Creating Funds and Categorizing Transactions
Funds are the envelopes in FundOS — named buckets that give every dollar a purpose. A transaction sitting in an account without a fund allocation is money without a plan, which is why uncategorized transactions show up in yellow. Creating funds and categorizing transactions resolves that.
Creating a Fund
Click the + button in the Funds column header. A dialog asks for a name. Alex creates four funds to start:
- Rent
- Utilities
- Food
- Emergency Savings
Each fund appears in the Funds column with a balance of $0.00. The balance will change as transactions are allocated to it.
How granular to make funds is a personal choice. Alex chose separate funds for rent, utilities, and food — but someone else might prefer a single “Living Expenses” fund that covers all three. There is no wrong answer. That said, the budget Alex will build later assigns specific amounts to specific funds, so more granular funds give the budget more precision.
Categorizing a Transaction
Alex opens the Checking account and clicks the down arrow on the Opening Balance transaction to expand it, then clicks Edit. The $7,843.57 needs to be split across the four funds to reflect what that money is actually for.
In the allocation table at the bottom of the dialog, Alex uses Select a fund to add… to add each fund and enter an amount:
| Fund | Amount |
|---|---|
| Rent | $3,000.00 |
| Utilities | $200.00 |
| Food | $500.00 |
| Emergency Savings | $4,143.57 |
The dialog shows the running total as funds are added. When the last fund is added, the remaining indicator turns green and shows $0.00 remaining — the full amount is accounted for.
Alex clicks Save. The opening balance row is now grey — fully categorized.
Categorizing the Bills
The rent and electric transactions each go entirely to one fund, so Alex uses the Justified by dropdown rather than the allocation table. Selecting a fund from this dropdown attributes the full transaction amount to that fund in one step.
Both the Justified by dropdown and the Select a fund to add… dropdown show each fund’s current balance, excluding the transaction being edited. Alex can see that Rent already has $3,000.00, Utilities has $200.00, and Food has $500.00 before deciding where to send this transaction.
- Rent → Rent
- Electric → Utilities
After saving both, all three transactions are grey. The Funds column now shows updated balances reflecting the allocations.
A fund’s balance represents money that has been mentally claimed for that purpose. The Rent fund sitting at $3,000.00 does not mean Alex has paid three months of rent — it means $3,000.00 of the money in Checking is reserved for rent. The money still lives in the account; the fund just says what it is for.