ClearCheckbook’s budget calculator too, simply known as Budgets in the site, is a great way to set monthly budgets and track your spending in various accounts and categories. To get to the budgets page, simply log into your account and click on the “Budgets” link in the main navigation menu. If you’ve already added some budgets, they will show up as a list on this page. You can also add new budgets / spending limits from here.

Adding a budget:
To add a new budget to the site, go to the Budgets page and scroll to the Create a Limit form. On this form you will enter the amount you want your monthly budget to be, then whether it’s for all your accounts, a specific account or a specific category. Next, you select what day you want the budget calculator to reset your budget. By default it’s set to the 1st of the month, so on that date, the amount spent will reset.

There are also a few options you can choose from. “Rollover” allows you to tell the budget calculator that you want any money you didn’t spend on the budget to be added to the next month’s budget. “Include Transfer” tells the system to include any transfers into the budget. “Include Deposits” tells the system that it should deduct any deposits you’ve made to the budget from the amount spent.

Viewing your budgets:
You can view your budgets from the Budget page, or by adding a dashboard gadget to your Dashboard page. Each budget will list the name of the budget (which you can click on to be taken to a search page that shows all transactions included in the budget), the amount you’ve spent, the actual spending limit for the budget, how much money you have remaining in the budget, a colored bar representing how close you are to reaching your budget, an options column that shows any additional options you selected and a column for editing or deleting the budget.

Editing your budgets:
Editing a budget is as easy as clicking the Edit link next to the budget you want to modify. Clicking that link will take you to a form that behaves exactly like the Create a Limit form. Simply modify your settings and save it.

Deleting a budget:
To delete a budget, simply click the Delete button next to the budget you want to delete and confirm that you really want to delete it. It will then remove the budget from our budget calculator.

Our budget calculator is a great way to stay on top of your spending. By setting realistic spending limits, you can track how close you’re getting to exceeding your budget. It’s also a great tool if you’re trying to save some money. You can adjust your budgets to a lower amount to try and force yourself to cut back in certain areas.

If you’re a premium member, you can also see a history of your budgets and how much you’ve spent compared to what the spending limit of your budget actually was. This is a helpful way to go back and see if you need to adjust a budget if you’re consistently going over or under the spending limit.