The year grid

Before you start

• Categorize a month or two of transactions first. Categories are the rows, so uncategorized spending collects in a single Uncategorized row and tells you very little.
• Confirm your base currency in Settings. Every figure in the grid is converted into it.
• If your history spans currencies, add exchange rates for those periods, or the amounts are left out rather than counted one-to-one.

How to use it

1. Read across a row to see how one category moved through the year. The small line beside each category name is that row's shape, so a spike is visible before you read a figure.
2. Read down a column to see one month in full. Rows are grouped as Income, Spending by category, Investing, and a Left over line; the arrow beside a group collapses it.
3. Click any figure to open the transactions behind it, filtered to that category and that month.
4. Switch the toggle to "vs Budget" to see each month against its target — positive is room to spare, negative is an overspend.
5. Choose "Set targets" to edit the targets themselves: one field per category, cleared to remove.
6. Step between years with the year selector, or press [ and ] to move a year at a time.

To date, Year est., and Avg

When a year still has months ahead, the right-hand side shows three columns instead of two, because folding actuals and estimates into one number would mislead you.

To date adds up only the months that have happened. Year est. adds those to the projected months, so it answers where the year is heading. Avg divides the To date figure by the months elapsed — never by twelve — so a year three months in is not averaged against nine empty columns.

Once a year is complete there is nothing left to estimate, and the columns collapse back to Total and Avg.

Where the projected months come from

A projected month is the average of your most recent finished months in that category. The month currently in progress is deliberately left out of that average — a half-finished month would drag every future column down.

It is a trend, not a promise, and it does not read your subscriptions or planned expenses. For obligations with real dates attached, use the Forecast page.

If no month has closed yet in the selected year, nothing is projected at all rather than being guessed from thin data.

What affects this page

• Posted transactions in the selected year, counted under the category you gave them.
• The categories themselves — renaming one renames its row; recategorizing a transaction moves the amount to another row.
• Monthly targets, which drive the vs-Budget mode and the tinting of over-target months.
• Exchange rates dated to each transaction, for anything not already in your base currency.
• Your profile timezone, which decides which month today falls in.

What does not affect this page

• Transfers between your own accounts. Moving money is not earning or spending it.
• Refunds and reimbursements. They are money coming back, so they stay on the ledger rather than being netted into a month and quietly shrinking what you appear to have spent.
• Pending and projected ledger entries. Only posted transactions count toward a real month.
• Assets. The asset register sits outside cash flow unless you record a transaction for it.
• Labels. They filter the ledger but never change how an amount is classified or counted.

Common mistakes

• Reading the current month as a drop. It only counts what has happened so far and fills in as the month goes on.
• Treating a projected month as a schedule. It is an average of your recent history; the Forecast page is where dated obligations are modelled.
• Adding To date and Year est. together. Year est. already includes the To date figure.
• Setting a target to zero to mean "no target". Clear the field instead — zero reads as "I plan to spend nothing here", so every purchase shows as an overspend.
• Assuming a missing category means missing money. It is usually uncategorized spending, and the alert line above the grid says so.

FAQ

Where this lives in the app

• Dashboard
• Transactions
• Forecast

Related articles

• Spending targets

  Give a category a monthly target, then read the whole year against it in the grid.

• Transactions

  Every money movement in TallyFolio is a transaction. Learn the types, the statuses, and how to keep them categorized.

• Forecast

  See projected cash over the next 30, 60, or 90 days under three scenarios, plus what your credit-card statements are heading toward.

• Reports

  Historical, read-only analysis of spending and merchants over any period you choose.