Pro Feature

Budgets

Budgets let you set spending limits — either for individual categories (like Food or Entertainment) or as an overall total across all categories. Pocket Clear tracks your spending against these limits in real time and shows your progress as a visual bar on the Home screen.

Each budget follows your budget period setting. If your budget period is monthly, a budget of $500 for Food means you have $500 to spend on food each month. When the period resets, your budget progress resets automatically.

When you hit 80% of a budget limit, the progress bar turns amber as a visual warning. At 100%, it turns red. This gives you a clear, at-a-glance signal without being intrusive — no pop-ups or annoying alerts, just a color change you can act on or ignore.

How to set up a budget

1. Open Pocket Clear and go to the Budgets tab.
2. Tap Add Budget.
3. Choose whether this is an Overall budget or a Category budget.
4. If category, select which category to track.
5. Enter your spending limit amount.
6. Tap Save. Your budget will appear on the Budgets tab with a progress bar.

The summary at the top

Above the list of individual budgets, Reports → Budgets shows a roll-up of all of them together — the two questions a flat list of bars can't answer on its own: am I okay? and how much can I still spend?

• A progress ring with the percentage of your total budget used, and the figures behind it — for example $820 of $1,400.
• What's left — "$580 left" in green, or "$120 over" in red if your combined spending has passed your combined limits.
• Status chips counting how many budgets are over and how many are on track, so one blown category doesn't hide behind nine healthy ones.
• A pace line, shown only while you're viewing the period you're actually in: "12 days left · spend up to $48.33/day to stay on budget". If you're already over, it tells you that instead — "12 days left · $120 over across all budgets".

Look at a past or future period and the pace line disappears — a daily safe-spend figure only means something for the period still running.

Managing budgets

• Tap any budget to edit its limit or delete it.
• You can have one overall budget and multiple category budgets active at the same time.
• Budget progress is calculated using transactions within the current budget period only.
• If you're linked in Partner Mode, every budget limit automatically tracks your combined spending — yours and your partner's together. This is always on once you're linked; it doesn't depend on which Me / Partner / Combined view you happen to be browsing elsewhere in Reports.

Budgets when you're linked with a partner

Your partner's own budget limits show up on your device too — as a read-only list in Settings → Budgets, and as read-only progress bars in Reports → Budgets. You can see what they've set and how it's tracking, but you can't edit or delete it — a limit can only be changed on the device that created it.

If you and your partner both set a limit on the same category, you'll see two separate bars in Reports → Budgets, both measuring the same combined spending. They aren't additive — having a $300 limit and a $200 limit on "Groceries" doesn't give you $500 of room, it gives you two bars watching the same number. If you only want one limit for a shared category, delete the extra one.