A budget is a cap you set on your own spending — for one category, or for everything at once. Pursly keeps score against it so you do not have to.
Setting one up
Pick a category, a cap, and how often it resets. That is the whole setup.
- Monthly — the usual choice. Your month does not have to start on the 1st: if you are paid on the 25th, start it on the 25th and the budget lines up with when money actually arrives
- Weekly — good for the categories that move fast, like eating out
- Yearly — for the once-a-year ones, like gifts or insurance
A budget for everything
Leave the category off and you get an overall budget — a single cap across all your spending.
You can run both kinds at once, and one expense counts toward each. That is deliberate. "Am I overspending on takeaway?" and "am I overspending in general?" are different questions, and a single cap cannot answer both.
How spending is counted
Pursly works the number out from your real transactions every time you look, so it is never stale — edit or delete an expense and the budget moves with it.
- Only expenses count. Income does not top a budget back up: a budget is a limit on what goes out, not a running balance
- Everything from the first day of the period to the last is counted, both days included
Before you get there
Pursly can warn you rather than let you find out afterwards:
- At 80% — the cap is in sight
- At 100% — you have reached it
Each of those arrives once per budget, per period. Going over does not mean a notification for every coffee that follows. Both can be switched off in notification settings.
Going over
Nothing is blocked and nothing is scolded — Pursly is not going to stop you buying something.
What is left simply stops at zero, while the percentage keeps climbing. So 150% used stays on screen instead of being quietly rounded down to "nothing left". Knowing you went half as much again over the cap is the useful part; hiding it would not be.
Budgets feed your streaks
A week where you come in at or under every budget you set counts toward your under-budget streak, and a run of those earns a bonus toward whatever you are saving up for. See the Goals article for what happens to that bonus.
Landing exactly on the cap counts as under. And if you have no budgets at all, the streak simply does not advance — it is never counted against you.