Feature Guide
Everything Budget G.P.A. can do — from basic budget grading to AI-powered insights and automatic bank syncing. Your complete user guide.
Your financial report card. The Report Card tab is your home base — it shows your overall GPA (0.0 – 4.0), letter grade (A+ through F), and a breakdown of your score across five weighted categories.
What You See
- Overall letter grade (A+ to F) with numeric GPA
- Status indicator: On Track, Warning, At Risk, or Critical
- Five category cards, each with its own letter grade
- "Need more data" shown per category until enough transactions exist to score accurately
- Month navigation to view past months
- Pull-to-refresh for manual data updates
GET THE MOST OUT OF IT
- Check your report card weekly, not just monthly — catching a grade drop early lets you course-correct
- Tap into each category to understand exactly why a grade dropped — the detail view shows the specific line items
- Use month navigation to compare current performance against previous months and spot patterns
Your GPA is calculated from five weighted categories. Each category scores 0–100, converts to a letter grade, and then rolls up into your overall GPA on a 4.0 scale. The goal is accurate planning: spend as close to your budget as possible without going over. Overspending hurts the most; consistently spending far under budget means the budget was set too high — tighten it and your score rises. During the current month you're graded on pace, so being under budget mid-month never counts against you.
The Five Categories
| Category | Weight | What It Measures |
|---|
| Budget Adherence | 35% | How closely your actual spending matches your budget targets, per category |
| Financial Safety | 25% | Emergency fund coverage, debt-to-income, and cash left at month end |
| Spending Stability | 15% | Consistency of spending month-to-month — detects volatility and unplanned spikes |
| Needs vs Wants | 15% | How close your spending split is to the 50/30/20 framework (or custom targets) |
| Forecast Accuracy | 10% | How well your budgets predict actual spending: the average miss, weighted by each category's share of your budget |
Grade Scale
- A+ = 97–100 (4.0 GPA)
- A = 93–96 (4.0) · A- = 90–92 (3.7)
- B+ = 87–89 (3.3) · B = 83–86 (3.0) · B- = 80–82 (2.7)
- C+ = 77–79 (2.3) · C = 73–76 (2.0) · C- = 70–72 (1.7)
- D+ = 67–69 (1.3) · D = 63–66 (1.0) · D- = 60–62 (0.7)
- F = 0–59 (0.0)
The Budget tab shows your monthly spending against your targets. Every category displays a progress bar, remaining balance, and whether you're on track or over budget.
Monthly Budget View
- Total budgeted vs total spent with percentage
- Per-category progress bars: purple under 90%, amber to 100%, red over
- Remaining balance or overage amount per category
- Category bucket labels (Needs / Wants / Savings)
- Worst categories first; ones with no budget and no spending fold into one row
- Month navigation to view past months
- Free: 21 ready-made budget categories — Pro: Unlimited
Category Detail View
Tap any category to see: budget vs actual progress bar, remaining balance, daily budget calculation (remaining ÷ days left in month), total transactions in the category, and a full transaction list sorted by date.
Log expenses manually or import them automatically from your bank. Every transaction gets categorized, scored, and reflected in your grades in real time.
Manual Entry
- Add amount, description, date, and category
- Toggle between expense and income
- Date picker defaults to today
- Grades update instantly after saving
Connect your bank accounts through Plaid for automatic transaction importing. No more manual entry — your spending data flows in automatically, gets categorized, and updates your grades.
How It Works
- Securely connect checking, savings, and credit card accounts
- Transactions sync automatically throughout the day
- Manual "Sync Now" button for on-demand refresh
- Stale sync warning if data is 24+ hours old
- Recurring charges automatically detected as subscriptions
WHY THIS IS PRO
- Your subscription directly pays for Plaid's bank connection service — it costs money per user to maintain secure bank links
- No ads, no data selling. Plaid connections are the primary cost your Pro subscription covers
- Plaid is the same service used by Venmo, Robinhood, and thousands of other financial apps
Claude AI suggests a category for each new bank transaction and learns from your corrections. Your grade itself comes from the app's own scoring math, which is laid out on this page.
AI-Powered Classification
- Automatically categorizes bank transactions by merchant and context
- Confidence badges (high/medium/low) so you know when to double-check
- Learns from your corrections — accuracy improves over time
- Handles ambiguous merchants (e.g., Target → Groceries vs Shopping)
WHY THIS IS PRO
- Claude AI has a per-request cost; your subscription pays for it
- Free users get their bank's categories and rule-based matching
- Between Plaid and Claude AI, these are the two real costs your Pro subscription covers. No fluff.
See all your recurring subscriptions in one place. Monthly and annual totals, needs vs wants breakdown, and smart alerts for price changes, unused services, and subscription creep.
What You See
- Monthly and annual total cost overview cards
- Needs vs Wants breakdown of subscription spending
- Each subscription: merchant, amount, frequency, bucket, status
- Auto-detected from bank transactions (requires Plaid — Pro)
21 alert types across budget, score, subscription, spending and income, plus three reminders. All of it lives under Settings, Alerts & Reminders, with your alert history at the top.
Alert Categories (Free = green dot, Pro = purple dot)
Category Breach
Alert when any category hits 100% of budget
Budget Pacing
Customizable threshold (50-90%) spending pace warning
Approaching Budget
Heads-up at 50-85% of category budget
Projected Overspend
Forecast-based alert per category
Grade Drop
When any letter grade decreases
Streak Milestone
B or better for 3, 6 or 12 months in a row
Personal Best
Your best month yet, in grades, once the month closes
Category Red Flag
Custom threshold alert (C- to D-)
GPA Change
Alert on GPA shifts of ±0.1 to ±1.0
Upcoming Renewal
1-7 day heads-up on subscription renewals
Price Change
Detects subscription amount changes
Unused Subscription
Flags services with 30+ days of no activity
Subscription Creep
3-month trend of increasing subscription costs
Large Purchase
Customizable $50-$1,000+ threshold
Weekend Recap
Monday morning spending summary
Duplicate Charge
Same merchant + amount within 24 hours
Unusual Transaction
3x above your average at a merchant
Savings Rate Warning
Below your Needs vs Wants savings target
Emergency Fund Milestone
1, 3, 6 or 12 months of expenses saved
DTI Threshold
Custom 28-50% debt-to-income alert
Payday Optimization
Suggests budget allocation when income is deposited
Alert Controls
- Master toggle to enable/disable all alerts
- Quiet hours (do-not-disturb window)
- Per-alert toggle and threshold customization
- Push notifications + optional email digest (weekly, biweekly, or monthly)
Three parts measure your cushion: emergency fund, debt-to-income, and cash left at month end. Together they make up 25% of your overall GPA.
Emergency Fund Score
- Calculates months of essential expenses your savings covers, using the larger of your needs budget and what you've spent on needs
- Target: 6 months of essential expenses (a year is even better)
- Scored like the FinHealth Score: 1 month = 50, 3 months = 75, 6 months = 100, so your first month counts the most
- Cash counts unless it's linked to another goal: an account tracking General Savings belongs to that goal
- Investments count at 80% (toggle); retirement accounts only if you turn them on
- Pro: Milestone alerts at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months
See your financial health evolve over time with trend charts and exportable monthly reports.
Trend Charts
- Overall score trend (line chart)
- Savings rate trend
- Total spending and income trends
- Month-over-month comparisons: arrows show direction, color shows better or worse, no change is grey
Three presets per score: strict, balanced (the free default) and relaxed. The exact numbers are below.
Adherence Presets
Strict
Over budget penalized 4x, under 1x. Going over costs the most.
Balanced (Default)
Over budget penalized 2x, under 0.6x.
Relaxed
Over 1.5x, under 0.5x. Lighter penalties both ways.
Safety Presets
Safety Net
Emergency fund 60%, debt 20%, month-end cash 20%.
Balanced (Default)
Emergency fund 40%, debt 35%, month-end cash 25%.
Debt Focus
Emergency fund 20%, debt 55%, month-end cash 25%.
Also Customizable
- Stability: Strict (a 35% jump is a spike, 20 points), Balanced (50%, 15 points), Relaxed (70%, 10 points)
- Needs vs Wants: Aggressive Saver (40/20/40), Balanced (50/30/20), High Cost of Living (65/20/15)
- Forecast: The first 10% of your average miss is free; past that, Strict (misses cost 2x), Balanced (1.5x), Relaxed (1x), all over the last 6 months
- Variance window: Free gets 3-month rolling. Pro adds 6-month rolling and calendar YTD.
Three styles, each with its own paper, type and cards, in light, dark or system mode.
Styles
- Free: Sticky Notes: pastel notes on cork, handwritten headings
- Pro: Glass Aurora: frosted glass over mint and violet light. Blueprint: line drawing on a drafting grid
- Light, dark or system mode in every style
