Setting up your budget
Budgeting Tools → My Budgets
How Swish's budget is different
Most budgets ask you to invent numbers and then feel bad about missing them. Swish does two things
differently.
It starts from what you actually spend. Your categories and suggested amounts come from your last 90
days of real transactions.
Unspent money carries forward. In an ordinary budget, $200 set aside for car maintenance disappears
at month end. In Swish it becomes a reserve — three quiet months means $600 waiting when the car needs
tyres.
That is what makes bills paid yearly or on a different rhythm from your pay work properly. If you have not
read Reserves and lumpy bills yet, start there — it explains how to
choose the targets you are about to set.
The screen opens with: "Build your budget around what you actually spend. The averages below are based on
your last 90 days."
Those averages come from the last three complete months. The month you are in is left out, since a
part-finished month would drag every average down.
The budget summary cards
The Budget Cycle and Income Sources settings share one editable card.
Budget Cycle and Income Sources
How long a budget period runs, and when it rolls over.
Select it to set:
- Cycle length — Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly
- Next rollover date — when the current cycle ends
- Adjust per-cycle amounts — whether your category amounts should be recalculated for the new length
Match it to how you get paid. Paid fortnightly? Use a fortnightly cycle. Aligning the two is what
makes "what can I spend this cycle" a question with a real answer.
Income Sources (After Taxes)
Add each source of income by name and amount — salary, a second job, rental income, benefits.
At least one income source is required. Changes to income alone keep your current cycle. If you change
the cycle too, Swish saves the cycle and income sources together. The income amounts you enter become
the final values for the selected cycle.
Use take-home amounts, after tax and after deductions. What lands in your account, not what your
contract says.
Total Budgeted
Everything you have allocated across your categories, including money going to goals. Hover the goals
figure to see the breakdown, or select through to My Goals.
Surplus
Income minus everything budgeted.
Positive — money not yet assigned. Consider putting it towards a goal.
Negative — you have budgeted more than you earn. Something needs to come down.
Categories and groups
The main table lists your category groups with their categories inside them.
| Column | Means |
|---|---|
| Category | The category or group |
| Avg./Month | What you actually spend on this, monthly, from your real transactions |
| Bucket Balance | The most that can build up in this category's reserve |
| Avg./Fortnightly | The same average, converted to your cycle length |
| Funding/Fortnightly | What you want to set aside each cycle — this is the number you set |
The last two headings are named after your own cycle, so on a monthly budget they read Avg./Monthly and
Funding/Monthly. Avg./Month only appears when your cycle is not already monthly.
On a narrower screen — a tablet, a phone, or a small desktop window — there is
less room, so those two headings shorten to the short form of your cycle: Avg./FN and Funding/FN on a fortnightly budget,
Avg./Mo and Funding/Mo on a monthly one. They mean exactly the same thing.
At the end of each group's row is a ⋮ menu.
Amounts are editable in place. Select one, type the new figure, and it saves.
Setting your targets
Start with the average and adjust:
- Fixed costs (rent, monthly premiums, monthly subscriptions) — billed every cycle, so set the target
to the actual amount. - Variable costs (groceries, fuel) — the average is usually about right.
- Occasional costs, the lumpy ones (insurance and rates paid yearly, car registration, servicing, vet,
gifts) — divide the yearly cost by cycles per year. Reserves make this work: small amounts each cycle
accumulate for when you need them. See
Reserves and lumpy bills. - Anything paid on a different rhythm from your cycle — a monthly power bill on a weekly budget is an
occasional cost too, even though it arrives every month. Divide it the same way. - Things you want to cut — set the target below the average deliberately, and watch it in
Transactions.
Bucket Balance
The Bucket Balance caps how much accumulates in a category. Once it is reached, further money is freed up
for elsewhere.
Useful because a category you have over-funded for a year should not keep hoarding money that a goal could
use. Set the limit to the largest single amount you would realistically need — roughly a year's servicing
cost for car maintenance, say.
If you see "Reserve setup needs attention", Swish needs to know where freed-up money should go.
Select Set default bucket and choose. If a savings bucket your budget used has been deleted
(for example, together with its goal), select Replace bucket, choose another bucket and save.
Organising groups
Groups keep the table readable — Housing, Transport, Food, Personal, and so on.
| To | Do |
|---|---|
| Create a group | + CREATE CATEGORY GROUP, name it, choose its categories |
| Rename or delete a group | The group's ⋮ → Manage group |
| Move a category | Drag it to another group |
The group's ⋮ menu has a single item, Manage group. Everything else — renaming, adding and
removing categories, deleting the group — happens inside the panel it opens. Search there to find
categories to add.
Deleting a group does not delete its categories — they move out of it.
Adding a category
Open a group with ⋮ → Manage group and add the category there. Choose from the standard list or
create your own, then set its target back on the main table.
Filtering
Configured categories only hides everything you have not used, which makes a long list much easier
to work through. Empty sections show No spend in this period.
A first budget, step by step
- Set your cycle to match your pay.
- Add your income, take-home.
- Turn on "Configured categories only" so you are working with reality.
- Work down the list, setting a target for each.
- Set the Bucket Balance on the occasional ones — car, health, gifts, holidays.
- Check your Surplus. Negative means trim. Positive means you have money to point at a goal.
- Set up your goals — Goals and account allocation.
- Come back after a cycle or two and adjust. First attempts are always approximate.
Common questions
Do I have to budget every category? No. Start with your biggest few and add as you go.
What if I overspend a category? The reserve absorbs it if there is one. Otherwise it shows as
overspent, and Spend Overview records what happened.
Can I change my cycle later? Yes. Swish asks whether to adjust your per-cycle amounts to match.
What happens at rollover? Reserves carry forward, the new cycle starts, and the closed cycle is saved
permanently in Spend Overview.
Where does surplus go? Wherever you point it — usually goals. See
Goals and account allocation.