Understanding Your Budget

The Budget View

The budget page is the heart of Daily Bread. It shows three key numbers for every category, every month:

Column	What it means
Budgeted	How much you allocated to this category
Activity	How much you actually spent (or received)
Available	How much is left to spend

Understanding how these three numbers relate to each other is the key to mastering envelope budgeting.

Budgeted

The Budgeted column is what you control. When you type $400 into the Groceries category, you're putting $400 into that envelope. This money comes from your "To Be Budgeted" pool.

Think of budgeting as a decision: "I'm choosing to make $400 available for groceries this month."

You can change budgeted amounts at any time during the month. Need more for groceries? Increase the budget. But remember — that money has to come from somewhere. Either "To Be Budgeted" decreases, or you move money from another category.

Activity

The Activity column tracks real transactions. Every time you record a purchase at the grocery store and assign it to Groceries, that amount shows up as activity.

• Negative activity means spending (money leaving the category)
• Positive activity means income or refunds (money entering the category)

Activity is calculated automatically from your transactions. You don't edit it directly.

Available

The Available column is the most important number. It tells you how much you can still spend in each category. The formula is:

You have $175 left for groceries this month.

Color Coding

Daily Bread color-codes the Available column:

To Be Budgeted

At the top of the budget page, you'll see To Be Budgeted (TBB). This represents money you have but haven't assigned to any category yet. Think of it as cash sitting on the table that hasn't been put into an envelope.

The goal is to get TBB to exactly $0.

• Positive TBB means you have unassigned money. Give it a job!
• Zero TBB means every dollar is assigned. Perfect.
• Negative TBB means you've over-budgeted. You've promised more money to categories than you actually have. Remove budget amounts until TBB is back to zero.

Where TBB comes from

Your TBB increases when:

• You receive income (a positive transaction assigned to "To Be Budgeted" or a category)
• You remove budget from a category (money returns to TBB)

Your TBB decreases when:

• You assign money to a category (budgeting)
• You have uncovered overspending from the previous month

Category Groups

Categories are organized into groups for easier management. Groups are purely organizational — they don't affect how budgeting works. You might organize by:

• Priority: Needs vs. Wants vs. Savings
• Frequency: Monthly Bills vs. Annual Expenses vs. Variable Spending
• Life area: Housing, Food, Transport, Entertainment

You can create, rename, and reorder groups to match how you think about your money.

How Money Rolls Forward

One of the most powerful features of envelope budgeting is rollover. At the end of each month:

• Positive available balances carry forward to the next month. If you budgeted $400 for groceries but only spent $350, that extra $50 is still in your Groceries envelope next month.

• Negative available balances (overspending) also carry forward, reducing next month's available amount. This is by design — overspending has consequences that you need to address.

This rollover behavior is what makes saving for large expenses possible. Budget $100/month for "Holiday Gifts" and after 6 months you'll have $600 available in that category — even though you haven't spent a dime.

Handling Overspending

When you overspend in a category, you have two options:

1. Move money from another category — Click on a category with extra available balance and move money to cover the overspending. This is the recommended approach.

2. Let it roll forward — The negative balance carries into next month. You'll need to budget extra next month to cover it.

Monthly Workflow

Here's a simple workflow for each month:

The more months you do this, the more natural it becomes. You'll start to know exactly what each category needs, and budgeting will take just a few minutes.