Did you ever want to travel in time? Me too. Here’s how you can do that in Toshl Finance. At least when it comes to your financial history.

You can change the time span displayed in the Android app in the right sidebar.

Tap on the clock icon top right, to open the right sidebar. You can also swipe left from anywhere on the right edge of the screen.

Then tap the button with the name of the current month to get into the time span section.

My financial month

The default time span is “My financial month”. If you haven’t been playing around with the time spans, your financial month will be the same as the calendar month. If you prefer to sync up your financial month with when you get your salary, you can change that to whichever day you like.

First, open the drawer on the right. Swipe from anywhere on the right edge of the screen, or tap the time span button (clock icon) on top right.

Then, tap the red time span button in the centre. The button will usually list the current month.

Keep in mind though, that this will also change when your monthly budgets start and end, all the monthly graphs etc. We think that it’s still easier for most to leave the start of the financial month on the 1st, even if you get your main income on a different date. But if you’re really set on matching the dates, go right ahead.

Quick hint: If you change your financial month to somewhere in the middle of the month, the month will be named after the month that includes the most days. For example, if I made my financial month start on the 15th, my financial month of May will last from May 15th to June 14th.

Custom time spans

In Toshl you can display any time span you want. If you click on the Custom time span tab, you’ll see the option to set the start and end date manually, or use one of the preset time spans for quicker access.

The preset options are based on calendar months. The presets for last 2, 3, 6 months will suggest those periods respectively, including the months that can be displayed from start to finish. You can also choose to display one of the recent calendar years, or even “All time”.

All time includes the time span from 1. 1. 1970 until today’s date. All the future cannot be included automatically in all time. If you have endlessly repeating expenses for example, that would mean displaying an infinite number of expenses, a possibility at which even the most adventurous Toshl monsters baulk at.

Knowing where your money goes is an important step. It can help you rein in your spending, as you become aware of 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 altogether. 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. Tap the navigation icon on the top left or simply swipe from the left edge of the screen.

 

Tap the blue + button on the bottom left to add a budget.

Leave the “budget for” on All expenses. Tap the “Time period” section below.

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. Monthly budgets for all expenses also play nice with other features. They get included in the River flow graph, as well as get a more prominent place in the Budgets section.

If you want, you can also make the budget start further in the past using the “Budget starts on” setting. This is useful if you have data in Toshl from earlier periods.

Tap the row labeled “Amount”.

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, tap the tick icon on the top right of the screen to Save the budget.

Your first monthly budget. Congratulations!

While we covered the basic things you need to set up your budgets in previous steps, there are a few more options that you can use once you nudge closer toward becoming a budgeting savant:

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 you’ve cheated on the inside. ;)

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.

 

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 left to Add a budget.

This time, in the “Budget for” section choose this to be a budget for a category.

You’ll see your categories listed so you can choose which category or categories you wish to track with this budget. We’ll go with Food & Drinks this time.

Next, let’s scroll down and tap the Amount setting below.

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 in this tutorial.

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 % of the expenses sum, 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.

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

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 this number is calculated read the Left to spend blog post, or go to the “River Flow” section in the app menu.

 

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. 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: Tap and hold with your finger on 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.

As the name implies, this big green number tells you how much money is remaining for you to spend this month. It gives you a 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. Tap the time span & accounts indicator on the top right. In the right sidebar that opens up, tap the name of the month on top. Make sure you’re in the “My financial month” tab. Turn the switch “Show planned expenses in graphs” either ON or OFF. Your wish shall be our command.