ClearCheckbook Knowledge Base

The envelope budgeting system has been around for decades and was simply a way of having physical envelopes for each of your budget categories. You would fill each envelope with the amount of cash you wanted to limit yourself to spending. Then, when you went to the store you would take your envelopes and spend from them. This would make sure you couldn't overspend on your budgets since you had a physical set amount of cash you could use.

With the advent of online shopping and online bill-pay, that physical system doesn't work as well which is why an online version can be very useful.

Envelope budgeting is broken into four parts which are as follows:

1. Determine your budget categories
2. Figure out how much to fund each budget
3. Create envelope budgets and fund them
4. Don't spend more than you've allotted for each category.

The Envelope Budgets tool lets you select from the categories you've created in ClearCheckbook. The first thing you'll want to do is set up all of the categories you need.

To add a new envelope budget, click on the Add New Envelope button at the top of the Envelope Budgets page. This will bring up an Add New Envelope form.

Add New Envelope form

Select the category you would like to create the budget for from the Category drop down list. The other two options are explained in the table below.

Funding your budgets is very easy. Whenever you make a deposit into ClearCheckbook, simply split the transaction and divvy the amount up into your various budgets as needed. If you receive money, add that as a deposit and want all of that money applied to a budget, simply categorize that entire deposit to the budget you want it applied to.

For more information please see the following knowledge base items:

• Adding Transactions
• Splitting a Transaction

You can also use our "Fund Envelopes" button to quickly find deposits that haven't been assigned any categories, as well as see deposits from the last 45 days that have been categorized.

Button to open the fund deposit panel

The panel that opens will default to showing you any deposits made to your accounts that do not have any categorization.

List of any deposits that haven't been categorized

If you need to assign a deposit to a single envelope, like in the case of a refund, you can change the "Fund Single Envelope" drop down to the budget you want to fund. In this example, we got a refund from the grocery store so we're going to assign it back to our Groceries budget.

Click dropdown to select a single budget

Select a single envelope to be funded

After funding the budget, a success dialog will pop up with an option to undo the assignment.

If you want to fund multiple envelopes with a single deposit, like a salary payment, you can click the "Fund Multiple Envelopes" button.

Click to split the deposit to fund multiple envelopes

The form that appears will look very similar to our normal Split Transaction form. You can select which envelopes you want to fund, how much each envelope should receive and give each split an optional description.

Split deposit form

If you need to add more splits, just click the "+ Add Another Split" link. As you split the deposit and fund your envelopes, you can see the running sum of split transactions below the list of splits, as well as the difference from the deposit amount.

Adding more splits

When you've added all of the splits you need, click the "Save Splits" button to save the split information to the deposit.

All funds from this deposit have been assigned

To view funded deposits with dates in the last 45 days, click the "Assigned" tab at the top of the Fund Envelopes panel. You'll see the information about the deposit as well as the envelopes each one is funding. If a deposit is categorized with a category that isn't one of your envelope budgets, a red exclamation point will appear next to it.

Viewing assigned deposits in the Assigned tab

If you need to edit the envelope assignments for a budget, click the "Edit" button to go to a search results page where you can click on the transaction and make the necessary changes.

Editing a transaction to change the categories assigned to it.

Have you ever wanted to move excess funds from one budget to another? For example, you have an excess of $30 in your grocery envelope and need to cover a deficit in your Cell Phone envelope. In the real world, all you have to do is shuffle some cash around. You can still easily do this with ClearCheckbook's Envelope budgets through the Transfer Funds option.

Link to add a transfer of funds

When the transfer fund form opens, you can enter how much money you'd like to transfer, which budget you're transferring from and which budget you're transferring to. You can also enter an optional note about the transfer. Transfers can only be made from envelopes that have a surplus of funds and any transfers cannot make the budget negative.

Form to transfer funds between envelope budgets

When a transfer is made, a new icon will appear in the envelope budgets that the transfer affects, and the envelope amounts will be adjusted accordingly.

A transfer icon will appear on any budget that has had a transfer to or from it

Clicking on the transfer icon will show the details of any transfers made to or from that budget.

Viewing all transfer details for a budget

Once a budget has been created, any time you add a transaction and categorize it with any of your budgeted categories, that amount will be calculated into the budget.

For example, lets assume you have an envelope budget for your Groceries category and it has been funded with $50. If you add a $30 withdrawl and categorize it as Groceries, the budget will be updated and show $20 remaining.

The envelope list displays all of your budgets and how much is remaining in each budget. There are several other pieces of information which are explained in the screenshot and table below.

Sample envelope list

To edit a budget, click on the icon. This will bring up a new form where you can change the budget as needed.

Sample edit a budget form

You can manage your envelope groups by clicking on the Manage Envelope Groups link at the top of the Envelope Budgets page. This will bring up a form where you can add new groups as well as manage your existing groups.

Manage your envelope groups

Once you've assigned budgets to groups, they will appear under that group in the budget list. The sum of all the budgets contained within that group will also appear next to the group name.

Manage your envelope groups

Take control of your finances with our Envelope Budgets tool. It's an intuitive way to track spending using digital cash envelopes. Set up category-based budgets, fund them through income splits, and monitor your progress to avoid overspending. Perfect if want visibility, structure, and smarter budgeting all in one place.