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Creating a budget and sticking to it is one of the most important things that you can do in your life. With Cha-Ching this rather mundane and difficult task becomes simple through "Tag Based Budgeting". |
To get started click on the "gear" button at the bottom of the source list and select "New Budget"
Creating a new Tag Based Budget:
There are two kinds of budgeted items. Incoming items like Salaries, Bonuses, Gifts etc... and Outgoing items like debits, checks other expenses. Creating a budget in Cha-Ching couldn't be easier.
First start with your incoming items:
Setup Outgoing Items:
Now you can use tags to set up all outgoing transactions you wish to track. These are things like "rent" or "groceries"
Now that you have created your budget the real power of tag based budgeting becomes apparent. Via a beautifully designed and informative budget overview screen you can quickly get a look at where you stand in each of your budgeted categories. The red progress bars represent outgoing items and the blue progress bars represent your incoming items.
As you enter transactions into your accounts, Cha-Ching automatically monitors each and every tag you enter and applies it to the appropriate budgeted category. You may find yourself going over your budget for a certain category. Simply click the edit button to adjust your budget by increasing and decreasing amounts allocated to each tag in order to make sure you meet your goals
Budget Overview Tips
For Example: You coud set up a budget item for "Dining Out" with a limit of "1200 dollars" and set the range to "yearly". Then if you view your budget by month Cha-Ching will divide the amount you have budgeted into 12 equal payments of 100 dollars each and apply any transactions from the given month to that amount.
If you switch over to view by year... No problem as Cha-Ching seamlessly and effortlessly updates the progress of all your budgeted items to reflect the given year.