This article provides an introduction to Transactions, Tagging and Budgeting. We will run through what each of them mean and a very simple example to show you how they all work together.
Introduction
Ever wondered how much you spend on lunch in a month? How much went out of your Amazon? Or where you could save a little extra? Transaction, Tags and Budgets are the backbone features of Money Dashboard Classic. Gaining an understanding of these features and setting them up will then enable the other features within the application (such as Planner, Balance History and Incoming vs Outgoing) to accurately help you plan your finances better.
What is a Transaction?
Transactions are payments that that come through the bank accounts you have linked - they can either be positive (incoming) or negative (outgoing)
When you connect your bank accounts you’ll see all the payments you've made and received. We call these transactions. Each transaction contains a date, description, a Tag and an amount. Now you’ll see some of these transactions are already ‘tagged’ by some of our software ninjas. We will go into more depth for assigning tags to transactions later on.
What is a Tag?
Tags = The ‘category’ that you give to a transaction.
In short, Tags allow you to categorise your Transactions as you choose. Whether that Spa day is a weekend is enjoyable activity, a health or a special one-off treat we want to make sure you can monitor your spending. By customising the Tags you assign to your spending, you will then be able to get a personalised view across all features within Money Dashboard Classic.
What is a Budget?
Budget = A collection of one or more Tags to track your spend against a set goal
In short, the Budget feature allows you to track your spending across multiple types of transactions (as such, different types of Tags assigned to these transactions) against a set budget. The following example gives you an idea why this can be extremely helpful.
A simple example
You pay your wifi bill every month. If you pay for this from a bank account linked to your Money Dashboard Classic account this will come up as a TRANSACTION. Now the software ninjas may have tagged this for you, or maybe it needs tagging by you. You decide to tag your wifi as a MEDIA BUNDLE.
You also pay your rent, so you tag this transaction RENT. What happens if you want to see your living costs and how well you are faring against a fixed budget you know you don't want to exceed for living expenses?
To do so, you can create a 'Living Expenses' budget.
You add the RENT and MEDIA BUNDLE tags to your LIVING Expenses Budget. This will track all transactions with the tags RENT and MEDIA BUNDLE and total up the cost. Pretty neat if we say so ourselves!
Throughout the Transactions, Tagging and Budgeting category of the Help Centre, we've added a host of articles for you to delve into. So whether you’re a new user looking for some tips or a veteran Money Dashboard Classic user looking to finesse your skills we’ve got something for you.