Tier Availability
Essential & PremiumWhat Are Tags?
Tags let you track spending themes that cut across your budget categories. Think "vacation," "home renovation," "side hustle," or "eating out with friends" — things that don't fit neatly into a single category but that you want to see as a group.
Unlike categories (which control your budget), tags are purely organizational. Adding or removing a tag never affects your budget numbers — it just gives you another lens to view your spending through.
Categories answer "what kind of spending is this?" Tags answer "what is this spending for?" A $50 grocery run and a $200 restaurant dinner can both be tagged "Anniversary Trip" even though they live in different budget categories.
Creating Tags
Inline Creation
The fastest way to create a tag is right from the transaction form. Click the tag field, type a name, and a creation form appears inline — no separate settings page needed.
Emoji and Color
Every tag gets a custom emoji and background color so you can identify them at a glance in your transaction list. The emoji picker includes 80+ icons organized into 8 categories (food, travel, home, work, health, shopping, entertainment, and general). The color palette offers a curated set of background colors that pair well with the emoji.
Tag Examples
- 🏖️ Vacation — Track all spending on a specific trip across dining, transportation, activities, and shopping
- 🏠 Home Reno — Group hardware store runs, contractor payments, and furniture purchases
- 🎄 Holidays — See total gift and celebration spending across categories
- 💼 Side Hustle — Track business-related expenses for tax or profitability analysis
- 🍕 Friends — See how much you spend on social outings
Managing Tags in Settings
You can also create, edit, and delete tags from Settings → Tags. This is useful for setting up tags before you start using them, or for cleaning up tags you no longer need. The settings page shows each tag's emoji, color, name, and usage count.
Applying Tags to Transactions
Single Transaction
When editing a transaction, you'll see a tag selector in the form. Click it to choose an existing tag or create a new one. Each transaction can have one tag.
Bulk Tagging
Select multiple transactions in the transaction list, and the bulk action bar appears with a "Tag" option. Choose a tag and it's applied to all selected transactions at once — great for retroactively tagging a group of vacation expenses.
Auto-Tag with Transaction Rules
Premium Feature
Auto-tagging via transaction rules requires a Premium subscription. Essential users can still create and apply tags manually.
Premium users can add a tag to any transaction rule. When a rule matches an imported transaction, it auto-applies both the category and the tag. This is powerful for ongoing themes — for example, a rule that matches your gym's merchant name can auto-tag transactions as "Fitness" so they show up in your tag reports without any manual work.
Tag Reports and Analysis
Category Modal Breakdown
When you click a category in your budget to see its transactions, you'll see a tag breakdown at the top. This shows how spending within that category splits across your tags — useful for understanding what's driving spending in a particular area.
Dedicated Tags Report
The Tags report (under Reports in the sidebar) gives you a full view of tag spending:
Overview Mode
- Summary metrics: Total tagged spending, number of tags used, and transactions tagged
- Monthly trend chart: Stacked bar chart showing your top 5 tags over time, with an "Other" bucket for the rest
- Tag list: Clickable list of all tags with their total spending — click any tag to drill down
Drill-Down Mode
Click a tag in the overview to see:
- Category donut chart: How spending for that tag breaks down across your budget categories
- Transaction list: Every transaction with that tag, sorted by date
Tips and Best Practices
Keep Tags Focused
- Use tags for themes, not categories: If something fits neatly into a budget category, you probably don't need a tag for it
- Fewer is better: 5-10 active tags is a sweet spot. Too many tags and you'll stop using them
- Time-bound tags are fine: Create a tag for a specific trip or project, use it, then archive it when done
Combine with Rules for Automation
The most efficient workflow is to pair tags with transaction rules (Premium). Set up rules for recurring tagged spending (gym membership → "Fitness", coworking space → "Side Hustle") and only manually tag one-off transactions.
Remember: Tags never affect your budget. They're metadata only — adding, changing, or removing a tag won't move money between categories or change your available balance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can a transaction have multiple tags?
Currently, each transaction supports one tag. If you need to track a transaction across multiple themes, choose the most relevant one. We may add multi-tag support in the future based on user feedback.
Q: Do tags carry over when I split a transaction?
Each split line inherits the tag from the original transaction. You can change the tag on individual splits after splitting.
Q: Can I tag transfers?
Yes, you can tag the leg of a transfer that you edit. The other leg (the paired transaction) doesn't receive the tag automatically — this is intentional so you only see the tag on the side that's meaningful to you.
Q: What happens if I delete a tag?
Deleting a tag removes it from all transactions that had it. The transactions themselves are unaffected — they just lose the tag association. This action cannot be undone.
Start Organizing with Tags
Tags give you a flexible way to track spending themes across your entire budget. Whether you're planning a vacation, tracking a renovation project, or just curious how much you spend on social outings — tags make it visible.