Before you start
Have at least one account and the expense categories you care about. Budgets are most useful when categories already match how you spend — you can refine categories later, but a clear first scope makes the first budget easier to trust.
Decide whether this is a short one-off period or something you want to renew. You can change some details after creation, but getting the currency and core scope right up front saves edits.
Write down the limit in the currency you actually spend for that scope. If you think in euros for daily life, do not set a USD grocery budget unless the account you are scoping is truly USD — mixed mental math is how budgets get ignored.
Create the budget
Head to Budgets and click Create. Give it a name you will recognize later, set your limit and currency, choose your dates, and pick which accounts and categories it should apply to.
That is the core setup: name, limit, period, and scope. Optional styling (color or icon) can wait; focus on the rules that decide what counts as spending against the limit.
Name budgets by purpose (“Berlin groceries”, “Q4 travel”) rather than vague labels (“Stuff”). Future you will thank present you when the Budgets list grows. Pick accounts deliberately; including every account can make a “dining” budget absorb unrelated cash-card spend.
After you save
Matching expenses start counting as you record them — including ones you import later, if they fall in scope. Open the budget anytime to read progress at a glance and see how close you are to the limit.
If you use notifications, turn on a heads-up so you hear about approaching limits without living on the Budgets page. If Pro plan limits apply to how many budgets you can keep, the create button will tell you when you are at the ceiling.
Record or import a couple of matching expenses and confirm the progress bar moves. If it does not, the category or account on those expenses is outside scope — that is the usual first-week bug, not a broken budget engine.
Tips and what to read next
Start narrower than you think — one or two categories — then expand once the first period feels right. Overlapping budgets on the same categories often confuse progress more than they help.
For the bigger picture, see What a budget does for you. For renewing periods, see Setting up a budget that renews itself. For edits after setup, see Adjusting a budget after it is set up.
You can adjust color, icon, categories, and some schedule details later. If you need a clean restart of a period without losing the budget definition, look at pause and renew guides rather than deleting and recreating from scratch.