Step 3: Navigating the Budget Page
You're on Step 3 of Lunch Money's Budgeting Guide!
Now that you've got your budget all set up under the hood, it's time to explore the Budget page. This is where you'll get to see where your hard-earned money is going!
Before we dive deeper, let’s get familiar with the layout. The Budget page can feel a bit overwhelming at first glance, so knowing what’s what will help you feel at home.
Current Period Indicator
At the top, you’ll see the time period you’re budgeting for. In the example above, we have set up our custom budgeting period to be every 2 weeks starting on September 1, 2024. You can navigate to future or previous periods using the arrows:
Remember that you can choose whatever period works best for you — monthly, bi-weekly, you name it!
Navigation buttons
Underneath the Current Period Indicator, you’ll see the following buttons:
Budget View vs. Setting View: Located on the far left, this switch lets you flip between your actual budget and the summary of your category settings. This is helpful for quickly checking how you've set up each category without diving into all the details.
Feature Guide: Provides a quick link to this guide!
Budget Settings: Located on the far right, this is where you can set your Budget Period (Monthly or Custom), enable the General Pool Rollover, hide categories with no activity and no budget, and choose what you will base your income on. You should already be familiar with this from setting up your budget.
Inflow & Outflow Tables
The Budget View is made up of two sections:
Inflow (Income categories — shows all your money coming in)
Outflow (Expense categories — shows where your money is going)
Each table has rows for each budgetable category. For a cleaner view, you can choose to hide categories that have no activity and no budgeted amount. This is perfect for keeping things tidy if you have lots of categories.
Is your income category missing from the Inflow Table? Head over to the Categories page, and make sure that the 'Treat as income' category property is enabled, and that 'Exclude from budget' is disabled.
What each column means
In each category row in the Outflow table, you’ll find three important columns:
Budgeted: The amount you planned to spend for this period.
Activity: The amount you spent so far.
Available: The amount you still have left to spend. You can also think of this as the balance for your category. This number includes any rollovers, your budgeted amount, and your spending activity (transactions) to show you how much is safe to spend in the category for the rest of the budget period.
Rollover breakdowns
When you hover over any Available amount, you'll see exactly how it was calculated. This helps you understand where every dollar comes from.
For expense categories with rollovers: If a category is set to "rollover to same category", hovering shows:
Previous period's ending balance
Current period's activity
For your general pool (in the Inflow section): The first line in your Inflow table shows your rollover pool. Hover over the number to see the breakdown:
Money rolled over from last period's general pool
Money from individual expense categories last period that rolled to general pool
Sidebar: Budget Status Card
At the top of the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see the Budget Status Card. Depending on your budget status, this card will either show:
This is particularly useful if you are using a zero-based budget, and need to make , this is super helpful for making sure every dollar is accounted for.
Sidebar: Action Buttons
Below that, you might see some Action Buttons, depending on your setup. These will make more sense when your budget is ready, but we’ve linked to them in case you want to read about them now:
Sidebar: Budget Overview
On the far right, you’ll see the Budget Overview. Think of this as a quick health check for your entire budget.
Here's what each line means:
Available to Budget: The total money you have to work with this period. This includes your income plus any money that rolled over from previous periods.
Total Budgeted: How much you've assigned to categories so far. This is the sum of all the amounts in your "Budgeted" column.
Left to Budget: The amount you still need to assign (Available to Budget - Total Budgeted). When this hits $0, you've given every dollar a job!
Green = money left to budget
Orange ("Underbudgeted") = you still have money to assign
Red ("Overbudgeted") = you've assigned more than you have available
Budget Status: A quick visual indicator that matches your Left to Budget amount
Understanding Net Total Available
Net Total Available deserves special attention because it helps you understand if you have enough money to execute your budget.
Simply put, it is the minimum amount of money you need in your bank accounts to cover your budget. It adds up all the Available balances in your categories plus any money you haven't budgeted yet.
How to use it:
This is the least amount of cash you need to have right now to cover your budget
Your actual bank balance might be higher (if you keep extra buffer money)
If you budget every dollar (zero-based budgeting), this number should match your bank accounts pretty closely
Note: Lunch Money doesn't offer a reconciliation feature to match your bank account balance exactly to your Lunch Money budget. The Net Total Available is the closest number we have to that, and is calculated based on all the rollover balances in your individual categories or the general pool.
What's Next?
You know your way around the Budget page– now let's put it to use! In the next section, we'll explore how to make Lunch Money work for your budgeting style.
Ready to start budgeting? Let's go! 👇
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