Toshl Finance Blog

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

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

Posted on December 23, 2015

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.

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.

Posted in iOS Tutorials, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials

Edit Categories and Tags (Web App)

Posted on December 23, 2015

When you signed up on Toshl, your new account already included categories and tags that should cover most types of entries that you make. If you migrated your account from the previous version of Toshl, just the default categories were added and you could convert your pre-existing tags to the new system.

While we did our best to cover most cases of what kind of spending and earning you can do, we all have our individual circumstances. That’s why we made it easy to add new categories and tags, or modify the existing ones. This tutorial will help you tweak your category and tag system just the way you like it, as well as introduce some more general principles of expense and income categorisation in Toshl.

First, the basic rules:

1. Each entry (expense or income) must have a category

2. There can be only one category on each entry

3. Tags are optional

4. An entry can have multiple tags

5. Expense and income categories and tags are separate

6. Any tag can be used with any category, but just among the same type (rule 5.)

You can see these rules in action when adding an expense. Amount, category, date and account (if you have more than 1) are the required information to save a new expense.

All the categories and tags that you’ve used in the selected time span will show up on the Expenses and Incomes sections.

What about the entire system? ALL the categories and tags, even those that you haven’t used?

Click on the “Edit categories” button.

Each of the squares represents one category. The categories are sorted alphabetically. You can also see how many expenses or incomes use that category and how many tags are usually used with it. Why “usually”? Eeeeasy young padawan, we’ll get there soon. Click on one of the squares to open category details.

The tags that you see on category details are put there because you most likely use them together with that category. Categories and tags are not strictly hierarchical and a tag can be used on an entry together with any category. For example: if I put the tag “books” into category “Leisure”, it doesn’t mean that I can’t use the tag “books” together with category “Gifts” on a different expense. Tags are put into categories merely to help you better suggest the right tags when adding an entry.

For example, when you’re adding an expense and you have already chosen the category “Food & Drinks” and you then click in the tags field, the tags that will be suggest the first, are the ones which were put in that category, weighed by how often you use them. You can choose any tag you like though, even if it was put in a different category.

Categories

Add a new category

Click on the last of the category squares, with the + sign on it. Pick a title for the category and save. That’s it.

You can also add new categories when adding a new expense or income. Just type it into the category field and press Enter to add it as a new category.

Rename a category

Click on the category square to get the details.

Click on the “Edit” button top right.

You can rename the category by typing a new title and saving it.

Delete a category

Click on the category square to get the details. Click on the “Edit” button top right. Click the Delete button.

If you have expenses that still use this category, Toshl will ask you what to do with them. You can choose to assign them all a different category or delete the expenses as well. Consider this carefully, it cannot be undone.

Merge a category

When looking at all the categories, drag and drop one category square on top of the other. Toshl will ask you to confirm the merging.

The category title that will be kept is the second one, onto which you have dragged the first category to. All the expenses from the first category will then be marked with the new – merged category.

Tags

Add a new tag

Click on a category. Click on “Add a new tag”, pick a title for the tag. Save.

You can also add new tags when adding a new expense or income. Just type it into the tag field and press Enter to add it as a new tag.

Rename a tag

Click on a category, in category details click on the tag you want to rename. Click “Edit tag”.

Pick a new tag title and save.

Delete a tag

Click on a category, in category details click on the tag you want to delete. Click “Edit tag”.

Click on the “Delete” button.

If any expenses use this tag it will simply be removed from the expense. The expense will continue to exist.

Move tag to a different category

Click on a category, in category details click on the tag you want to move. Click “Move to another category”.

Moving the tag to another category will not alter your expenses in any way. This is simply so we better know which tags to suggest when adding an expense and you have already chosen a category.

Merge tag with a category

Click on a category, in category details click on the tag you want to merge. Click “Merge with this category”.

When you merge with the category, the tag will cease to exist and will be removed on all the entries that use it.

Leave tag outside of categories

There are some tags that are often used across many categories and can’t fit into a single one. We like to call them “meta-tags”. A typical example of this would be the “travel” tag which can be used with almost any sort of expense while you’re traveling. Another typical example would be tags that you use to note the person who paid.

It doesn’t matter if you put them in a single category, since you can still use that tag with any other as well. But to make things clearer, especially for those who migrated from Toshl v1, we added the option to keep tags out of a category altogether.

Click on a category, in category details click on the tag you want to leave outside. Click “Leave tag outside of categories”.

Merge tags

To merge a tag, first click on a tag, then click “Merge with tag”. This will open a window where you can choose among your other tags, to find the one to merge your selected tag with. You can merge two tags or multiple ones.

The suggested title of the new – merged – tag will be based on the second tag you chose for merging. You can however change the title of the new tag to whatever you want. After the merging is confirmed, all expenses or incomes that previously used one of the tags you selected for merging, will now use the new tag.

Convert a tag to a financial account

This option exists more as migration help for people who have migrated their data from the Toshl v1 where multiple financial accounts were not available. If you used a tag as an extra tag that noted which account it was spent from (e.g. credit card, bank account, cash etc.) you can now convert that tag into a financial account.

Use this only on tags that you used along with other tags on an expense. The tag being converted to an account should not be the only one on a tag.

This feature will likely be removed in the future once everyone has finished the migration process from v1.

Posted in Uncategorized

Left to Spend – The Gist of Your Finances in 1 Number (iOS)

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 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.

Posted in iOS Tutorials, Tips & Tricks, 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

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

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