credit for that bank.
• You can purchase a pack of 5 credits for 99¢ and a pack of 40 for $4.99.
• You can earn sync credits (and help us!) by filling out our surveys (usually we like to know what features would be most useful to you) or submitting bug reports.

Additionally, when you first sign up for Weekly PRO, we will start you with 5 free credits so you can try it out.

Each time you sync an institution uses one sync credit. If your institution fails to sync, you will not be charged a credit.

Supported Banks

On demand syncing works for most financial institutions and there is no extra setup required. There are a small number of institutions (like Capital One) that do not support syncing on demand – in this case your bank will be listed but grayed out.

Sync History

Additionally, we have launched sync history. 

Sync history allows you to see the times your Weekly account has connected to your banks and downloaded transactions.   This can be useful if you want to know if all your purchases have been downloaded into the app or if you just want to check on the health of your bank connection.  It will show you on demand and scheduled syncs.

You can access your sync history by clicking the clock icon on the on demand sync page, the arrow next to the institution name on the on-demand sync page or on the page.

Read more about sync history.

We’re thrilled to introduce this new feature, and we hope it will elevate your budgeting experience. If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to our support team.

 

 

When you first come to Weekly, you go through guided walk-through of putting in all your income, expenses and savings goals.  Then at the end we calculate your Weekly Spending Limit.

But if you ever forget to add something you can restart the onboarding process and add in any missing budget items.  Here’s how –

• Go to top left menu
• Tap Settings
• Then tap “Review Budget Items”

This will restart the budget flow but it will remember everything you have already added.

See a quick video demo below of where to find this functionality.

Dan Seethaler sat down with Vince Carter the host of the CFO at Home podcast to discuss all things weekly budgeting.  In this conversation with Vince, Dan discussed how weekly budgeting can make the process of budgeting simpler, enable communication between partners and reduce money fights.

In this podcast learn…

• How Dan and his wife decided to budget weekly (1:53)
• The clarity that weekly budgeting provides (5:04)
• Course correcting your budget (9:00)
• Getting started with weekly budgeting (13:57)
• Who weekly budgeting works best for (19:54)
• How weekly budgeting can help reduce money fights (29:47)
• Words of encouragement for budgeting (33:56)

Check out the episode today!

So you want to get yourself on a budgeting plan!  That’s great.  So, what’s the first step?

You may discover quickly there is no one way to do budget and the first step depends on what budgeting method you choose to use.   People use different ways to plan their money and a methodology might work better for you based on how much clarity or flexibility you want, how much time you have and how you like to think about your money.

What follows is a breakdown of three different methodologies of budgeting that you might use to manage your personal spending so that you can get an overview of the different ways before you get started..

Zero-based Budgeting

One of the most popular budgeting methodologies is zero-based budgeting.  Zero based budgeting means that you take all your income, down to the last dollar, and you decide how you will “spend” it upfront. And by “spend it” it doesn’t mean you always buy things with all your money.  Some of your spending can be on your saving goals.   Some people like to say you give every dollar a job.  Zero-based budgeting can get specific.  

So Zero-based budgeting might look something like this.

Income
$5,000 of income each month.

Expenses
$1,850 – Rent
$500 – Groceries
$400 – Car
$400 – Going Out
$125 – CellPhone
$120 – Gas
$100 – Clothes
$75 – Internet
$75 – Car Insurance
$70 – Electricity
$30 – Coffee
$30 – Credit Card Minimum Payment
$15 – Netflix
————–
$1,160 – Left over

$500 – Pay Down Debt
$660 – Save for Retirement
———–
$0 – Yay!  

Then as you’re spending money in each of those categories you “withdraw” from that category.  So if you spend $48.39 at the grocery store, you withdraw that money from the $500 which gives you $451.61 for the rest of the month.

Is Zero-based budgeting right for me?

Taking this approach forces you to think about your personal spending beforehand which can be helpful for you to make sure you maintain your long term goals especially when you get in the “heat of battle” when deciding what to spend during the month.  It is easier to say “No” to things when you have decided beforehand what you value.

The disadvantage of this system is it can be complex to maintain because you have to download and categorize your purchases to keep up with where you are at.  If you got strict with it too, you would need to split some transactions from stores like Walmart or Target where you purchase things in multiple categories.   Also, it doesn’t allow for flexibility you might need when managing the unpredictability of every day life or to take advantage of opportunities that come your way..  It can also require you to split some transactions to make sure they go into right categories.

Advantages of Zero-based budgeting

Forces You Think About What is Important To You

Zero based budgeting forces you to step back and take a look at what you actually have first and think about what is important to you.  It also If you allocate money to going out, then you don’t have that money to pay down debt or save for a vacation.  

Disadvantages of Zero-based budgeting

Handling mixed transactions.

If you go to Target you might buy groceries, clothes and home store items in one trip, its a good probability you might, you will need to break out the receipt from your transactions and allocate the spending to those categories when it comes to figuring out how much money you have left.

Lack of flexibility

Sometimes things happen in life and when every dollar has been given a job, it can make it limiting to take advantage of your life while you live it.  So let’s say you run into a friend who invites you to the coffee shop.  You want to go, but you did not allocate money for coffee this month. You could suggest another idea and skip the coffee but you could also take money from your entertainment budget and put it in the coffee budget.  But you do have money allocated to Entertainment.  But how much is your entertainment budget you think?  What was it that you had planned on doing with it?  

This type of budgeting might require you to move money between categories to keep up with everything.  This may be ok to handle one or twice a month, but if it gets beyond that, you may find yourself spending more time moving money between categories and managing your budget.

Requires Effort

How complex should you get with your categories?  When planning, it can be tempting to categorize alot of spending for accuracy.  The more specific you get, it feels like the better planning you will do, but too many categories can get unwieldy.  In Quicken for example, there are categories for Restaurants, Fast Food and Coffee Shops.  But these could also be unified into one category for Eating Out.  This method requires you to be pretty accurate about your spending behaviors, both as they are currently and as you want them to be.  

What is the Cash Envelope System?

Cash envelope system is not a different budgeting system; it is the zero-based budgeting system but it uses cash and envelopes to let you know how much you have left in each category.  So, when you allocate $300 to groceries, you get $300 out of the bank in cash and you add it to an envelope called “Groceries” and you spend out of that. 

Having cash in an envelope makes real and tactical how much money is left to spend in each category.  Also when people spend actual dollars vs digital money, they tend to want to hold onto it more so you subconsciously spend less.

The downside of using Cash Envelopes is that its not very practical in today’s digital economy, – especially in the post-COVID world where it seems you have to scan a QR code to facilitate even basic transactions. Also there are the logistical and safety issues of carrying around so much cash.  

50 / 30 / 20 Budget

50 / 30 / 20 budgeting is more a way of thinking about how much money you “should” be allocating to different areas of your life to make sure you have enough to enjoy your life but also save for your future self..  The idea is that you should target 50% of your income to necessities, 30% to wants and 20% to savings and paying off debt.

So if you make 

You have $5,000 of income each month, you spend 

$2,500 on Necessities,
$1,500 on Wants and
$1,000 on Savings Or Paying off Debt.

So examples of Necessities include

• Mortgage or rent payments
• Water, Electricity or Power Bills
• Health Care
• Basic groceries
• Child Care Cost
• Basic Transportation Costs

Wants, or discretionary spending, are things like

• Dining out
• Entertainment
• Travel
• Nice Cars 
• Fancy Groceries

Savings and Debt Payments are

• Paying off Loans
• Paying Down Credit Cards
• Growing Retirement Savings
• Building Emergency Funds

This upfront tells you how much you can spend on different areas of your life.  So, if you make $5,000 a month, your rent should probably not be $2,300 because the extra $200 a month will not cover your basic groceries and rest of the utilities.  Now you could just spend more discretionary spending on a nicer place but human nature is that you will probably want other this and social interaction that costs money outside of the home and you don’t want to put yourself in a box and be “house poor”.

Advantages of 50 / 30 / 20 Budget

It scales

What is nice about this approach is that it scales with different income levels (because even rich people can go broke).  So whether you make $2,000 or $20,000 dollars a month, it can keep both people on track ensuring their future selves have enough money

Its gives a common values filter

One of the most important things to understand about spending money is that its best when its done based on what you value.  So if you truly value social interaction and can live modestly, you can make a 30/50/20 rule work for you.  But the 50/30/20 rule adds a “common human” value filter onto money.  It cautions you against getting to excited about any particular area and especially encourages you to save for your future self.

Disadvantages of 50 / 30 / 20 Budget

Want vs Need Categorization

There can be some gnarliness when deciding if something is a want or need.  So take the choice of what type of car for example. You may need transportation but if you get a Mercedes, then some portion of that expense is more want than need because you could have gotten the Corolla and saved money.  

It might not match your values

If you have heard the maxim don’t use life to build money, use money to build a life.  The things that truly make you happy might not fit into these categories so easily.   So if you wanted to live frugally and travel the world, it would not match the 50 / 30 / 20, but it would still be a happy life for you.

One Number Budget 

This is the method of budgeting that Weekly invented!

This method is a tactical approach that maximizes flexibility and reduced complexity while still keeping you on track.  One Number budget breaks free from the categorization required by Zero based budgeting and also avoids the subtleties around defining transactions as “Wants or Needs” in the 50/30/20 budget.  It does this by focusing on what is actually happening in your life and letting you know what is safe-to-spend based on your commitments.  

To set up this type of budget, Step 1 is to collect all your recurring expenses.  A recurring expense is defined as a payment that is the same amount each time and occurs at regular intervals (usually monthly).  These can be things like rent, subscriptions, utilities.  Step 2 is to decide what you want the contribution to your savings goals to be.    Step 3 is to subtract your recurring expenses and the contributions to your savings goals from your regular income.  What is left over to spend on discretionary spending.  As long as you don’t spend more than what is left over then you are on track and don’t have to worry about categorization.  To keep the discretionary number from being to large, you can break it down into weekly portions.

Let’s look at the same budget we used for the 50 / 30 / 20 but instead apply One Number budget.

$5,000 of income each month.

Recurring

$1,850 – Rent
$400 – Car Payment
$125 – CellPhone
$75 – Internet
$75 – Car Insurance
$70 – Electricity
$30 – Credit Card Minimum Payment
$15 – Netflix
$300 – Vacation (Savings Goal)
$500 – Pay down debt (Savings Goal)
——————–
$3,365 

Left Over
——————
$1,635 per month or

$380 per week ← This is your “One Number”

Notice the categories of gas and groceries have been taken out of budget because they are not set amounts and they can change based on how you shop and how you travel.  Instead all of the non-recurring expenses are but into one “bucket” which reduces the need for categorization.

You can then portion out this discretionary budget on a weekly basis which kind of makes it like an adult allowance.   But this allowance number has all your current obligations as well as your future wants and needs factored in.  This is your “One Number”.  

Doing it this simple way allows you to make decisions in the moment.  It is also lighter weight and doesn’t require a great deal of work.

The nice thing about the One Number method is that although it doesn’t label expenses as wants vs needs, recurring expenses, like rent and utilities, are often your needs.  Although there are exceptions — take Netflix for example that is a recurring expense that could be considered wants more than needs.

Advantages of the One Number Budget

Easy to Maintain

When you don’t have to think about really and categories at all, it’s easier to move through your day.

Easy to Understand

You have regular income and recurring expenses that must be paid.   The rest is discretionary you can spend it as you like.  That’s pretty simple.

Neither Advantage Nor Disadvantage – Just Is

Value judgements done outside the system

The decisions about value are largely left outside of the system.  How much you spend on rent or eating out, this system doesn’t judge.  But if you have no discretionary spending after you pay all your recurring expenses you are going to be in trouble because you haven’t gotten groceries yet.   If you don’t have enough money for your discretionary spending, you need to look at and reduce your recurring expenses.  It is then that you might be forced to judge whether you recurring expenses are adding value to your life and if something you are paying for regularly is a want or a need.

Disadvantages of One Number Budget

Have to mentally be aware of your variable but important expenses

Because gas and groceries are not recurring and can vary based on behaviors, they are considered discretionary.  But these can also be important.  It’s not like you can go clubbing, spend all your discretionary spending and then be OK for the rest of the week or month.  So you have to be mentally aware of what you need for gas and groceries.  Breaking your discretionary spending up on a weekly basis helps with this though.

Conclusion

In the article, we have reviewed three budgeting systems and how they work: Zero budgeting, 50/30/20 and the One Number.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each. The important part is to try one and see if it works for you. 

A big update has come to Weekly that changes how the app handles transactions.  With this update you will have the ability edit transactions in past weeks, search for transactions and manually add transactions to recurring items.  See below for descriptions and quick demos of these features.

Recent transaction search

You can now search for recent transactions directly from the global search page. Simply swipe down on the dashboard and type in the transaction name or amount.

Search results include transactions from the past month. You can also go to any previous week, then swipe down and the search results will include transactions for that week.

Add a manual transaction to a recurring budget item

We’ve redesigned the add transaction screen to allow creating recurring transactions manually. You can create a recurring transaction from the dashboard or from a recurring item directly.

Editing transactions for previous weeks

You can now edit transactions from previous weeks. If you edit a Safe-to-Spend or fund transaction, the corresponding balance will be recalculated.

Inline editing bank transactions

To edit the title, amount, or date of a bank transaction, simply tap the label and make your changes. You can reset your changes by tapping the three dots and selecting “Reset to original”

Transaction weeks

Previously Weekly would put Safe-to-Spend transactions in the week they were confirmed in. So if you started your week on Sunday but then had a transaction sync from the day before (Saturday), it would be added to the new week.

This update changes this to always use the transaction date regardless of when it was confirmed. This change may cause some transactions to be moved to a different week and Safe-to-Spend balances may have changed slightly. This is a one-time adjustment to bring transaction dates into alignment with week dates. We believe this will provide a intuitive experience moving forward.

Important Note

If you are using the same Weekly account across multiple devices, you will need to update both devices with the latest version of Weekly for the app to work as expected.

Conclusion

In addition to these new transaction features, this new release also positions Weekly for new features in the future such as new reporting on how your Safe-to-Spend has been spent historically in addition to supporting splitting transactions.

We hope you enjoy the new features and if you have any questions or concerns you can reach out to support@weeklybudgeting.com.

One of the problems couples can run into is conflict over how money is being spent.  In fact the origin story of Weekly has roots in helping two people getting on the same page with each other financially.  At Weekly we want to help couples budget well together.  Weekly is built in away that it can be used by couples at the same time to keep track of their finances.

How Weekly Helps Couples Budget Together

Weekly can provide a couple things that can help couples get on the same financial page.

• A clear view into how much money is coming in and going out. Just setting up Weekly and looking at your committed expenses and regular income can lead to conversations about what is most important to couples. 
• A real-time shared view of how much money is available to spend at any time.
  The data in Weekly can be shared across devices.  So you and your partner can login on separate phones and know what is available to spend on your day-to-day transactions like gas and groceries.  This helps reduce friction in the relationships and avoid end-of-the-month Doomsday meetings where you are frustrated wondering “Where did the money go?”.  Instead it is replaced with a sense in real-time you know where you are at.

Sharing Weekly with A Partner

How share your account is different based on how you created your account in the first place.

If created your account using an email address…

If you signed up with your email address you can simply share that email address login with your partner or spouse and presto you both have access to the account.

If created your account using Google, Facebook or Apple social logins…

With the social logins (Google, Facebook and Apple) it can be harder to share those so we have a feature that allows you to add an email address to your account which you can then share with your partner or spouse to allow them access to Weekly. 

Here’s how to do it. 

1. Sign in with your social login (Google, Facebook or Apple)  
2. Go to Account and then hit “Add Email Login”.  From there you can add an email and password.  
3. A success message will be displayed. Clicking “Done” shows the Profile page, the email icon next to the original social icon. 
4. You can login using the new email/password combination.  Send this login to your partner or spouse.

Conclusion

Getting on the same page with you spouse or partner not only helps your financial situation, it might also improve your relationship.  Because Weekly can be shared across multiple devices, it allows couples to manage their budget together.