Categories are the foundation of how your data is organized. Every entry belongs to a category, every annotation lives inside one, and every report is read by category. It pays to invest your first minutes here: changing the tree later is possible, but re-categorizing hundreds of entries is not fun.
What a category holds
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Name | Identifies the category and must be unique — the app refuses to save two identical names, precisely so you don't end up with "Groceries" and "groceries" competing for the same entries. |
| Icon | Picked from a searchable box. On the main screen you recognize the category by its icon before reading the name — that is what makes the dashboard scannable at a glance. |
| Color and extra color | Define the category card. Use color families to visually group related subjects (all household costs in shades of blue, for instance). |
| Validity dates | A category can be valid only from a given period onward, or up to a certain date. Useful for projects with a start and an end, without cluttering the main screen forever. |
| Parent category | Empty = main category. Filled = subcategory. It is the only field that decides the level in the tree. |
| Position | Sets the display order among siblings. You choose it by indicating which category it comes after. |
Creating your first categories
- Open Menu › Categories › Create / Edit. This screen shows the whole tree and is where everything is created, renamed and reorganized.
- Start from the suggestions. The "View generic suggestions" and "View other suggestions" buttons open ready-made lists of common categories. Picking one opens the editor pre-filled — you adjust name, icon and color instead of inventing from scratch.
- Prefer few and broad. Between 6 and 12 main categories is usually the sweet spot. Too much detail at the first level makes the main screen unreadable — subcategories exist for detail.
- Save. The whole tree is persisted at once, with the hierarchy and order you left on screen.
If, looking at any given entry, you hesitate between two categories, the problem is not the entry — it is the category names. Names that describe a decision of yours ("Home", "Car", "Leisure") work better than names describing the vendor.
Reorganizing the tree
Under Menu › Categories › Move the tree switches to drag mode: press and hold the category icon and drag to move or reposition it. You change both the parent and the sibling order at once, and it is only written when you confirm — if you leave without saving, the app warns that there are pending changes.
A category that arrived through sharing is yours to place anywhere in your tree — including inside a category of your own — and to order among its siblings like any other. What does not change is what lives inside it: the subcategories that came with it appear locked, because that structure belongs to whoever shared it. See Shared category for the few combinations the app refuses.
Budget per category
Under Menu › Categories › Budgets each category can get a budget amount with a period: monthly, semiannual, annual or custom (any number of months from 2 up). You also set the start date, which anchors the cycle — a semiannual budget starting in March closes in August, not in June.
Once the budget is set, the category starts showing how much of the period has been consumed. If you want a more explicit warning when an amount is reached, that is the job of a Budget Limit annotation.
Deleting safely
Deleting is not a stray click, and it has a screen of its own: Menu › Categories › Delete. When you start a deletion the app counts how many entries exist in the category and in all its subcategories and, if there are any, requires you to pick a destination category for them. Only after you confirm the whole list of instructions are entries and annotations moved and the categories removed.