Categories

Categories are how you answer the question “where does my money actually go?” Every transaction gets a category, like Groceries, Rent or Salary, and Personal Ledger uses them to add things up for you. This page explains how they work and how to look after them.

Heads up: the Categories screen is still being built, so a few things here describe where it’s headed rather than what’s in your copy of the app today.

What a category is

A category is just a label for a kind of spending or a kind of income. You make up the names, so use whatever makes sense to you. “Groceries”, “Dining out” and “Pets” are all fine.

Each part of a transaction gets one category. If you split a shopping trip between groceries and household bits, each part gets its own category. Payees (who you paid) and tags (extra labels like “Japan trip”) are separate things, and you can use them alongside categories.

Expense or income

Every category is one of two types:

• Expense: money going out, like Rent, Groceries or Electricity.
• Income: money coming in, like Salary or Interest.

You pick the type when you create a category. It’s worth getting right at the start, because changing it later, once you have transactions, can muddy your history.

Categories inside categories

Categories can sit inside other categories, up to three levels deep. That lets you keep the big picture tidy while still being specific when you want to be. For example:

• Housing
  • Rent
  • Utilities
    • Electricity
    • Water
• Food
  • Groceries
  • Dining

A few things to know about how this works:

• The big ones add up the small ones. Housing shows everything spent on Rent, Electricity and Water combined, so you can see the total without doing any sums. These are marked with a small “rollup” tag.
• You only file transactions under the bottom level. You’d put your electricity bill under Electricity, not under Housing. Housing then picks it up automatically.
• A subcategory follows its parent’s type. Put something under Housing and it becomes an expense too.

Looking at your categories

The Categories screen lists everything as a tree, with expenses in one section and income in another. Next to each category you’ll see:

• Budget: the monthly limit you’ve set, or “no budget” if you haven’t set one.
• Spent this month (or Received this month for income): how much has gone through it so far.

If you’ve set a budget, a little bar fills up as you spend. If you go over, the bar and the number turn red, so it’s easy to spot which category got away from you.

Adding a category

Press n (or choose Add category) and fill in:

• Name: what you want to call it.
• Type: expense or income.
• Parent category (optional): pick one if this should sit inside another category. Leave it as “none, top level” if not.
• Monthly budget (optional): a limit for the month. Most people leave this blank and just watch what they spend, and that’s fine.

Changing a category

Press e on a category to edit it. You can rename it, move it under a different parent, or change its budget.

Renaming is safe, and your existing transactions just show the new name. Moving a category around or changing its type after you’ve recorded transactions is allowed, but think twice first, because it changes how your past spending adds up. If transactions already use the category, the dialog will tell you how many.

Removing a category

Press d to delete a category. Because this can’t be undone, you’ll be asked to type the category’s name to confirm.

Your transactions are never deleted along with a category. The confirmation tells you how many transactions use it and whether any budgets refer to it, so you know what you’re affecting before you go ahead.

If you just want a category out of your way but want to keep its history, look for an option to hide (archive) it instead, if your version has one. That keeps every transaction and total exactly as they were.

Tips for a category list you’ll actually keep using

• Start small. A dozen categories is plenty. You can always split one into two later.
• Prefer broad over fussy. If you’d never look at the difference between “Coffee” and “Cafes”, make them one category.
• Use tags for the odd ones out. A holiday or a home renovation cuts across lots of categories, and a tag lets you total it up without messing with your category list.
• Set a budget where it matters. You don’t need one on everything, and a few on the big spenders is a great start.

Getting around

If you’d like to jump straight to your categories from anywhere, press g then c. For the full set of keys, see Getting around.