Pro Feature

Savings Goals

Savings Goals help you set a target amount for something you want to save for — a vacation, emergency fund, new laptop, or anything else — and track your progress over time. Each goal has a name, a target amount, and a running total of how much you have saved so far.

You add contributions to a goal manually whenever you set money aside. This keeps you in control and makes the process intentional — every contribution is a conscious decision. The goal screen shows a progress bar and the percentage complete, so you always know how close you are.

You can have multiple savings goals active at the same time. Each one is independent, so you can save for a vacation while also building an emergency fund. When you reach your target, the goal is marked as complete — you'll see a checkmark next to it in your goals list, and it stays there until you delete it.

Your goals and every contribution and withdrawal against them travel with Cloud Sync. Set a goal up on your phone and it's on your tablet too; reinstall the app or move to a new device, sign in, and your goals come back with the progress you'd already made. Before this, goals lived only on the device that created them.

How to create a savings goal

1. Open Pocket Clear and go to Settings → Savings Goals.
2. Tap the + button.
3. Enter a name (e.g., "Summer Trip") and a target amount.
4. On iPhone, you can also optionally set a target date to track whether you're on pace. This isn't available on Android yet.
5. Tap Save. Your goal appears with a progress bar starting at 0%.
6. To add a contribution, tap the goal, enter the amount you're setting aside, and tap Add.

Funding a goal with real money (optional)

When you add a contribution, you can optionally choose a payment method for it — this is what decides whether the contribution moves real money or just updates a counter:

• Leave the payment method empty and the contribution is counter-only, exactly as savings goals have always worked. It increases the goal's saved total and nothing else — your balance for any payment method is untouched.
• Choose a payment method and the contribution also records a real expense from that payment method, for the same amount. That payment method's balance drops by the contribution amount, because the money has actually moved out of your everyday spending and into this goal. In your transaction history, that row carries its own set-aside icon and shows in a neutral tone, not the red used for a purchase — so it's never mistaken for spending at a glance.

Either way, a contribution is never counted as spending in Reports — it doesn't appear in your category breakdown and it never counts against a budget, even when it moves real money out of a payment method. That's true no matter what. Whether a funded contribution also moves your Money In/Money Out and balance figures is a separate, optional choice — see Counting a set-aside as money out below.

This is the one way a funded contribution differs from an inter-account transfer: a transfer just moves money between two of your own payment methods, so it's left out of these totals entirely. A funded contribution is money that has actually gone out — Pocket Clear keeps it out of your spending analysis regardless, and whether it counts toward your cash flow is up to you.

Not choosing a payment method is the default, and it's exactly what every existing goal keeps doing — nothing changes unless you deliberately pick one.

Withdrawing from a goal

If you need to take money back out of a goal, you can record a withdrawal. Open the goal and tap Withdraw, then enter the amount. The withdrawal reduces the goal's saved total — it will never go below zero, so if you try to withdraw more than the goal currently holds the withdrawal is refused rather than trimmed. Pocket Clear tells you the most you can take out, and the Withdraw button stays unavailable until you lower the amount to that or less.

The same payment-method choice applies here too: choose a payment method for the withdrawal and Pocket Clear records real income into that account — the money comes back to you — while reducing the goal's saved total. Leave it empty and only the counter goes down. Withdrawals appear separately from contributions in the goal's history, so you always have a clear record of both what went in and what came out. A withdrawal always reverses whatever the original funding did to your Money In/Money Out and balance — see below for what that means under each setting.

Counting a set-aside as money out

Fund a goal with a payment method and, as above, Pocket Clear writes one real transaction — the money genuinely left that account. It shows up in your history with its own set-aside icon, in a neutral tone rather than the red used for an actual purchase, so you can tell it apart from a purchase at a glance.

What's still your choice is whether that transaction also moves your bigger-picture totals. Settings → Data → Count savings as money out controls this — it sits right next to Carry over balance, and it's off by default.

That last row is the whole point, and it holds under either setting: a set-aside is never spending. Turning this on only changes whether the money shows up as having left — it never makes a set-aside count against a budget, show up in your category breakdown, or add to Spent today.

For example — say your balance reads $1,000 and you fund a goal with $200 from a payment method:

• Toggle off (default): Money Out and your balance don't move — they still read exactly as if the $200 had never left. Spent today, your category breakdown, and any budget are unaffected, as always.
• Toggle on: Money Out rises by $200 and your balance drops to $800. Spent today, your category breakdown, and any budget are still unaffected — that's the row that never changes.
• Withdraw the $200 later and the reversal follows whichever setting was on: with the toggle on, Money In rises by $200 and your balance returns to $1,000; with it off, nothing moves, because nothing moved when you set it aside either.

Like Carry over balance and the settings under Appearance, this is a per-device setting — it isn't synced. Turn it on on your phone and it stays off on your tablet, even though both are signed in to the same account and see the same goals.

Tips for reaching your goals

• Contribute regularly, even if the amounts are small — and set a target date on iPhone to track whether you're on pace.
• Use the Budgets feature to limit spending in other categories, freeing up money for savings.
• A contribution never counts as spending — no category breakdown, no budget — whether or not you chose a payment method for it, and whichever way you've set Count savings as money out. Whether it counts as money out and balance is exactly what that setting controls.
• On Android, you can edit the target amount or name of a goal at any time without losing your contribution history. On iPhone, this isn't available yet — delete and recreate the goal if it needs to change.