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SillyBudget uses zero-based, envelope-style budgeting. The idea is simple: every dollar you already have gets a job. Zero-based does not mean spend everything. Savings, next month’s rent, an annual bill, debt payoff, and money you simply want to keep are all perfectly good jobs.

1. Start with the money you really have. Add the checking, savings, cash, and credit-card accounts you want to budget with and enter the current cleared balances you see today. SillyBudget does not need your bank login or account number. If checking already shows $1,247, that balance already includes the paychecks and deposits that got you there — do not enter those old income transactions again or you will count the same money twice. Cash in your on-budget accounts becomes Money to Spend — real money that is available to assign.

2. Give those dollars jobs. On Budget, move Money to Spend into categories such as Rent, Groceries, Electric, Fun, Savings, or whatever matters to you. Categories work like digital envelopes. Keep assigning until Money to Spend reaches $0. That does not mean your bank account is empty; it means every available dollar now has a purpose.

3. Know the three Budget columns. Assigned is what you deliberately put into a category this month. Activity is what actually happened through transactions. Available is what is left in that envelope and is the number to watch before you spend. Positive Available balances can roll forward.

4. Spend, record, and adjust. Enter transactions as they happen so the correct category is reduced. If life changes, move money between categories. A budget is a plan you are allowed to change, not a promise you can never edit.

5. Reconcile regularly. Compare each SillyBudget account with the balance shown by your bank or card issuer, mark transactions cleared, and finish reconciliation when the difference is zero. Regular reconciliation keeps the dollars in your categories tied to money that actually exists.

6. Use Forecast for future money. Do not put next week’s paycheck into the real Budget before it arrives. Forecast is the separate planning space for expected income and expected spending, so you can look ahead without pretending future money is already yours.

7. Credit cards are handled differently from cash spending. Record the purchase in the credit-card account and categorize what you bought. When the category was funded, SillyBudget reserves that cash for the card payment. Paying the card is a transfer from checking to the card account, not a second expense.

Quick example: if you have $2,000 in checking, you might assign $1,000 to Rent, $300 to Groceries, $100 to Electric, $200 to Savings, and $400 to everything else. The goal is not to spend $2,000. The goal is to decide what all $2,000 is for.

When you first add an account, enter the current cleared balance you see today. That balance is your starting point and already includes the deposits, paychecks, purchases, and payments that happened before you started SillyBudget. Do not recreate old income that is already included in the starting balance; doing both counts the same money twice. After setup, enter new Income transactions only when new income actually arrives. If you discover the starting balance was wrong, correct the account setup/data rather than inventing an income transaction that never happened after your SillyBudget start point. For a credit card, enter the amount you currently owe as a positive number during account setup.

Money to Spend is cash that has entered your on-budget checking, savings, or cash accounts but has not yet been assigned to categories. Tap or click Money to Spend, enter an amount, search for a destination category, and move the money. When it reaches zero, all currently available cash has been given a purpose. SillyBudget prevents new category assignments from pushing Money to Spend below $0.

A negative Money to Spend means more dollars have been Assigned than SillyBudget currently knows you have. A completed zero-based budget should normally end at $0, not below it. SillyBudget shows a warning with the exact shortfall and blocks actions that would make the shortage worse. To recover, reduce Assigned amounts in the month where the over-assignment happened until Money to Spend returns to $0. Moving money from one category to another does not change the overall Money to Spend total. If real cash is genuinely missing from SillyBudget, correct the account balance or enter income only if that income actually arrived.

Category groups organize related categories. Use the + next to a group to add a category. Category and group names can be edited directly from the Budget screen. Archive categories you no longer need; an empty non-system group can then be archived as well. Archived items are kept out of normal budgeting without rewriting transaction history.

Assigned is how much you deliberately budgeted to a category for the month. Activity is the transaction activity in that category. Available is the amount you can still safely spend and is the key day-to-day signal. Positive Available balances roll forward.

Move Money shifts existing category availability without creating income or spending. Clicking a positive Available balance locks that category as the source. Choose a destination and amount. Moving money changes assignments/availability, not account balances or transaction history.

A negative Available balance means a category is overspent. Click the negative balance to open Cover Overspending. Choose a category that has positive Available funds and move enough to cover some or all of the shortfall. SillyBudget prevents moving more than the source has available.

Targets are reminders for how much you want a category funded. Monthly targets apply each month; monthly savings targets help you build balances over time; by-date targets aim for a balance by a chosen date. The Budget toolbar shows a live Monthly Targets total. Click or tap that total to open the branded funding confirmation. SillyBudget funds monthly targets only when there is enough real Money to Spend to complete the requested funding; it will not silently create imaginary dollars or push Money to Spend below $0. If there is not enough available, adjust Assigned amounts manually according to your priorities or wait for real income to arrive.

Budget Notes are persistent notes attached to the budget rather than a single month. Use them for reminders, bill details, or context you want to keep while moving between months. Notes can be added, edited, deleted, and reordered.

Add Transaction is the fast entry point for expenses, income, and transfers. Expenses use a category. Income goes directly to Money to Spend rather than a spending category. Transfers move money between accounts and do not count as income or spending. Manual entries start uncleared so you can confirm them during reconciliation.

Payees are the people, stores, services, and other names you transact with. Open Payees to register a name before its first transaction, rename a payee, remove it from future suggestions, or give it an automatic category rule. A rule can fill Category during Add Transaction while still letting you override the category manually. Removing a payee does not delete historical transactions. Advanced contains-text rules are also managed from the Payees page.

Use a split when one transaction belongs to multiple categories. The split amounts should add up to the total transaction amount. SillyBudget records the individual category activity while keeping the transaction together in the account register.

Income is intentionally uncategorized. When recorded in an on-budget cash account it increases Money to Spend, where you decide which categories receive it. Monthly Income is only income actually earned in the month you are viewing. Do not add prior-month income there, and keep expected future income in Forecast until it actually arrives. From your SillyBudget starting point forward, add new income when it reaches your bank.

Transfers move money between SillyBudget accounts without being counted as income or spending. A checking-to-credit-card transfer represents a card payment. Use the To Account field when the transaction type is Transfer.

Uncleared means the transaction has not yet been confirmed against the financial institution. Cleared means you have verified it. You can toggle the status directly in Transactions; the update happens in place without reloading the page.

Open Accounts and choose Reconcile on the account you want to check. Compare SillyBudget with the balance shown by your financial institution as of the statement/current date, mark transactions cleared or uncleared, and finalize when the difference is zero. After you finish, reconciled transactions keep their Reconciled status and badge but the account register returns to a clean Cleared + Uncleared view. Use the Status filter to choose Reconciled or All statuses whenever you want to review that history. Reconcile regularly so the category money you rely on stays backed by real account balances.

Accounts represent the places you track money or debt: checking, savings, cash, and credit cards. Use descriptive names such as Main Checking or Fidelity Visa. SillyBudget does not need account numbers. Starting balances establish the opening point; current and cleared balances evolve from transactions.

1. Buy with the card: Record the purchase in the credit-card account and categorize what you bought, such as Groceries. If Groceries had enough Available, SillyBudget reduces Groceries and automatically reserves the same cash in the card’s Payment category.

2. Understand the Payment category: It is not a spending category. It shows cash that is already reserved to pay the card bill.

3. Pay the card: Enter a Transfer from your checking account to the credit-card account itself. Do not categorize the card payment as an expense because the spending was already recorded when you made the purchase.

4. Example: If Visa Payment has $460 Available and you transfer $200 from Checking to Visa, Visa Payment should fall to $260, Checking falls by $200, and the Visa balance moves $200 closer to zero.

5. Extra debt payoff: You can also assign Money to Spend directly to the card’s Payment category when you intentionally want to reserve additional cash toward paying down existing card debt. This is separate from the cash automatically reserved by funded card spending.

6. Unfunded spending: If the original spending category did not have enough Available, the unfunded portion becomes credit-card debt instead of creating payment cash. If you fund that overspending later in the same month, SillyBudget recalculates the payment reserve.

Rule of thumb: Buy with the card → categorize the purchase. Pay the card → transfer from checking to the card account.

Forecast is completely separate from your real zero-based budget. It uses the same categories as your Budget, so category names and organization are managed from the Budget page. Use Add Income for expected income, then assign that money from the Expected Income bubble beside Expected Spending or edit category forecast amounts directly. Forecast never changes Money to Spend, Assigned, Available, account balances, or real transactions.

Expected Income is money you reasonably expect to receive during the forecast month. Use the compact Add Income button to enter, edit, or remove expected income in a modal. The page does not use a separate income card; the Expected Income bubble beside Expected Spending shows the total and how much is left to forecast. Clicking that bubble lets you assign expected income to Forecast categories only. These entries never create real budget money.

Set a Forecast amount for categories you expect to use. You can edit a category amount directly or click the Expected Income button beside “What do you expect to spend?” to assign part of the amount left to forecast. Each assignment increases that category’s Forecast amount and reduces the amount left to forecast. Actual is read-only and comes from real transaction activity. Difference compares what you forecast with what actually happened without changing the underlying Budget.

Copy Last Month is a convenience for recurring planning. It carries the previous month’s forecast assumptions into the current forecast so you can adjust them instead of starting from zero. It does not copy real transactions or change the Budget.

Reports help explain where money went. Available views include spending by category/group/payee, income versus spending, monthly trends, category comparisons and averages, and account balances over time. Use date and account filters to focus the analysis, then drill into transactions where available.

A SillyBudget login can belong to more than one private budget. My Budgets on the main SillyBudget site lists the budget workspaces available to your account. Each budget has separate financial tables and data.

Start from a Clean Slate lets you reset only the part of a budget you want to redo. You can delete all transactions, categories, payees, accounts, or targets individually, or choose Delete all of the above for the full financial reset. Each option explains dependent data before anything is removed. Budget Notes and your SillyBudget login are preserved. This is different from permanently deleting the entire account and budget.

The Danger Zone in Settings can permanently delete the current budget site and its SillyBudget data. It requires your password, the exact confirmation phrase, and a final confirmation. If the login belongs to another budget, that other budget is preserved; otherwise the user profile may also be deleted. This action cannot be undone.

Settings includes data export tools so you can keep a copy of important information. Exports are especially useful before destructive actions or major changes. SillyBudget does not treat the hosted copy as a substitute for your own important records.

SillyBudget stores the budgeting information you enter manually. It does not connect to financial institutions and does not ask for bank passwords, routing numbers, full bank account numbers, full card numbers, or brokerage credentials. Private budget pages are no-store/no-index and require authentication.

A network Super Admin may need to inspect a budget for troubleshooting. If that Super Admin is not the explicit creator or an administrator of the budget, the SillyBudget front end is forced into read-only mode and mutation requests are rejected server-side. Infrastructure-level access may still exist for maintenance and security.

Support Docs are available publicly at sillybudget.com/support/ so you can use the same polished help center before or after signing up. If a feature behaves differently from the documentation, treat that as something worth reporting because the docs are written around the intended product behavior.