Set up BudgetViz to model your complete financial ecosystem — the more you add, the more powerful your insights become.
BudgetViz is designed to give you a complete, detailed view of your finances. The key to unlocking its full potential is to model your entire financial ecosystem — all your accounts, regular payments, and financial goals. This guide walks you through the setup process step by step.
You don't have to do everything at once. You can start with just a single account and add transactions right away. But the more of your financial life you model in BudgetViz, the richer your reports and insights become — from tracking daily expenses to monitoring your entire net worth.
The first account you create in BudgetViz becomes your default account, and its currency becomes your home currency. Your default account should be the account you use most often — typically your main bank or checking account. This is the account that will be pre-selected whenever you create a new transaction, so choosing your most-used account here means less switching for most of your day-to-day entries.
The home currency — inherited from your default account — is the baseline for all reports, budgets, and portfolio calculations. Any transactions in other currencies are automatically converted to it. Choose the currency you use day-to-day: SEK if you live in Sweden, USD in the US, and so on.
Not set in stone. You can change your default account at any time in the app settings. If your primary banking situation changes, simply switch the default and BudgetViz will adjust accordingly.
Multi-currency from the start: Even though you set one home currency, every account you create can use a different currency. BudgetViz automatically handles exchange rate conversions in reports, budgets, and portfolio views — so you can freely mix SEK, EUR, USD, crypto, or even custom currencies across your accounts.
This is the most important step. Create accounts that mirror your real-world finances. Every bank account, credit card, loan, investment, and asset you add gives BudgetViz a more complete picture — enabling accurate net worth tracking, portfolio breakdowns, and meaningful analytics.
BudgetViz organizes your accounts into portfolio categories automatically: assets (what you own) and liabilities (what you owe). The more complete your setup, the more useful your portfolio and net worth reports become.
Your everyday accounts — checking, savings, cash, and prepaid cards. These form the core of your daily transaction tracking and cash flow monitoring.
Credit cards and loans — mortgage, car loans, student debt. Track how your liabilities change over time and monitor your debt reduction progress. For credit cards and transaction accounts, you can also set a credit limit to see utilization at a glance.
Brokerage accounts, retirement funds (pension), and crypto wallets. Use value-mode to update balances directly and track investment growth over time.
Property and tangible valuables — your home, rental properties, vehicles, collectibles. These contribute to your total net worth picture.
Track personal loans and tabs with friends and contacts. Three modes: loans you've given, loans you've taken, and running balance tabs.
Anything else that doesn't fit neatly into the categories above — the "other" type adapts automatically as an asset or liability based on its balance.
Think broadly. Do you have a mortgage? A pension fund? A crypto wallet? A friend who owes you money? Property abroad? Each of these is an account in BudgetViz. The goal is to capture everything that contributes to your financial standing — both what you own and what you owe.
Automatic net worth portfolio: BudgetViz automatically creates a net worth portfolio that includes all your accounts. As you add accounts, they're automatically organized into asset and liability categories — liquid assets, investments, real assets, credit, loans, and more. You'll see your net worth and its breakdown immediately.
Balance targets for savings goals. Savings accounts, investment accounts, retirement funds, crypto wallets, and property accounts can each have an optional balance target. Set one, and a progress bar appears on the account's dashboard card showing how close you are to your goal — great for tracking an emergency fund, an investment milestone, or a down payment.
Now that your accounts are set up, you need to decide how to start populating them with data. You have two paths — pick whichever suits your style, or combine both.
Set an initial balance on each account and begin tracking from today. This is the quickest way to get up and running — you'll start building history from this point forward.
Best for: Getting started quickly and building habits right away.
Quick startImport past transactions via CSV from your bank statements or other financial tools. This gives you trends, reports, and analytics from day one — even for periods before you started using BudgetViz.
Best for: Seeing full historical trends and getting meaningful reports immediately.
More completeYou can combine both approaches. Set initial balances for accounts like investments or property where you don't have detailed transaction history, and import CSV data for your bank accounts and credit cards where you can easily export statements. See the CSV Import & Export Guide for detailed instructions on preparing your files.
New to transactions? Before you start adding data, it's worth understanding how transactions work in BudgetViz — including types, transfers, recurring chains, and more. See the Transactions Guide for a complete walkthrough.
BudgetViz comes with a set of default categories and subcategories to get you started. Before you begin adding transactions, take a moment to review them and make adjustments so they match how you think about your finances.
If you think of "Eating Out" instead of "Dining", or "Subscriptions" instead of "Digital Services" — rename them. Categories that match your mental model make transaction entry faster and reports more intuitive.
Freelance income? Side business? Pet expenses? A specific hobby? Add categories and subcategories for recurring types of spending or income that are important to you.
Don't own a car? Don't have kids? Remove categories that don't apply to you to keep the list clean and focused when adding transactions.
Subcategories are where the detail lives. "Food" might break down into "Groceries", "Restaurants", "Coffee", and "Delivery". The right level of detail here powers your most useful budget and expense reports.
You can always adjust later. Categories aren't locked in — you can rename, add, or reorganize them at any time. Existing transactions will update to reflect the changes. But getting a good starting structure makes everything smoother from the beginning.
Most people have a set of fixed expenses and income that repeat regularly — rent or mortgage payments, salary, subscriptions, insurance, utilities, loan repayments, and more. Setting these up as recurring transactions is one of the most valuable things you can do early on.
Once all your regular payments are set up, you immediately get a clear picture of your committed monthly expenses and reliable income. This is the foundation for understanding your actual spending flexibility.
Each recurring transaction can have a reminder — you'll get a notification when a payment is due so nothing slips through the cracks.
For transactions you don't need to approve each time, enable auto-pay. BudgetViz will automatically record the transaction when it's due and simply notify you that it's been done — no manual action needed.
Recurring transactions support a wide range of schedules — weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and more. Schedules can even respect holidays and non-business days, automatically adjusting the date when a payment would land on a day off.
Recurring transactions are the backbone of BudgetViz's forecasting features. The app can project future occurrences beyond the next scheduled payment and include them in reports, letting you see projected account balances, expected expenses, and anticipated income for any future period.
Go through your regular financial commitments and add a recurring transaction for each one. Here are common examples to consider:
Rent or mortgage payment, property insurance, building fees, utilities (electricity, water, heating, internet).
Salary, freelance retainers, rental income, pension payments, dividends, or any other regular income.
Streaming services, gym membership, phone plan, cloud storage, software subscriptions, news subscriptions.
Health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, loan repayments, savings transfers, investment contributions.
Start with the big ones. You don't need to capture every single recurring payment at once. Begin with your largest fixed expenses and income — they usually account for the majority of your cash flow. You can add smaller ones over time.
Budgets are where BudgetViz turns your data into actionable goals. Define spending limits, savings targets, or cash flow objectives — then track your progress over time with detailed breakdowns at every level.
Set spending limits for a period — with goals on three levels: overall, per category, and per subcategory. See exactly where you're over or under budget.
Define a savings target and track your progress toward it. Great for building an emergency fund, saving for a trip, or any financial goal.
Monitor the balance of income versus expenses. Understand whether you're gaining or losing ground each period — the big-picture health check.
Each budget can be scoped to specific accounts, categories, and time periods, giving you precise control over what you're measuring. Budget reports then show you detailed comparisons of actuals versus goals — for the current period and for any historical period.
Start with one. A good first budget is a monthly expense budget for your main spending accounts. Set an overall target, then optionally add per-category limits for your biggest spending areas (groceries, dining, entertainment). You'll quickly see where your money goes and how it compares to your intentions.
Expense budgets also support rollover — carrying unspent amounts forward to the next period so you can see how your spending adds up over time. For a complete walkthrough of how budgets work — including the three budget types, multi-level targets, rollover, health indicators, and built-in analytics — see the Budget Guide.
BudgetViz automatically creates a net worth portfolio containing all your accounts — so you already have a full overview of your assets and liabilities from the moment you finish setting up your accounts. But you can also create additional, focused portfolios to get specific insights.
By grouping different sets of accounts, you can monitor different aspects of your financial health:
Net worth overview — assets vs. liabilities with full breakdown
Cash flow monitoring — see how your available funds grow or shrink
Debt reduction tracking — monitor loans and credit cards over time
Investment performance — track growth across all investment accounts
Each portfolio generates its own reports with hierarchical breakdowns — from the overall portfolio value down to individual account types and accounts — along with period-over-period gain in both absolute value and percentage.
How portfolio categories work: BudgetViz automatically classifies each account into categories like Liquid Assets, Investments, Real Assets, Credit, and Loans & Debt based on the account type. The portfolio report then shows your balance broken down on three levels: total portfolio, asset/liability groups, and individual accounts.
You can also set a balance target on any portfolio to track a savings goal — a progress bar will show how close you are to your target right on the portfolio card.
For a full guide on how portfolios work — including the balance sheet hierarchy, balance targets, focus mode filtering, and available charts — see the Portfolios guide.
With your accounts, transactions, and budgets in place, you now have access to BudgetViz's full reporting engine. Reports are fully customizable — choose your filters, time period, chart type, and the level of detail you want to see. The reports are displayed in the dashboard.
The reporting engine covers every angle of your finances, such as:
Within each category you'll find multiple report types — daily and monthly views, accumulated trends, breakdowns by category, subcategory, or account, and visual formats including line charts, bar charts, and pie charts. Reports can also include unpaid and projected transactions for forecasting — showing where your balances and spending are headed, not just where they've been.
Custom reports are separate from budget and portfolio reports. Budgets and portfolios each have their own dedicated, detailed reports (accessible from the budget or portfolio itself). The custom reports described here are independent — they are flexible chart-based reports that you build from scratch or from templates. Templates give you a starting point, but every aspect can be modified: filters, time periods, chart types, accounts, and categories. Think of them as your personal analytics dashboard. See the Custom Reports Guide for a full walkthrough.
Your default net worth portfolio is already populated. Open the portfolio report to see a full breakdown of your assets and liabilities and how they compare to the previous period.
If you've set up a budget, check the budget report to see how your current spending or saving compares to your goals — at the overall, category, and subcategory levels.
Try a monthly expense report by category to see where your money is going. Pie charts are great for a quick overview; bar charts are better for tracking trends over time.
Explore the custom report builder to create chart-based reports tailored to your specific questions. Start from a template — like daily cash flow, monthly expenses by category, or net worth growth — and customize the filters, time period, and chart type to show exactly what you want to see.
BudgetViz is privacy-first — your data lives on your device and never leaves it unless you choose to back it up. But it's important to set up protection so your data is both safe and private.
Enable backups to protect against data loss. You can back up locally on your device or to your own Google Drive account. For peace of mind, enable automatic nightly backups so your data is always protected without you having to think about it.
Protect access to your financial data with fingerprint or face unlock. This ensures that only you can open BudgetViz, even if someone else has access to your phone.
Don't skip backups. Since all your data is stored locally, your phone is the only place it exists. A lost or broken phone without a backup means losing all your financial history. Google Drive backups are strongly recommended.
With the essentials in place, here are a few optional settings that can further improve your experience.
If you travel across time zones, setting a home time zone ensures your reports stay consistent — transactions and periods are always aligned to where you consider "home", regardless of where you are when you add them.
Fine-tune how and when you get notified about upcoming payments. Adjust the reminder timing so it works with your routine — whether you prefer a heads-up a day before or on the morning of.
If you use recurring transactions that respect business days, you can define custom holidays and non-business days specific to your country or situation. Recurring payments will automatically skip these dates.
BudgetViz offers extensive theming and customization — colors, layout preferences, and Material Design 3 dynamic themes. Make the app feel like yours.
If your bank or payment apps send notifications for transactions, you can turn them into automatic entries in BudgetViz. Define a notification template with a pattern that matches your notifications — BudgetViz will intercept them and create transactions hands-free, with the right account, category, and amount filled in automatically. See the Auto-Capture Transactions guide for details.
If you have savings, investment, retirement, or crypto accounts, you can set an expected annual return rate on each one. BudgetViz will project the long-term growth of those accounts — combining your current balance, recurring contributions, and compounding returns month by month. You can also explore what-if scenarios to see the impact of extra contributions. See the forecasting & projections guide for details.
For power users, BudgetViz supports adding transactions via deep links — enabling integration with automation tools like Tasker or Shortcuts for fully hands-free transaction logging. See the deep links guide for details.