Inflation can be a scary prospect for many people, as it can erode the value of their hard-earned money over time. However, there are steps you can take to manage your money in preparation for inflation. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some practical tips to help you prepare for inflation and protect your financial […]
While the main reason to create a budget is to save, budgeting is also great to define your income and expenses. By attaining a realistic idea of how much you can save each month, you’ll be able to reach your long term goals sustainably – such as saving up for that deposit on a house […]
In Canada, the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is $243,660. To make that number a little easier to get your head around, that’s $1,070 a month per child. Of course, you need to factor in that most new mothers spend the first year of their child’s life – if […]
When it comes to saving money, some of the typical methods that might cross your mind include using coupons, reducing the heat or air conditioning in your house, or steering clear of excessive personal spending. While all of those are great strategies, have you ever thought about the things in your life you can actually […]
We’ve integrated a Kids Budgeting page to help parents teach kids about how to budget money. We will be continuing to update this page based on user feedback to make it as easy as possible for kids to understand. This is mainly a simplified version of our My Budget page with more visuals to make […]
One of the problems when importing your transactions is that the payee name can be unique for each transactions with a reference number. You can fix this on the import by applying a rule that will convert the payee name to something more common (for example: Starbucks 33323151 would convert to just Starbucks). However, if […]
This tip is to help you quickly categorize uncategorized transactions to prepare for your taxes. First go to the My Transactions page and click “Transaction Search” at the top of the page. From the right side of the page, select the categories and change it to “No Category” Change “This Month” to “All” Scan through […]
When you first click on the balance account link either on the My Accounts page or under the account transactions on the My Transactions page, you are presented with 3 options: Balance only cleared or reconciled transactions Balance all transactions including unreconciled Reconcile all unreconciled transactions. The first option is mainly for users who write […]
We’ve updated the design of our Blog to a new format. This provides more flexibility to post financial information, site updates, and video tutorials about the BudgetTracker website. If you have feedback on our new design or would like to get help on the BudgetTracker website, please email us at support@budgettracker.com
On the website, we’ve implemented a Charts Module that will allow you to see a quick summary of your spending and account forecasting. To view, click on the update modules link and choose the Chart Summaries module. On our new mobile site, you’ll now see a Charts link under the more section which will also […]
The main thing to keep in mind when setting up a credit is that we offer 2 main screens for credit card setup. The first is My Accounts which allows you to assign your transactions to a specific credit card account for tracking purposes. The other is the My Bills page. This lets you setup […]
Nearly every financial guru tells potential budgeters to start their financial management with a simple (but not easy) task: track every single penny. For Source: How to Create a Hassle-Free Budget Plan for Tracking Expenses
Credit Card payments are a bit tricky to track in your budget. On one hand, you’re paying down a debt similar to your house payment so it counts towards increasing your net worth but on the other hand, if you’re making monthly payments, this feels more like an expense that you want to budget for. […]
A big part of staying on top of your budget and utilizing the BudgetTracker tool is to record all your transactions. This can however be a time consuming and difficult task to stay on top of it day to day so here are some optional tips you can use to remain up to date: Set […]
We’ve made some exchange rate updates. Now when viewing the My Transaction page, any accounts that have a custom exchange rate will get calculated into the total balance which is your default currency.
Getting Started To help get started with the new iPad app, this article will give you a walk-thru of the app. When you first install the app, the Home screen is a list of all your categories and stored locally on your device. Clicking the plus sign in the upper right corner will allow you […]
When thinking about budgeting your money, there are typically two types of budgeting, Categorization and Envelopes. The idea behind categories is that you create separate categories for each expense over a monthly period and allocate from the entire monthly income how much you would like to spend during that month. With Envelopes, this usually is […]
When setting up your Income on the My Income page, we give you the flexibility to split the way your Income comes in. The easiest way to handle Income is record the Net Amount in the amount field but if you are one of those users that want to keep track of taxes withheld or […]
When importing your transactions, most times the bank will give you a payee that starts out with the name of the place you made the purchase at and ends with a long tax id or bank id. To automatically import the correct payee, we have 2 methods in place. The first is to go to […]
When entering in your Transactions, it’s important to understand the difference between types of transactions to ensure your records are kept in order. Many people misunderstand the differences between Reconciled and Cleared so hopefully this post will help clear it up. Void: We’ll take the easiest one first “Void”. This of course means that the […]
Keeping your accounts in balance with your Bank can sometimes be difficult when entering your Transactions manually. The flexibility of entering your transactions before your bank knows about them allows you to plan for your budget and upcoming expenses. If you find yourself too far behind what your bank states you should have as a […]
Included with the BudgetTracker site is the ability to keep track of Invoicing, Product Inventory, and send those Invoices to other BudgetTracker users for review. First of all, to access Invoices you can either change your theme to “Business” or switch to Advanced Navigation and look under My Business. The first page your presented with […]
When recording cash transactions on the BudgetTracker site, the first thing to think of is how does it actually get effected in your bank records. Although BudgetTracker gives you the ability to use the site in a way that best fits your needs, below are some suggestions for how to record cash transactions: ATM Withdrawals […]
One of the more recent features added is the ability to view and manage your Budget using the Envelopes system. This gives you the flexaiblity to manage your budget in either a standard way by creating multiple categories and applying your transactions to each category or setting up your Income as envelopes and then applying […]
Included in the BudgetTracker site is the ability to view your balance sheet which will give you a break down of your net worth by calculating your current Assets (both Cash and Non-Cash) against your Liabilities. To get to the Balance Sheet page, look under Reports & Graphs from the Navigation menu. The first thing […]
Included in the BudgetTracker site is the ability to view a schedule of how long it will take to pay off a loan, credit card, or any other debt you might have that has a limit value. There are two ways to view your pay-down schedule: The first is simply to create a loan or […]
Setting goals though a Budget is a great way to adjust your spending by giving you an incentive each month to save extra money. The BudgetTracker site comes with the ability to setup your goals either by account, or by budget category. Your goals can be accessed from the Accounts page, Budget page, or the […]
BudgetTracker makes it easy to keep track of what items need to be saved as tax deductions at the end of the year. Since April will be coming around soon, we thought it would be good to make people aware that you have the ability to mark your transactions as Tax Deductions. When creating a […]
You may have noticed we added a Kids/Basic option to the dropdown menu when choosing advanced or simple mode. The idea is to come up with an easy way to teach kids about budgeting their money and get started at an early age. This is a very slimmed down version of the regular site to […]
We hope your new year is one of happiness and financial success. We look forward to introducing you to some new and exciting additions to the BudgetTracker site in the coming year.
We try to pack in a large variety of features and flexibility yet still make it easy to use and give you the ability to manage several aspects of your finances. Because we have so many features, some may not be easily noticeable on the site so we’ve compiled a list of options on the […]
With the new year approaching, now is a good time to start thinking about your goals for 2009. Enter the New Years Resolution application. This will allow you to keep track of the goals you set for next year in a convenient place for you to come back and check periodically on how your doing […]
The My Calendar page has several options and ties into the site: Color – By default, the background color of all Bills on the My Calendar page is red and all Income items are Yellow to distinguish these from other Calendar entries. You do however have the option to update the background color of any […]
The I Owe You page can be accessed under Organization from the Simple Navigation menu or under Financial from the Advanced Navigation. When you enter in a new I Owe You, you can choose whether you owe someone money or if someone owes you money. If you select “I owe money to:”, and enter the […]
BudgetTracker not only will track financial information as well as life information such as tasks, contacts, etc. but we also give you the tools necessary to design your own applications. This allows you to track almost anything you can think of. To get started, first you’ll need to go to the Beta Applications page by […]
There are several ways to generate extra income without much work. “The Dough Roller” has a good article that helps explain one way to utilize 0 interest credit cards with no balance transfer fees. The idea is that you receive cash from a credit card that doesn’t charge you any interest, then transfer that cash […]
With the holidays approaching, now is the perfect time to start organizing your gift list. Our Gift List application will allow you to track what your going to buy, for how much, and who you’ll be buying it for. Then mark it as complete by clicking the checkbox once you pay for the gift. To […]
The search page on the BudgetTracker site has several features that you may not have known about. When you search through your transactions from the My Transactions page at the top, you are taken to transaction search results on the Search page. However, you can also save notes, site URL’s, and have the ability to […]
This was created with the hope of providing both additional information on using the BudgetTracker site as well as offer financial information for users to talk about and review. We also plan on uploading some tutorial videos within the how-to section of this weblog to give you more of a visual understanding when using the […]
This post will hopefully give you some idea of how a lot of the site ties together. As an example we’ll start with creating a new bill. When your Bill is created, you have several options to choose from. Category Tie – When you select a category or create a new one, this is directly […]
You have two options for recording your credit cards. The first is to simply enter it as a new Bill and enter the account that it will be paid from. The second and probably more effective way is to create a Credit Card Account from the My Accounts page. If you think about a real […]
The My Budget page will allow you to keep track of your spending limits for all your monthly transactions. This is tied directly with your Bills, Income, Transactions, and Categories. When a new Bill or Income is create, if you choose an existing Category or create a new one, that category will then show up […]
When creating a Bill, this will also be entered into your Calendar and Budget if you choose a category. The way we track your Bill to determine if it has been paid is by entering a Transaction. When clicking the “record” link next to a bill and filling out the Transaction, this will now be […]
