Glossary

The words Pentos uses, and what each one means here.

Terms as Pentos uses them. Some are shared with other budgeting tools and mean something slightly different here, so the definitions are the ones that apply on this site.

Account: A real place your money sits: a checking account, a card, cash. Every transaction belongs to one.

Activity: The sum of transactions in a category in a month. Negative for spending, positive for income.

Available: What is left to spend in an envelope. Last month’s carryover, plus what you budgeted, plus this month’s activity.

Budgeted: What you assigned to a category in a month.

Carries debt: A per-category setting. When on, a negative Available stays on that envelope instead of being charged to next month’s To Budget.

Carryover: What an envelope passes to the next month. A positive Available always carries; a negative one carries only if the category carries debt.

Category: An envelope. A thing you assign money to and spend against. Either a spending category or an income category.

Cleared: A transaction you have seen on the bank’s side. One step firmer than uncleared, one step short of reconciled.

Envelope: A category, thought of as a container of money. The two words mean the same thing here.

Envelope mode: The default budgeting method: assign money you hold, balances carry forward, and a To Budget pool tracks what is unassigned.

Goal: A monthly target on a category. It drives the row’s indicator and what Fund goals would assign. It never moves money on its own.

Group: A container for categories, used to keep the Budget tab readable.

Hold: Money set aside from a month’s To Budget, returned in full the next month. One figure per month, not per category.

Off Budget: An account tracked but excluded from budgeting. Its balance is not part of To Budget.

On Budget: An account that feeds your envelopes. Fixed when the account is created.

Overbudgeted: To Budget below zero. You have assigned money you do not hold.

Overspending: A negative Available. By default it resets to zero next month and is charged to that month’s To Budget.

Payee: Whoever money went to or came from.

Reconciled: A transaction that matched a bank statement during a reconciliation. Reconciled rows lock against edits.

Rule: Conditions plus actions, applied to transactions automatically as they are imported, or retroactively on request.

Schedule: A recurring transaction. Posts automatically, or waits for you to approve it.

Split: One transaction divided across several categories. The parent has no category; the lines do.

Starting Balance: The transaction Pentos writes when you create an account, recording what it held at that moment.

To Budget: Money you hold that has no job yet. Last month’s leftover, plus this month’s income, minus what you have assigned.

Tracking mode: The second budgeting method: independent months, budgetable income, no carryover and no To Budget.

Transfer: Money moved between two of your own accounts. Always two paired rows, and never categorised.

Uncategorized: A transaction with no category. It never affects the budget, and the register flags it.

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