Budgets & spending limits

Budgets let you set a monthly spending limit — for the whole month, for any expense category, or both — and track your progress through the month.

Creating a budget

Tap the Budget tile on the Dashboard (on iPad, Budget in the sidebar). On the Expense tab, tap Add limits. Enter an overall monthly budget at the top and an amount next to any category you want to limit. Auto-allocate by recent spending fills the amounts in from what you’ve spent lately. Each category can have one budget at a time; folders only group categories, so limits are set on the categories inside them.

If your category limits add up to more than the overall budget, Lode offers to raise the overall budget to match. To change budgets later, tap the pencil at the top right.

Budgets are free and unlimited.

Income plan

On the Income tab, tap Plan income and enter how much you expect from each income category — or tap Fill from recent income. The tab then shows what’s Planned against what you’ve Received. While your overall budget equals the plan’s total, it follows the plan when you change it. An income plan never sends alerts or rolls over.

Rollover

Tap a category’s budget to open its page, then turn on Rollover unused budget to carry unspent amounts forward. If you underspent last month, the surplus adds to this month’s limit. Overspending doesn’t reduce next month’s limit. Rollover is available for category budgets, not for the overall budget.

Editing mid-month

When you change the amount of an existing budget, Lode asks Apply to which months?:

• This month onward — the new amount applies from the month you’re viewing; earlier months keep the old one.
• Only <month> — changes just the month you’re viewing and leaves later months as they are.
• Every month — sets the amount for every month and clears amounts set for single months.

How spending is calculated

Lode adds up expense transactions in the category for the current budget month. If you’ve set a custom Start of Month in Settings — your payday, for example — the budget month starts on that day. Transactions in other currencies are converted to your base currency. Transfers, goal contributions, debt payments, starting balances and balance adjustments aren’t counted as spending, and by default a project’s spending stays out of the overall monthly budget (Keep out of the monthly Budget in the project editor). In shared accounts, transactions other participants have hidden are excluded from your totals.

Notifications

Budget alerts are off until you turn on Budget Alerts in Settings → Notifications (or tap Enable on the Budget screen). Then choose the Threshold — 50%, 75%, 80%, 90% or 100% (80% by default). When your spending crosses it, Lode sends a Budget Alert notification; once spending goes over the limit, it sends Budget Exceeded. Each alert is sent at most once per budget per month.

Questions? Reach out at lodeapp@proton.me.