Category: Personal finance

The River Flow Graph – How Your Money Flows Each Month (Web App)

Posted on December 23, 2015

Once in a while, one needs to take a broader look of things, even personal finances. To help you see your monthly flow of finances from a higher ground, we made the “river flow” graph.

Imagine the money that you earn and spend each month as a system of rivers. It flows in, hopefully rests a bit in a lake of your making, then most of it flows out again to replenish the fields – or yourself and your phone bill. With some good planning you can build yourself a dam and some accumulation lakes on the side, just to be safe if a dry season ever hits you.

The number at the very top is your income, your main inbound stream. If you set up your monthly budget for all expenses, that will be the dam that you constructed. Income flows in and hits the dam. If the income amount is larger than the budget amount, the difference will flow into your savings for the dry months. It’s good to grow an “accumulation lake” or your “savings account” as your less poetic banker would call it.

If the budget is larger than the income, you’re living beyond your means and need to readjust the budget. Or even better, increase the income if possible.

Beyond your budget dam and monthly money lake, your expenses flow out. The width of the flow represents its size.

The flow in dark red are expenses that have already been made.

The orange flow are your planned expenses, the ones which are coming this month, but have not been due yet.

The green flow is your “left to spend” money. The money that you have already budgeted for, so it should hold by the end of the month, but you have yet to let it flow out of the dam.

If you have not built your dam yet (set up a monthly budget for all expenses), then the flows will simply be going straight down, but their width still representing their size.

If your expense flow is much stronger than the income one, you know the lakes will run dry rather quickly. It’s a situation that should be quickly fixed. Hopefully you’ve accumulated enough in the past to weather through this dry season.

Hopefully, the river flow graph will help you get a good understanding of your money flows and you’ll be able to avoid the dire situations before they occur.

While it’s great seeing these rivers from the top down to manage your money better, it’s even better in first person, leaping down those rapids as the Toshl Monsters see them…

To learn more, check out the Monthly overview and Left to spend blog posts.

Posted in Budgeting, Personal finance, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Web App Tutorials

The Monthly Overview – Your Personal Finances at a Glance (Web App)

Posted on December 23, 2015

Getting a complete sense of your personal finances is important, even when you just open the app for a quick peek. That’s why we made the Monthly Overview graph. We included the information you need right away and made it easy to go deeper when you need more details.

It’s true that this graph contains a few more elements than usual, so there is a bit of a learning curve. But give it a chance, it will make the quick looks at your finances a lot more effective. Here are the main elements:

The “Left to spend” number

As the name implies, this big green number tells you how much money is remaining for you to spend this month. If you have set up a monthly budget, all the expenses in this month will be deducted from the budget amount and what you get is the “Left to spend” number.

For more details on how do we get this number read the Left to spend blog post, or click on the river flow icon, to the far right of the left to spend number.

The “Left to spend” progress bar

The green-coloured background of the graph is a progress bar that tells you how much money you have “left to spend”. The length of the graph represents all the money you have “left to spend” in the month. In the beginning of the month, the whole graph is green. But as you add more expenses, it starts shrinking from left towards the right side. Kind of like a glacier, but a green one. The green lollipop shows you where it ends and tells you how much you have left to spend.

If you surpass the budget amount you have set for yourself, or spend more than you earn, the progress bar will start appearing from the left in red colour, with the red lollipop up front. In that case it will display how much you went over your budget, or overspent your earnings.

The “today” lollipop

You can also see an upside-down lollipop in dark grey with “today” written on it. This lollipop shows current day compared to the time of the entire month. The entire length of the graph represents all the time in the month and the “today” lollipop displays where you are now.

The expense columns

These red columns are daily sums of expenses. They show how much you spent on a given day in the month, telling you when you spent the most and helping you to find the main culprit of overspending. The taller and darker the column, the more was spent.

Quick tip: Click and hold the cursor over the graph to see the daily details.

Compare the “left to spend” and “today” lollipops

To quickly size up your financial health this month, look at the two lollipops on the graph. The green lollipop tells you how much money you have left to spend, while the grey – today lollipop tells you how much time you have left.

If they’re aligned or almost aligned, you’re right on track so far. You’re on the way to spend the almost exact amount of money you budgeted or earned in this period.

If the today lollipop (grey) is way ahead of the money left lollipop (green), then you’re doing great this month. You’ve spent less than you thought you will in this amount of time. If this happens a lot, perhaps it’s time to lower the budget amount.

If the money left lollipop (green) is way ahead of the today lollipop (grey), then you’re not doing so well with your budget. You’re spending more than was expected. Time to reduce your spending, or if that’s not possible, make the budget amount larger next time.

If the lollipop has already turned to red, you have already spent more than the money you had put in the budget amount. The lollipop simply tells you by how much.

To learn more, check out the Left to spend and River flow graph blog posts.

Posted in Personal finance, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Web App Tutorials

Left to Spend – The Gist of Your Finances in One Number (Web App)

Posted on December 21, 2015

As the name implies, this big green number tells you how much money is remaining for you to spend this month. It gives you quick information on where you stand financially right now, while keeping your budgeting goals in mind.

If you have set up a monthly budget, all the expenses in this month will be deducted from the budget amount and what you get is the “Left to spend” number.

If you don’t have a monthly budget for all expenses, expenses will be deducted from your incomes this month to get the “left to spend” number.

Left to spend with a monthly budget for all expenses

Left to spend without a monthly budget for all expenses

Overspent

If you have already spent beyond your means or over budget, the “left to spend” number turns to the red “overspent”. It shows you how far over your monthly budget or your earnings you already went this month.

Left per day

The smaller number below left to spend tells you how much you can spend each day by the end of the month to keep your finances aligned with your goals. The number is simply the current “left to spend” number divided by the amount of days remaining in the current financial month.

Reduce spending to

If you have already overspent this month, the smaller number below will turn to the “reduce spending to” mode. This number tells you how much you should have spent per day to get through the month normally. It’s your monthly budget amount or the monthly income (if there is no budget), divided by the number of days in the month.

Including planned expenses – or not

The “left to spend” number can either include planned expenses and incomes – or not. Planned expenses are those which you have already entered in this financial month, but they are still in the future – they haven’t been due yet. These can be regular bills that you know are coming, but haven’t paid yet, incomes that should come in the future, but haven’t yet… You get the idea. You can set these to be included in “left to spend” and all the graphs by clicking the “time span” setting on the top of the page. In the overlay that opens up, turn the switch “Show planned expenses in graphs” either ON or OFF. Your wish shall be our command.

Posted in Personal finance, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Web App Tutorials

How to Set Up Your Budgets and Control Your Spending (Web App)

Posted on December 18, 2015

Knowing where your money goes is an important step which can help you with reining in your spending, just by knowing your weak points. But sometimes you need to grab the bull by the horns and firmly set the direction in which you want your finances to go. Budgets are here to help you do that.

Consider what your goals are. Is the situation dire and you need to seriously reduce your spending to the minimum? Or would you just like some more money left over to start some savings? Want a friendly reminder in case the spending goes over your usual average? This consideration will determine your basic budgeting strategy.

1. Set a monthly budget for all expenses

Take a look at how much you usually spend each month all together. Based on what your goals are, pick a number that will be your monthly spending goal. If you’re with the easygoing, “just monitoring” crowd, you can keep it much the same as it was in the previous months. If you want to spend much less than before, reduce the number accordingly.

Now let’s get to the practical part.

Go to the Budgets section.

Click the blue + button on the bottom right to add a budget.

Leave it on All expenses, click Next.

Leave the setting to the budget period of 1 month. You can add other types of budgets later on, we recommend starting with a monthly budget which will be in sync with your financial month. This will also enable some nice features later on.

Click Next.

Remember that monthly spending goal number you chose before? This would be the time to enter it. Once you click in the amount field you also get some additional options:

– “number” enter the amount as a regular number which stays the same every month until you change it

– “income –“ this will sum up all the incomes in the current financial month and subtract a number of your choosing. If you stick to your budget, this will be the amount of money you save each month.

– “income +” your budget will be your income plus the number you chose. Probably not ideal for most, but if you can draw on a reserve of cash to add to your monthly income, this is the solution for you.

– “% of income” great to set a proportion of income you want to save. If you want to save 20 % of your income each month, set the budget to 80 % of your income and stick to it.

Whether you want the number to be static or adjust automatically to your income, your call. You know your circumstances best. If things change, or you manage to save more you can always change it later.

The next step is simply a sum up of what you chose so far. If you’re satisfied with the choices you can click Save, but if you’re wishing for some more options, click “Show more” on the bottom.

As you see some new options showed up:

Accounts – You can limit the budget to follow only certain accounts. That way only expenses coming from those accounts will be counted in the budget. For the start, it’s probably better to leave it to “All accounts”

Date – This defines when a specific budget starts. If you left the budget on the monthly period, the default will be the start of the current month. If you have already been using Toshl for a longer period of time, you can set that start date in the past and budgets will be calculated automatically for all those past periods. Neat trick, eh?

Move remaining funds to next period – Also known as the “rollover”. If you set this to ON, any surplus or lack of funds in the budget will be transferred to the next budget period. If you really want to be rigorous about your spending, use this and see how good you are at self-discipline. If the sins of the past months become too much of a burden, you can edit the rollover amount separately later on. But you’ll know deep down that you’ve cheated. ;)

Title – We automatically generate a title for your budgets based on the settings you chose for each one, but you can always change it to something custom if you so desire.

Once you’re satisfied with all the choices. Click “Save”.

Your first monthly budget. Congratulations!

2. Add a monthly budget for specific categories

Not all spending is the same. Some costs are relatively fixed or a bit harder to change, like rent for example, while others are more flexible and more easily change month to month based on your habits.

Think about what kind of spending gets you in trouble. Which are the unnecessary things you really could do without, or at least spend a bit less on them. All the tech gadgets, drinks, games, gardening supplies… ? Your call. Just don’t say “alimony”. Not cool! ;)

If you’ve been using Toshl for a while, it’s best to browse through your past months in expense graphs and see where your money leaks are.

Once you’ve thought about it, go to the Budgets section again, click the blue + button on the bottom right to Add a budget.

This time, click on the dropdown and choose this to be a budget for a category.

You’ll see a pie chart of your all time spending per category to help you decide more easily what to save on. Click on the pie chart or chose the category by name below. We’ll go with Food & Drinks this time. Click next.

Keep it on the 1 month period. Click Next.

How much you can spend on this specific category is up to you. If you have past data base it on that, see how much you spent and what your goal is. If you prefer, you can also define it as a percentage of your income, but that will probably take a bit more fine-tuning in this case.

If you’re satisfied with your choices, that’s all there is to it. Click “Save”.

If you’ve used some more advanced features like starting the budget in the past or for certain accounts before, you can set these to match with this budget as well.

3. Budgets for more categories?

If you’ve identified multiple categories that you need to keep a vigilant eye over, by all means, add them as well. If you want, you can make a budget for every single category, the same way we have been doing this so far.

Monthly budgets for categories and the one for all expenses are a bit different than the rest of the budgets. Because they all use the same monthly period and the categories add up to 100 %, this is reflected in the budget list.

The top budget is your general monthly budget for all expenses. The ones below each represent a percentage of the total monthly budget. That’s why the little progress bars beneath each category budget are of different lengths. The category budget amounts all represent a percentage of the total monthly budget. The categories for which you have not yet made a budget for are covered in the “Remaining budgets” section. That way you get a rough picture of how your monthly budget for all expenses is distributed among the categories.

4. What about other, non-monthly budgets?

In this tutorial, we covered the most basic budget that we think would be most beneficial for most people to set up at first. We also offer a lot of different budget options for your specific needs. You don’t need to base your budget based on your financial month, although they’re displayed a bit more nicely if you do (see point 3.).

Budgets can be based on almost any time period, be it a custom number of days, weeks, months, even years.

They can be set to track all expenses, some categories, exclude some categories, tags or exclude some tags. They can also track your budget using all financial accounts, or just a few you selected.

You can have the budgets transfer the remaining or lacking funds to the next period (rollover) or see them individually for each period.

Explore Toshl, try the different options and we’re sure you’ll find a way to budget which suits your needs the best.

Posted in Personal finance, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Web App Tutorials

How to Set Up Your Finances (Web App)

Posted on December 18, 2015

When you start using Toshl for the first time, it’s good to set up a few basic things so things can run smoothly and quickly in the future. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do this in the Toshl web app, which works best on tablet and desktop/laptop computers. You can do all the same things in our iOS mobile app as well, but the buttons might be positioned a bit differently.

Without further ado, here’s what you should do:

1. Add your financial accounts and balances

When you sign up on Toshl, a Cash account is added in advance. You can see your accounts by clicking the “Accounts” button on the top right in the web app.

Open your wallet, count what’s inside. Then click “Edit” below the accounts, and “Edit” again right next to the cash account. In the inital balance field, enter the amount that you counted in your wallet. Keep in mind that the inital balance amount will be added to the current balance, it won’t just replace it. Although if you started with balance 0 on the account, that’s all the same.

When you’ve entered the initial balance of the account click “Save”.

If cash is all you use and that’s all you mean to track in Toshl, you’re all done. But most likely you have at least a bank account and a credit card or two to add as well.

Click “Add account” to add another financial account. You can name the accounts however you like, but for most the name of the bank where the account is at or the name of the credit card will be most suitable. Remember to check what the current balance on that account is and enter it as your initial balance. Just like you did with the Cash account.

There you go. All set.

Now when you add an expense or an income to Toshl, you can choose to which account should this entry go. Expenses will be deducted from your balance, incomes will of course be added. Balances on accounts are “all time”, meaning that they will always show the current balance, no matter which time span you have chosen to display.

Quick tips:

– When you draw cash at an ATM, add this as a transfer from your bank account (or credit card) to your cash account.

– When you need to pay your credit card bill, add this as a transfer from your bank account to your credit card account. Most likely the credit card balance should be 0 just after you’ve paid.

2. Check your categories and tags

We have already added the most widely used categories and tags that should cover most of your spending and earnings. Naturally we all have our own stuff going on, so you might need to add a few. Go to the Expenses or Incomes section and click the “Edit categories” button.

This will take you to the Edit categories & tags screen.

Take a look around click on the categories to see the tags, see if you’re missing anything and add them if you are.

3. Add your salary and other incomes (repeating incomes)

Most people have some sort of regular income. It’s best to enter them in advance and set them to repeat automatically so you don’t have to enter them manually each month or every few weeks.

Go to the Incomes section. Click the green + button on the bottom right.

Now enter the information about your salary: amount, the category “Salary”, if you like you can also add tags. Choose the financial account this salary usually comes to and the date of the month you get the salary on. Important: If you wish to add past salaries, you can set the date in one of the past months. Keep in mind that the past salaries will also be added to your financial accounts.

Now click “Show more” below.

You should set the salary to repeat automatically. You can set that with the dropdown menu next to the “R in a circle” icon. Set your salary to repeat in the period that you are paid. Be that monthly, weekly or whichever period you want. You can choose the “Custom repeat” and set it to repeat in any period you like e.g. every 2 weeks, every 17 days.

If your paycheck varies, you can later edit each individual repeat to enter the correct amount. If that happens a lot set up a reminder (the little bell icon) to remind you to do that with a notification when the next pay-check arrives.

Save and you’re done. The salary will show up automatically in each period. Hopefully, just like the real one.

4. Add your regular bills (repeating expenses)

You should also add the bills that you know will be coming each month to make things more predictable, quicker and financial planning easier. Add things like electricity, internet bills, rent, gym memberships… all the regular expenses you have in your life.

Go to the Expenses or Monthly overview section and click the red + button on the bottom right.

Enter all the relevant information like the usual amount, category, tags (optional) and the date in the month that you usually pay the bill on.

Now click “Show more” below.

Click the repeat options dropdown next to the “R in a cricle” icon. Select one of the predefined repeating periods like, weekly, monthly or add a custom period like every 4 weeks, every 3 months etc.

If you would like to be reminded to pay those bills when they arrive you can also set up a reminder so the notifications will remind you when the bills arrive. It’s also useful if the amount of the bill varies and you need to modify it in each period. You can set up the reminders on the day it’s due, before, or any time you like. Up to 4 reminders per expense.

5. Look around Toshl, enter expenses on the go

Now that you’ve entered your expected incomes and expenses, the graphs around Toshl should look a bit differently. Explore them a bit and see how they can help you with monitoring your finances. Then as time passes, remember to enter the expenses and incomes on the fly to keep the balances on your accounts accurate. If you’re having trouble remembering to enter the expenses, set up a daily reminder in Settings / Notifications. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.

Posted in Personal finance, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Web App Tutorials