One budget per category, per month
Groceries in March is its own limit, separate from groceries in April. A bad month never quietly eats into the next one.
Budget planner
A monthly budget planner that speaks up on the 14th
A budget you only check at month end is a report card. By the time it tells you the grocery spend was too high, the month is closed and there is nothing left to decide.
Casshi checks your limits against your real spending every time you save an expense. Cross the percentage you picked and it says so, while there are still two weeks left to do something about it.
- Free plan
- Alerts before you overspend
- Nothing to reconcile
Warned at your threshold
Set the percentage at which you want to hear about it, 80% by default. The check runs on every expense you save, not once a night.
Spend that cannot be stale
The amount spent is calculated from your transactions when the page loads. It is never stored, so it can never disagree with your ledger.
Edits correct themselves
Fix an amount from three weeks ago and the budget it belonged to updates with it. There is no reconciliation step and nothing to re-run.
Budget versus actual, charted
Reports put your plan and your spending side by side for the whole period, so you can see which limits were realistic and which were wishful.
Take the plan with you
Export any period to CSV, JSON or PDF when you need to share it, file it, or work on it somewhere else.
Budget the categories that actually hurt
The instinct with a new budgeting app is to set a limit on everything. Thirteen categories, thirteen numbers, an afternoon of work, and a plan that collapses the first time a wedding or a car repair lands in the middle of the month.
Almost everybody has three or four categories that decide whether the month goes well. Groceries, eating out, transport, and whatever your particular weakness is. Budget those honestly and leave the rest untracked for now. You can add more once the first four have survived a full month.
This is also why Casshi's free plan caps the number of active budgets rather than the number of transactions. The cap is low enough to nudge you towards the handful that matter, and going over it never deletes anything.
Set the number from your own history
Do not guess. Track one full month first, then open the category breakdown in reports and look at what you actually spent. A grocery limit set from a real figure is a target you can hit; one set from an idea of how you ought to shop is a target you will miss in week two and stop looking at in week three.
Once you have that baseline, set each limit slightly below it. Small and achievable beats ambitious and ignored, and the point of the alert is to change a decision, not to confirm a failure.
If you like a named system, the shape of one still works here. A 50/30/20 split maps onto category limits easily enough, and so does zero-based budgeting. The app does not take a side, because the method that fits your income is not something a piece of software gets to decide.
Where the alert actually lands
Threshold alerts are evaluated at the moment you save an expense, against the live total for that category and month. There is no overnight job, so there is no window where you are already over budget and the app has not noticed.
The threshold is yours to set. Eighty per cent suits most people, because it leaves enough room to adjust. Set it lower for a category you are trying hard to bring down, and higher for one where you only want to hear about a genuine overrun.
A plan you can read back
At the end of a period, reports roll everything into four views drawn from one calculation: a spending trend line, a category breakdown, an income and expense comparison, and budget versus actual. Because they share a calculation, no two figures on the page can disagree.
Income is drawn in blue and expenses in red rather than the obvious green and red, because that pairing is the one most likely to fail for a red-green colour-blind reader. It is a small thing that decides whether a chart is readable at all.
Getting started
How to set up your monthly budget
Track first, then plan. Guessing at the numbers is what makes budgets fail.
- 1
Track one full month
Log your spending for four weeks without any limits. You need a real baseline before a budget means anything.
- 2
Read the category breakdown
Open reports and find the three or four categories carrying most of your spending. Those are the ones worth planning.
- 3
Set a limit and a threshold
Give each one a monthly figure slightly below what you actually spent, and pick the percentage at which you want a warning.
- 4
Adjust after the first month
Compare budget against actual, move the limits that were unrealistic, and add a category once the first few are holding.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Short, direct answers, and none of them promise anything the app does not already do.
How do I make a monthly budget that I will stick to?
Budget the three or four categories you actually overspend on, not all thirteen. A plan with four honest numbers survives contact with a real month. A plan with thirteen optimistic ones gets abandoned by the second week.
How much should I budget for each category?
Start from what you already spend, not from what you wish you spent. Track one full month first, open the category breakdown in reports, then set each limit slightly below the figure you see. A budget built on your own numbers is one you can hit.
Does the app warn me before I go over budget?
Yes. Every budget has an alert threshold, 80% by default, and Casshi checks it against your live spend each time you save an expense. You get told on the 14th that groceries are nearly gone, which is when the information can still change something.
What is the 50/30/20 budgeting rule?
It splits take-home pay into 50% needs, 30% wants and 20% savings. It is a useful starting shape rather than a law. Casshi does not force it on you: you set a limit per category, so you can follow that rule, follow zero-based budgeting, or just cap the two categories that keep surprising you.
Do budgets roll over to the next month?
Each budget belongs to a specific category and month, so a new month starts clean rather than inheriting last month's overspend. Previous months stay visible so you can compare them.
Is the budget planner free?
Yes. The free plan caps how many active budgets you can hold at once, but there is no card at signup and no trial expiry. Going over a cap never deletes anything: extra budgets become read-only until you are back under it.
Keep reading
Other things Casshi is good at
Same account, same data. These pages cover the parts of the app people usually come looking for next.
Expense trackerLog what you spend in seconds by typing, speaking or photographing the receipt.Personal finance appIncome, spending, budgets, savings and reports in one place on every device.Savings goal trackerName a target, add contributions, and watch a total that always matches its history.Split expensesShare costs with flatmates, friends or family and settle up without the arguments.
Plan the month while you can still change it.
Set one budget on the category that always surprises you. Casshi will tell you when you are close, and that is usually all it takes.
Free plan · No card required · Delete your account any time