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UnderBudget

UnderBudget is a tool for personal budget management and analysis.

Everything about UnderBudget is based on the concept of a budget--a set of estimates for incomes and expenses to occur over some period of time. Budgets can be created and managed through UnderBudget by creating and modifying the estimates that define a budget. Estimates can be hierarchical in structure, forming categories and sub-categories as desired. Each estimate is defined by a dollar amount and a set of rules for assigning imported financial transactions to the estimates.

The key feature of UnderBudget is its ability to import financial transactions from various sources (GnuCash, Quicken, Mint.com, etc.) and assign them to estimates according to the defined estimate rules. Assignment rules are flexible enough to allow wide, catch-all estimates as well as specific estimates.

Once transactions have been imported and assigned, UnderBudget analyzes the estimated dollar amounts and actual dollar amounts for each estimate to determine whether the estimate is over- or under-budget.

While many budgeting tools allow retrospective analysis (i.e., showing where money went), UnderBudget promotes "real-time" analysis. That is, continual review of the budget and progress-to-date during a budgeting period to empower users to control where their money is going.

For example, a user has set up a monthly budget with an "eating out" estimate of $100. During the month, the user can track how much they have already spent, how much is left to spend, and make adjustments as necessary to stay within their original budget.

To assist users with long-term financial planning, UnderBudget can calculate the estimated and actual ending balance for a given budgeting period. Over the course of the budgeting period, UnderBudget will take into account estimates that have gone over-budget and estimates that are complete, or final, and are under-budget when calculating the ending balance.

At no point does UnderBudget attempt to provide financial advise. It is simply a tool for defining budgets and tracking the to-date progress of those budgets.

See the Roadmap for more info.