Boglr's budget is a set of monthly envelopes: each category gets a target, and your real transactions fill the envelopes as the month goes on. This page explains how the budget is built, how transactions land in categories, and how to change any of it.
Boglr builds the budget from your actual spending. When you use auto-budget, Boglr looks at your recent months of transactions, works out what you typically spend in each category, and fits the targets to your income. It never allocates more than you earn.
Two kinds of categories behave differently when the math gets tight:
Not every transaction counts as spending. Transfers between your own accounts, credit-card payments, refunds, reversals, and card rewards are excluded automatically, so moving money around never looks like a purchase. You can override this for any transaction or with a rule (see below).
Upcoming bills count early. If Boglr has detected a recurring charge in a category that hasn't posted yet this month, it shows as "still due" and is held against the envelope. This is why a category can read "$500 over" even when you've spent $0 — Boglr is warning you that the bills already scheduled for this category exceed its target, before they hit.
Pace. During the month each category shows on pace, at risk, or over — based on what has posted, what's still due, and the run-rate of your day-to-day spending.
Rollover. Any category can optionally roll leftover budget into next month. A $150 groceries target with $20 left over becomes an effective $170 next month.
Boglr files every transaction into one of 15 built-in categories:
Groceries · Dining & Drinks · Shopping · Entertainment · Transportation · Travel · Health & Medical · Personal Care · Home & Garden · Housing & Utilities · Services · Loan Payments · Bank Fees · Giving & Taxes · Everything Else
— plus any custom categories you create.
When a transaction arrives, Boglr resolves its category in a fixed order. The first layer that matches wins:
Anything a layer decides applies everywhere at once — the budget, the Expenses report, cash flow, and Boglr AI all read the same categorization. If you share a household, the budget, categories, and rules are shared with your household too.
Custom categories behave exactly like built-in ones: they get a target, pace tracking, optional rollover, and show up across the whole app.
Three levers, from smallest to biggest:
1. Fix one transaction. Open the transaction and change its category. This affects only that transaction. When you do, Boglr may ask "Always file this merchant here?" — accept, and every future transaction from that merchant follows.
2. Write a rule. Go to Settings → Transaction Rules. A rule has conditions and actions:
Rules run top to bottom and the first match wins, so put specific rules above broad ones. You can reorder, disable, edit, or delete them anytime. Example: name contains "Zelle to John" → Housing & Utilities, count as spending files your rent correctly even though your bank labels it a transfer.
3. Edit a custom category's keywords and merchants. Open the category from the Budget screen and adjust what it matches.
Boglr also suggests rules on its own — for example, when a large recurring charge keeps landing in Everything Else. Suggestions appear on the Transaction Rules screen; nothing changes unless you accept one.
Why does a category say "over" when I've spent nothing? Detected recurring bills that haven't posted yet ("still due") are held against the envelope. If a category has $500 budgeted and ≈$1,000 of scheduled bills, it shows $500 over on day one — the warning is about what's coming, not what happened.
Why doesn't a transfer or credit-card payment show up in my budget? They're excluded from spending on purpose — counting them would double-count the purchases you made on the card. If something is wrongly treated as a transfer (rent paid by Zelle is the classic case), use a rule with count as spending.
Why is a category listed under "Outside the budget"? It has spending this month but no envelope. That happens when auto-budget declined it — a one-off purchase (spending in just one recent month), a trivial total, or a category that didn't exist when the budget was made — when a tight income squeezed a small category to zero, or when you removed the category yourself. The spending still counts in your monthly totals; tap Budget it to give it a target. Categories that come in bursts (travel, gifts) don't end up here: if they show up in at least two recent months, auto-budget sets aside a smoothed monthly amount with rollover on, so the money accumulates between trips.
Do my changes affect my partner's view? In a household, yes — budget targets, custom categories, and rules are shared, so everyone sees the same numbers.