Accounts, envelopes, and To Budget
The three things Pentos tracks, and how money moves between them.
Pentos keeps two separate ideas about your money and one number that connects them.
Accounts hold your money
An account is a real place your money sits: a checking account, a savings account, a credit card, cash in a drawer. Accounts answer where is my money.
Every account is either On Budget or Off Budget.
- On Budget accounts feed your envelopes. Their balances are the money you have to assign, and transactions in them change your envelope balances.
- Off Budget accounts are tracked but excluded from budgeting. Use them for money you want to watch without budgeting, such as an investment account or a loan.
The On Budget choice is made when you create the account, so give it a moment’s thought.
Refer to Add an account for the mechanics.
Envelopes give your money a job
An envelope is a category you assign money to: Groceries, Rent, Car Insurance. Envelopes answer what is this money for.
Categories are organised into groups, and every category is either a spending category or an income category. Income categories work differently: you never budget income, it funds the pool you budget from.
An envelope has three numbers each month:
| Number | What it is |
|---|---|
| Budgeted | What you assigned to this envelope this month |
| Activity | What you spent or received in this category this month |
| Available | What is left to spend, carrying last month’s leftover forward |
To Budget is the waiting room
To Budget is the number at the top of the Budget tab. It is money you hold that has no job yet.
It is arithmetic, not a stored balance:
last month’s leftover, plus this month’s income, minus everything you have assigned this month.
Assign money to an envelope and To Budget falls by that amount. Income arrives and To Budget rises. Nothing is created or destroyed; assigning only moves money from one column to another.
At zero, every unit of money has a job. Below zero the label changes to Overbudgeted, which means you have promised money you do not hold. That is worth fixing before you carry on, because the promises are now competing with each other.
To Budget counts money in On Budget accounts only. An Off Budget savings account can hold a hundred thousand and To Budget will not move.
How the three fit together
Money enters an account. If that account is On Budget, the money shows up in To Budget. You assign it from To Budget into envelopes. You spend against an envelope, and the spending also comes out of the account it was paid from.
Every transaction touches an account. Most transactions also touch an envelope. Transfers between two of your own accounts touch two accounts and no envelope at all, because moving your own money between your own accounts does not spend it.
Useful links
Something wrong or missing on this page? Write to supportpentosbudget.com.