Pro Feature

Budgets

Budgets let you set a spending limit on any of your expense categories — Food, Entertainment, whatever you want to keep an eye on. Pocket Clear tracks your spending against those limits in real time and draws each one as a progress bar on Reports → Budgets. Pick a category on the Add Transaction screen and you'll also see a one-line reminder of how much of that budget is left.

Each budget carries its own period. When you set one up it starts on whatever you've chosen as your default budget period, and you can change it for that budget alone — so rent can be monthly while groceries run weekly. Whichever period a budget uses, its progress resets automatically when that period rolls over.

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 Settings → Budgets.
2. Under Expense Categories, tap the category you want to limit.
3. Choose the period for this budget — monthly, weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly or yearly.
4. Enter your spending limit amount.
5. Tap Save. The category now shows its limit in the list, and a progress bar appears on Reports → Budgets.

A different amount each month

Not every month costs the same. If a category needs more room in December and less in February, you don't have to keep editing the limit as the year goes by — set all twelve at once and leave it alone.

1. Open Settings → Budgets and tap the category.
2. Make sure its period is Monthly. Per-month amounts only apply to monthly budgets, so the switch is hidden for every other period.
3. Turn on Different amount each month. The list of twelve months opens straight away.
4. Each month arrives pre-filled with the amount you typed above, so you only change the ones that are different. Close the list and tap Save.

That pre-fill isn't a one-off starting point — it's how the months you never touch keep behaving. Change the main amount later and every untouched month moves with it, while the months you set by hand stay exactly where you put them. If you want a month to go back to following the main amount, clear its field and save.

The twelve amounts repeat every year. They're keyed to the calendar month rather than to a particular year, so a December amount applies to every December until you change it. Each one has to be a real amount above zero; a blank or unusable entry simply means "this month follows the main amount".

To open the list of months again later, tap Monthly amounts under the switch on iPhone. On Android, switch Different amount each month off and back on.

What you see is the amount in force for the period you're looking at. Move Reports → Budgets to a different month and the limit on screen changes with it, as does the remaining-budget line on Add Transaction. The one exception is the list in Settings → Budgets: it isn't tied to a period you're browsing, so it always shows the current month's amount.

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.

Where budgets are set, and adding more

Budgets are always created and edited in Settings → Budgets; Reports → Budgets is where you watch them run. So that the route between the two is never hard to find, Reports → Budgets always carries a line pointing back at Settings. With none set it tells you that; with one or with a dozen it reads "Add or edit budgets in Settings → Budgets". Previously that line showed only while you had no budgets at all, so it disappeared the moment you saved your first one — which is exactly when most people go looking for how to add the second.

There is no limit on how many categories you can budget. Every expense category can carry one at the same time, each with its own period and its own amount. A single progress bar means one budget is set, not that one is all you're allowed.

If any of your budgets point at a category that no longer exists on this device, that same line says how many instead, so the specific thing to fix wins over the general pointer — see Budgets left behind by a deleted category below.

Managing budgets

• Tap the category again in Settings → Budgets to change its limit or its period, or to turn per-month amounts on and off. Remove Budget, at the bottom of that same screen, deletes it.
• Each expense category holds one budget, and every category can have one at the same time — with its own period and its own limit.
• 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.

Those partner budgets now show their real category name — Groceries, Rent, whatever your partner actually named it. They used to all display as "Overall" regardless of which category they were for, which made a list of several partner budgets impossible to tell apart. That's fixed; each one now reads correctly.

Budgets left behind by a deleted category

Deleting a category doesn't delete its budget — nothing is removed on your behalf just because the category it was attached to is gone. Previously that meant a budget like this had nowhere to appear, so it just sat there unreachable. Settings → Budgets now has a section for these leftover budgets so you can find and remove them.

This section lists your own leftover budgets only. A partner's budgets are never deletable from your device — including one left behind by a category they deleted — only from theirs.

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.