Commingle categories

Categorise by purpose

A category should usually answer why you spent the money, rather than what you bought. Tags are better suited to describing what the expense actually was.

Consider a taxi. There’s no default Taxi category in Commingle – deliberately.

A taxi to a restaurant can be part of Dining. A taxi to work can be a Job expense. The same service serves two completely different purposes, and categorising it by purpose gives you a much more meaningful picture of where your money goes.

It can also reveal the real value of an activity. Keeping job-related expenses alongside your salary, for example, helps you understand what you actually earn from your work after its associated costs.

Same categories for income and expenses

Categories in Commingle can contain both income and expenses. By default, they’re netted together in summaries, giving you a clearer picture of the overall financial impact of a category.

Say you sell your old car for $10,000 and buy a new one for $40,000. If both transactions belong to Car, Commingle will show a net expense of $30,000 in your summaries.

The same principle works for less obvious income. Find some spare change in your sofa? You could treat it as income from Furniture. Discover an ancient treasure while hiking? Clearly, that can go under Holidays and reduce your travel spending.

Once again, think about the purpose of the money rather than simply what the transaction was.

Look at the bigger picture

Commingle intentionally groups some expenses differently from traditional budgeting apps.

Things like nightlife, personal indulgences and even the cost of owning a car are grouped under Entertainment by default. A car costs money and loses value over time, while alternatives such as public transport may be available. Seeing those costs together can make the financial impact of your lifestyle choices easier to understand.

If you want to take this idea further, the next time you refuel, think back over how you used your car since the previous fill-up. You could distribute part of the expense across the purposes those journeys served, using the approximate cost of public transport as a reference, and leave the remainder under Car. This can give you an even clearer picture of what your activities really cost – and what you pay for the convenience of having a car.

Add detail with subcategories

You don’t have to sacrifice detail to categorise by purpose.

By default, Dining is broken down into subcategories such as Restaurants, Groceries, Coffee and Desserts.

Your main categories show the bigger picture, while subcategories let you explore it in as much detail as you need.

Be careful when changing defaults

Default categories are also the ones your friends are most likely to use when adding shared transactions involving you.

Changing the meaning of one completely may therefore create confusion. A friend could select a familiar category expecting its original meaning while it represents something entirely different for you.

If a default category doesn’t fit the way you manage your finances, consider deleting it and creating a new one instead of repurposing it.

Your finances, your rules

These are principles we believe make categories more useful – not rules you have to follow.

Commingle is designed to help you organise your finances your way. Keep the defaults, customise them or build your own system entirely.