The finance tracker

Todowl’s finance tracker is a monthly ledger, not a bank connection. You type what came in and what went out, and the app does the arithmetic across currencies. Nothing is imported from a bank, and no card details are ever involved.

You reach it from Finance in the sidebar. The tabs across the top are the different views of the same data.

Transactions

The Transactions tab is the log. Each row is one movement of money, and you fill in:

• Date
• Type, income or expense
• Amount, in the currency you choose
• Income source for money coming in, or category for money going out
• Comment, optional, for the detail you will want in three months
• Time spent, optional, in hours

Add, edit and delete work the way they do everywhere else in the app. The list is scoped to one month at a time, which keeps it readable and matches how most people actually review spending.

Transactions are stored on the server against your account, so they follow you between devices.

Why log hours

The time field is the reason the finance tracker exists in this shape. If you record hours next to income, the summary can tell you what an hour of a particular kind of work actually paid, which is a very different number from the invoice.

Monthly table

The Monthly table tab is the same month laid out as a wide grid, one row per day, with income and expense columns side by side. It is the fastest way to scan a month and spot the day something went wrong.

Next to it sits the summary panel.

The monthly summary

The panel on the right of the monthly table adds up the month:

• Monthly income and monthly expense, with the balance between them
• Income and time by work, breaking the month down by income source with the hours logged against each
• Average cost per hour, calculated from that income and those hours
• Total time spent for the month
• Debts, a small list of amounts you owe or are owed
• Exchange rates currently in use

Every total can be shown in more than one currency at once. See Currencies and exchange rates.

What is not here

The Dashboard, Charts and History views are placeholders today: they open, but the graphs and the long term monthly history are not built yet. Cash flow, Reports and Investments are labelled as coming soon in the tab bar for the same reason.

The planning screens sit in an in-between state that is worth knowing about before you rely on them. Planning screens in progress spells out which ones save your work and which ones do not.

Where to go next

• Income sources and categories to make the log fit your life
• Currencies and exchange rates if you earn or spend in more than one currency