Logging transactions

The forecast is the plan. Transactions are the evidence. Without them, the budget page has nothing to compare against, and the variance analysis that makes OutBudget useful is just an empty chart.

Logging transactions isn't glamorous, but it's the habit that determines whether OutBudget works for you.

Daily vs. batch entry

There are two approaches that work. Choose one based on what you'll actually sustain.

Log when it happens. You pay for something, you open OutBudget, you log it — thirty seconds, done. The mobile web app is designed exactly for this: optimised for speed on the go, so logging mid-day doesn't feel like a chore. The advantage is that you never face a backlog, and transactions are fresh enough that categorisation is automatic.

Batch entry takes 15–20 minutes once a week. You sit down with your bank statements or card history, work through the week's transactions in one pass, and close the tab. The advantage is fewer interruptions and a rhythm that's easy to calendar.

Both work. What doesn't work is inconsistency — logging daily for two weeks, then stopping for a month, then trying to reconstruct everything. The variance analysis degrades the moment the actuals become unreliable.

Categorizing transactions

When you log a transaction, you assign it a category. Categories should match your forecast categories — that's how the budget page knows whether dining, travel, or rent is tracking above or below plan.

You don't need a perfect taxonomy. If your forecast has a "variable spending" catch-all, transactions that don't fit elsewhere go there. The goal is enough categorization to make variance meaningful, not an accounting-grade classification of every expense.

A useful rule: if a category has an assumption in your forecast, it's worth logging to that category carefully. If it doesn't, it can go to the catch-all without consequence.

Multi-currency transactions

Log every transaction in the currency you actually spent in. If you pay for a dinner in London with your GBP account, log it in GBP. OutBudget automatically converts the amount using the monthly average FX rate for that specific month, so the base currency equivalent appears in your dashboard and budget view.

This matters because logging in a pre-converted amount destroys your primary data. By keeping the transaction strictly in its original currency, OutBudget ensures your financial history stays accurate, even if you toggle base currencies or update conversion parameters later.

Transfers vs. spending

A transfer between two of your own accounts is not an expense. It doesn't belong in your budget and shouldn't appear in your variance analysis.

If you receive your GBP salary and immediately move a portion to your EUR savings account, that's a transfer — record it as one. If you pay off your credit card from checking, that's a transfer from checking to the credit account. The actual expenses are the transactions on the card itself, logged when you spent them.

Logging a transfer as a regular transaction double-counts it: the money leaves one account (which you log) and arrives in another (which you also log as income). The result is inflated income, inflated expenses, and a budget that can't be trusted. When in doubt: if the money is still yours and it's just moving between your accounts, it's a transfer.

Editing past transactions

Mistakes happen. Wrong category, wrong amount, wrong account. All of these are editable after the fact — open the transaction, correct the field, save. The budget and variance figures update immediately.

One situation worth handling carefully: if you've logged a transaction to the wrong category and the month has already been reviewed, the correction will shift past variance figures. That's fine — accuracy matters more than consistency of historical reports. Fix it.

When you fall behind

If you miss a week or two, don't abandon the log — catch up. Work through your bank and card statements chronologically, enter what you can, and don't worry about perfect categorization for the backlog. Getting the amounts right matters more than getting every category right.

If you've missed a full month or more, it's worth deciding whether to backfill or to start fresh from today with a clean balance. Backfilling is better for the long-term accuracy of the analytics. Starting fresh is better for your motivation if a large backlog feels like a wall. Either is a valid choice; not logging at all is the only one that doesn't work.

Step-by-step

Log a standard transaction

Go to Transactions → Add transaction. Select the account, enter the amount in the account's currency, choose the category, set the date, and save. For income, mark it as income; for expenses, it defaults to expense.

Log a multi-currency transaction

Select the account the transaction was charged to. Enter the amount in that account's currency — not in your base currency. OutBudget applies the monthly average FX rate automatically to display the converted equivalent.

Record a transfer

A transfer is just a transaction where the payee is another one of your accounts. Add a transaction as usual, then in the Payee field select the destination account instead of a regular payee. For cross-currency transfers, you can override the FX rate applied if the bank's actual rate differs from the monthly average.

End-of-month reconciliation

At the end of each month, spend 15 minutes checking your transaction log against your bank statements. Verify that balances match. Correct any miscategorised entries. This is also a good moment to review the budget page — the variance figures are only as useful as the transactions behind them.

Common questions

I'm two weeks behind. Is it worth catching up? Yes. Work through your statements in one batch session. Even rough categorization is better than nothing — the budget page can tell you whether a category drifted, even if a few transactions are in the wrong subcategory.

How granular should my transaction categories be? Match your forecast. If you have a "groceries" assumption and a "dining out" assumption, log to those separately — the variance is telling you something different for each. If you have a single "food" assumption, one category is fine. The level of granularity in transactions should mirror the level of granularity in your forecast.

How do I handle a credit card payment? Log it as a transfer from your checking account to your credit card account. Don't log it as an expense. The expenses are the individual transactions on the card — the payment is just settling the balance. If you've been logging card transactions correctly, the payment transfer will bring the credit account back toward zero without double-counting anything.