Money
Expenses and budgets
Expenses records your spending by category. You can split bills, pay from a gift card, set budget targets and import a bank file instead of typing each line.
Add an expense
- Enter an amount, a date, a category and a payment method. A description is optional.
- Payment methods depend on your currency. If your default currency is INR you can choose Credit Card, Debit Card, UPI Payment, Online Payment or Cheque. Otherwise you can choose Card, Cash or Gift Card.
- Choose Gift Card and pick the card, and the spend counts against its balance.
- Turn on Recurring for rent, subscriptions and bills. Recurring expenses work the same way as recurring income.
Split a bill
When you pay for others, enter the full amount and choose Split by 1, 2, 3, 4 or a custom number. FinTarget stores only your share.
A 120.00 dinner split four ways saves 30.00 as your expense.
A split paid by gift card is the exception. The card is charged the full 120.00, while your expense records 30.00. Editing it later restores the split.
Budget targets
- Set one up. Open Budget Targets, pick one or more categories, give a group name if you pick several, then set an amount and a period of weekly, monthly or yearly.
- Progress bar. Green under 75% used, amber from 75%, and red once you are over budget.
- One currency. A budget counts only the spending in its own currency. Other currencies are never added in.
Import a file
- CSV. Choose Import CSV. FinTarget finds the date, amount and description columns and shows a review table before saving. The limit is 2 MB and 5,000 rows.
- PDF statement. Choose Upload PDF Statement for a text-based statement up to 512 KB. FinTarget lists the transactions it found, you pick a category and payment method, and then import them as expenses. If it finds nothing, use the CSV import.
Compare periods
Turn on Compare next to the date filter. It works as it does on Income, with the colours reversed, because spending more is shown in red and spending less in green. A Category Comparison table lists every category.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely fix |
|---|---|
| The PDF import finds nothing | Likely fixThe file may be a scan or an image. Download a CSV from your bank instead. |
| A budget shows less than I spent | Likely fixIt counts only its own currency and its own categories. Check both in Budget Targets. |
Related
- Gift cards. Track balances across cards.
- Income. Recurring entries and the Manage Recurring list.
- Analytics. Spending against income by month.