How to track monthly expenses

Import last month's bank statement

To track monthly expenses, run one routine a month and start it with the bank statement. Export the previous month's statement from your online banking as a CSV or PDF and import it, picking the wallet the account belongs to, and every row comes back as a draft with a category and a budget already suggested.

If your spending crosses several accounts, repeat the import for each one. Rows that match something you already recorded are flagged as duplicates, so an overlap between two exports is caught rather than counted twice.

Clear the drafts

Skim what arrived. Fix the labels that landed wrong and decide what happens to anything flagged as a duplicate. Then publish. Drafts you have not published stay out of the month's totals, so the month is not readable until this sweep is done.

Most rows only need a glance. Your work is the exceptions.

Sweep in the paper receipts

Cash never reaches a bank statement. Photograph the receipts you collected during the month and each one arrives the same way an imported row does: drafted, categorized, and waiting in the same review, while the odd cash purchase with no receipt can be entered by hand.

Read the month in Stats

Open Stats and pick the month. The Category tab shows the month as one slice per category, and a large Uncategorized slice is usually the first thing worth fixing. The Budgets tab breaks the same month down by budget, shared budgets included.

Income sits alongside: monthly totals for what came in and what went out, and a daily chart for each.

Track every month the same way

The routine matters more than the timing. Import each month and the picture stays honest. Skip one and that month reads thin rather than cheap, and comparing months only means something when every month got the same treatment.