Budgeting app recommendations especially handling split-transactions
Hi! I’m looking for recommendations for a budgeting app. I currently have an Excel sheet with my estimated monthly budget, including recurring expenses, savings contributions, and estimated spending by category. Now I want to compare that budget with what I’m…
Hi! I’m looking for recommendations for a budgeting app. I currently have an Excel sheet with my estimated monthly budget, including recurring expenses, savings contributions, and estimated spending by category. Now I want to compare that budget with what I’m actually spending and saving so I can adjust each category. The complication is that I share many expenses with my fiancée and friends: My fiance uses my credit cards so we can maximize points. At the end of each month, I request her share of joint expenses and any personal expenses on Venmo/Zelle. I also frequently pay for group expenses and receive multiple Venmo reimbursements, or vice versa. I’m looking for an app that handles this well. Ideally, it would have: Good categorization of expenses Reliable auto-syncs across accounts Monthly spending by categories and breakdowns Correct treatment of transfers between my own accounts. Example: If I transfer money from checking to HY savings or brokerage accounts, that should be counted as a transfer, not spending/earnings. A way to associate reimbursements with the original expense, or at least just count towards that same reimbursement category. Example 1: If I paid $200 for group dinner on my card, and I got multiple Venmo transfers totaling $150, I want Dining to refelct the actual $50 I spent that month. Ideal: Tags or split-transaction features for expenses belonging partially or entirely to my fiance, and reflect this in categories accordingly. This is so it doesn't look like I'm overspending for two people's worth of expenses in a month. It would be incredible if I could tag her purchases throughout the month and have the app total how much she owes me. That would replace the monthly spreadsheet, but this feature is not a requirement. Accounts I would want to link: 1 checking 1 HY Savings 3 credit cards Venmo Roth IRA Personal brokerage account Which apps handle these situations best? Appreciate any recommendations or thoughts in advance!
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YNAB or Monarch would both be able to handle what you’re describing. The one exception is: there’s no way any budgeting app is going to know “when my fiancée uses my card, she owes me money”. If her points are that important to you, then just get your fiancée her own card and she can Venmo you the points she earns. (Hopefully you see how ridiculous this sounds but that’s basically what you’re trying to hack together).
Thanks, yep I wasn't expecting the app to figure that out, though she does have authorized user versions of the card. I had just wanted a way to manually be able to add that information for certain expenses.
Thanks, really appreciate all the tips! Just to clarify, you use "Reimbursement" transfer category for payments that will be reimbursed (and exclude them from your spending?), but once they are refunded in the future, do you also just count that one as Reimbursement?
Yep, exactly.
I think Monarch would handle this well. If you put the repayments in the same category as your original payment (e.g. Restaurants), they cancel each other out. I also use a "Reimbursement" transfer category for expenses I know will be refunded. There are tags. You can run reports to see the total for accounts, tags, or categories over a certain time period. You can split transactions and then tag, categorize, or note each one. You can turn on a setting to review all transactions so that you get a chance to review everything and add the appropriate markers without missing any transaction.
You can enter the 50 as dinning, and the 150 as reimbursement. Then as you get paid, enter that as reimbursement.
I use Rocket Money and pay $5 a month for access to custom categories and Tags (mobile app only). I also manually change our individual transaction names to say "McDonald's - A" or "Sheetz - B" , then I can search "- A" to find my individual stuff and "- B" to find my husband's. Then I manually put it into a spreadsheet for us. But I could also just make a new category for all of his stuff. For Venmo reimbursement, I just cash out after every group pays me, and count it as Dining. Then I'll add a note that says "Venmo from Steve, Joe, and Ann". Sometimes I'll manually change the date to be the same as the original food transaction (since Venmo has a delay of a few days).