A budget in Talvo isn't a punishment — it's a plan. You give every spending category a monthly amount, and Talvo tells you every single day whether you're on track, ahead, or drifting. This guide walks you through setting budgets for the first time, letting unspent money roll over into the next month, and rebalancing mid-month when life doesn't follow the plan (it never does).
Setting budgets: start from your real spending
Open the Budget tab and choose Set budgets. Instead of asking you to guess numbers out of thin air, Talvo shows a suggestion next to each category: your 3-month average for that category, computed from your actual transactions. Tap use next to any category to accept the suggestion, then fine-tune it — or press Use all suggestions to fill the whole list in one go.
The bar at the bottom keeps a running total: how much of your average income you've allocated, and what's left over for saving. If you budget more than you earn, Talvo tells you before the month does.
Two details worth noticing while you're here:
- Expense and income budgets are separate tabs. You can budget what you expect to earn (salary, freelance) as well as what you plan to spend — useful if your income varies month to month.
- “Apply to future months too” is ticked by default. Your amounts carry forward automatically, so this is a one-time setup, not a monthly chore. Untick it to experiment with a single month.
Pace tracking: “on track” beats “over budget”
Once budgets are set, Talvo doesn't just show a total — it shows pace. A category that has used €62 of €400 on day 5 of 31 is on track · day 5 of 31 even though the bar has barely moved. Talvo projects where each category will land at month-end from your current pace, and shows a safe-to-spend amount per day. You find out you're drifting on day 12, not on day 31 when it's already happened.
Rollovers: let good months help bad months
Some categories don't behave monthly. You spend €0 on clothes for two months, then €180 in one afternoon. A flat monthly budget calls that a blowout; a rollover budget calls it what it is — three months of clothes budget spent in one go.
Open any category from the Budget tab and switch on Roll over what's left. From then on, unspent budget carries into the next month. Spend €330 of your €400 grocery budget in August, and September starts with €470 available (€400 + €70 carried over). Overspend, and the deficit carries forward too — the budget self-corrects instead of resetting to zero and forgetting.
Rollover settings live on each category, so you can mix styles: rollover for clothes, travel and gifts; plain monthly for groceries and fuel.
Rollover start month and start amount
Two extra controls make rollovers precise instead of magical:
- Rollover start month — the month Talvo starts counting from. Set it to the current month for a clean slate, or backdate it to include history you've already imported.
- Rollover start amount — an optional opening balance. Already saved €250 towards travel before you started using Talvo? Enter it here and your envelope starts at €250 instead of zero.
Which categories should roll over? Irregular, lumpy spending: travel, clothing, gifts, car maintenance, annual insurance. Keep steady categories — groceries, rent, subscriptions — on plain monthly budgets so pace tracking stays meaningful.
Excluding a category from the total
Each category also has an Exclude from total budget switch. The category is still tracked — you'll still see what you spend — but it doesn't count toward your overall monthly budget. Handy for reimbursed work expenses or a shared cost a partner pays back.
Move spending: rebalance mid-month
It's July 24th. Utilities is €71 over because the annual electricity settlement landed; Travel has €150 sitting unused. You don't need a new plan — you need to move €71 from one envelope to the other. That's exactly what Move spending does.
Pick the category to take spending off, the category to put it on, and the amount. Your transactions don't change — the electricity bill stays an electricity bill, in the right category, in all your reports. Only which budget carries the cost moves. Talvo previews the result before you confirm.
After this move: the overspend is cleared, Travel still has €79 for the rest of the month, and every transaction stays exactly where it was.
Move spending is the difference between a budget you abandon in week three and one that survives contact with reality. Overspends stop being failures; they become transfers.
A sensible way to start
- 1Connect or import your accounts so Talvo has at least a month or two of history — the suggestions get better with more data.
- 2Accept the 3-month averages with Use all suggestions. Don't aim for ideal numbers yet; aim for honest ones.
- 3Turn on rollover for your lumpy categories and set a start month.
- 4Check the pace pills weekly, and when a category runs hot, use Move spending instead of giving up.
- 5Tighten one category per month. Small, boring, permanent wins beat heroic budgets that last eleven days.
Want to see the numbers behind your budget — where the money actually flows? That's what the Insights page is for. And if your categories don't fit your life yet, here's how to manage categories.