PearBudget beautiful, simple budgeting. (This is our blog.)

Entering in an existing balance is easy! But before we explain how, we’ll give some quick background on how it works.

When you enter a normal receipt into PearBudget, PearBudget looks at the amount of the receipt, and the amount that you’ve set aside in that category, and it subtracts one from the other. That is, it takes your $300 balance in groceries, and it subtracts your $50 groceries receipt, leaving you with $250. If you got a refund or a rebate, though, or if you had some other special money set aside for that category, though, you could enter it in as a negative receipt. When PearBudget sees negative receipts, it adds that amount to your category.

So if you’d already set aside $500 for a new car (or whatever) before you started using PearBudget, you can enter in a negative receipt for that category, and PearBudget will show that as money that’s now available in that category. Usually, what we recommend is that you enter in the negative receipt with a date from just before you started using PearBudget. So if you start using PearBudget in May, enter in a receipt for April 30th.

Keep in mind that if you’re starting in January, you’ll want to make sure that your category is carrying over its balance from the previous year. Also note that the carrying-over of balances only applies to Irregular categories. So make sure the category you’ve set aside money in is classified as an irregular category in PearBudget.

Absolutely. In truth, there’s a relatively easy way to budget when you get paid biweekly, and PearBudget works well with it: Just double the amount you get per paycheck, and consider that to be your monthly income. Then, twice a year, you’ll have a “bonus” paycheck that you can use to pay down debt or put towards your savings.

The downside to this approach is that you’ll have a slightly smaller amount to budget with each month ($80 less for every $1,000 in your paycheck). The benefits, though, are that you’ll have a much simpler budgeting process, and you’ll still get those bonus paychecks twice a year, which you can put towards Things that Matter. Since PearBudget isn’t tracking debt payoff or super-long-term savings, you don’t even need to enter the bonus paychecks into PearBudget.

PearBudget is actually modeled off of the envelope method. In fact, many people who use the envelope method use PearBudget alongside it, as a record of their expenses, so they can look back over time and see how their spending habits have changed. (Don’t you wonder sometimes how much you were spending on various categories a year or two ago? PearBudget will help you see that.)

Each of your categories acts as your “digital envelope” — when you have money in the category, you can spend it. When you don’t have money in the category, it’s time to stop spending.

Switching money from one “envelope” to another is easy. Let’s say you want to move $10.00 from the “clothing” category to the “groceries” category. All you’d do would be to enter a “receipt” of $10.00 in the clothing category and a “receipt” of -$10.00 (that’s negative $10.00) in the “groceries” category. The -$10.00 will even show up as green, to highlight that it’s a credit. You’d then have an extra $10.00 in groceries. (And, if you wanted to, you could tag the entries with something like “transfer from clothing to groceries” to help you recall the transfer down the road.)

I just want an expense tracker for now. Can PearBudget do that?

Sure thing. A lot of people are in this situation: They know they should set up a budget, but they’d rather just track their expenses for a couple of months, to see what they’re spending.

PearBudget can totally work with this setup. Just mark your “planned” amounts as $0.00, and as you get receipts in, enter them in. The Review page will show that you’ve overspent your categories (since zero minus anything is negative), but you’ll be able to see what your actual spending has been.

That being said, our recommendation is that even if you have no idea what you spend, that you just guess. That way, you have a record of where you thought you might be. For example, a true story: one PearBudget user sent us a note telling us that she budgeted something like $50 for eating out for the month, and after she entered in her receipts, she realized her dining out spending was more like $300. The difference between her initial guess and the actual amount was just as useful to her as knowing how much she had spent.

Several times a year, we meet up with PearBudget users (one-on-one meetings) up and down the East Coast. We meet up at a coffeehouse, buy coffee and donuts, and talk about budgeting and how PearBudget can better meet your needs. We sometimes even give presents (like personal finance books or comped months of PearBudget service).

We meet up with users in Arlington, VA, and Wayne PA around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We meet up with users in Richmond and Williamsburg, VA, throughout the year.

Once a year, we’ll meet up with people in San Francisco and New York City.

Regardless of where you are, just e-mail us and we’ll see when we’ll be in your area, and to get on the meetup list (spaces fill up! after all: donuts!). We’re terribly friendly.

Yes. For iPhones, see this post. For Androids, see this post. For regular mobile phones, just go to pearbudget.com/m, and you should see the bare-bones interface, useful for quick on-the-go entry.

We do! If you click on “your account” in the upper-right corner of the screen, you’ll see a spot where you can change your currency to a different symbol (or to nothing, if you prefer the minimalist look).

Some users ask us if PearBudget can handle multiple currencies at the same time. Unfortunately, in order to keep the program simple (and to not have to deal with things like currency conversions and foreign exchange rates), PearBudget only works with one currency at a time. But it can be any currency you like!