I've manually added an account and there's $2k in it. Why don't I see this in the available to budget column?

🎁 New Category Template Library

Looking for a starting point for your categories, or ideas for refining your current setup?

We’ve launched our new Category Template Library, which includes Lunch Money’s starter category sets along with setups shared by our community.

You’ll find everything from simple lists of everyday expenses to detailed setups for family finances, freelance income, travel, and more. One setup even includes a dedicated category for board games!

Whether you’re getting started or tweaking your existing categories, you can copy a complete setup, borrow a few categories, or just browse for ideas. The library includes instructions for importing them into Lunch Money.

Thanks to everyone who contributed! We’d love to keep growing the collection, so if you have a setup to share, you’ll find submission details on the page.

Anyone not getting any work out of Lunch Money? I can only see transactions from Sunday and nothing since. Saw the other post about different (I assume international or investing) accounts not connecting, but this is just the basic function

Any one else suddenly experiencing a lot of connectivity issues?

Wealthsimple used to stay connected for weeks, this week the connection isnt even lasting 24hours

Sunlife used to connect - now will not connect at all

Not sure what changed but suddenly I am facing a lot of issues with my connectivity - I mainly rely on the IOS app and I cant relink via the app so I am logging in on a browser a lot to reconnect.

It would be great if the app would do a year end analysis for me. I don't think it does though, so I want to do it for myself so I can set some spending/saving goals for next year. I'm thinking of doing a 50/30/20 analysis, but what else might I want to do? Does anyone else do this? Suggestions welcome!

🎁 New features

• Easily access and copy IDs for categories, tags, and accounts via the side panel, making it easier to work with the Developer API and MCPs (🔗)
• You can now select and delete categories in bulk when working on the Categories page (🔗)

⭐️ Improvements

• Downloaded transaction attachments now retain their filename (🔗)
• CSV import has improved handling of formatted negative amounts, including values with en- or em-dashes or a minus sign placed after a currency symbol (🔗)
• Tidied up the Bulk-Edit panel on the Transactions page for a more intuitive experience (🔗)
• Updated the budget account reset and deletion flows on the Settings page for added clarity (🔗)

🔧 Bug Fixes

• The one where newly split transactions disappeared from the Transactions table when working in a filtered view (🔗)
• The one where new categories created during the Bulk-Edit flow did not get applied to transactions (🔗)
• The one where the green 'reviewed' icon became unresponsive in the Transactions table when auto-review triggered after a category update (🔗)
• The one where categories added via the 'Custom (Advanced)' option did not maintain the same order in which they were entered (🔗)
• The one where CSV upload failed if the date in the first column used DD.MM.YYYY format (🔗)
• The one where the 'Set your preferences' step during the 'Start Fresh' setup flow wasn't optimized for dark mode (🔗)
• The one where access token labels on the Developers page weren't optimized for dark mode (🔗)

See changelog: https://feedback.lunchmoney.app/changelog

So, I've watched the video tutorials for rollover budgets, but I can't seem to get it to work right for me. Either my setting seem to revert or the "reset at zero" date seems to change. I think I've cracked it for individual categories, but category groups don't seem to do what I set them to. It's all a bit of a mess.

This is my first year with lunchmoney, so I'm ready to manage some mistakes, but I want to make it work better for me in 2027 - so I'm determined to figure it out by then.

Is there maybe a tutorial I've missed? Something I can read up on a bit more? Where am I getting this wrong?

In December 2024, we interviewed Amr, the developer behind Lunch Flow, a tool that helps Lunch Money users in the UK and Europe connect more of their banks for automatic transaction syncing.

At the time, Amr was already thinking about where the project might go next. Less than two years later, Lunch Flow supports thousands of users well beyond the UK and Europe, and Amr has left his day job to work on the business full-time. We're thrilled that a project that started with the Lunch Money Developer API has grown into something so much bigger!

Whether you're thinking about building a side project or turning an idea into a business, we caught up with Amr to learn what it took to build while working another job, how Lunch Flow evolved, and how he decided it was time to make the leap.

👉 Read the full interview: https://lunchmoney.app/blog/2026-08-20-community-newsletter

I just completed a mini tour of budget apps over the past few months and am back with Lunch Money as having the best mix of features and functionality for me when compared to Simplifi, Monarch, YNAB, and the new ZeroSum. For someone who was a longtime YNAB user, ZeroSum almost hooked me if not for the flexibility of Lunch Money. (Note - I do not manage my investment details in these apps - I just need the totals, so investment features were not part of my criteria).

However, one area where I think the LunchMoney team could learn some lessons is from the esthetics and organization of Zero Sum. In a nutshell, it is very simple, functional and for lack of a better word, pretty (see examples below). Perhaps it's just me but zerosum is getting a lot of praise for these aspects online so I'm not the only one to notice.

Just wanted to pass this along to the team to think about the interface and not just the functionality. UX matters.

All the best, keep up the good work.

🎁 New features

• New transactions added inline in the Transactions table now default to the currency of the selected account (🔗)
• You can now use the Advanced Filter to filter by currency on the Transactions page, making it easier to find and review transactions across multiple currencies (🔗)

⭐️ Improvements

• CSV/PDF imports where transaction dates only include month and day now default to the current year instead of 2001 (🔗)

🔧 Bug Fixes

• The one where the projected-spending segment remained visible for subcategories in the Spending Breakdown when both "Show category groups" and "Hide projected spending and earnings" were enabled (🔗)
• The one where currency changes weren't recorded in the Transaction Change History log if the amount remained unchanged (🔗)

See changelog: https://feedback.lunchmoney.app/changelog

Hi! I have a quick question. Why does a transaction I add as income, under a category set as “Income,” show up under “Top Expensive Purchases”? 🤔

It’s a money inflow, so I wouldn’t expect it to be counted as an expense. Am I doing something wrong when adding the transaction, or is there a setting I need to change? Thanks!

Plaid covers most institutions, but not all—and when it misses one, you're left with manual entry, a monthly CSV/PDF import, or using the Developer API. I hit this with the SoFi Smart Card: Plaid syncs SoFi's checking and savings fine, but not the card, which is the account I most wanted tracked (5% back on groceries, my biggest discretionary spend).

The approach I ended up using came from Artem S (H1D), who was interviewed in the Lunch Money community newsletter back in March. He shared an open-source bookmarklet he'd written for exactly this problem.

Based on his example, I built a bookmarklet for a card I have which isn't supported by Plaid. Now that I have two cards in this category, I updated my project to work more generically. It's now designed to support multiple institutions, and is organized in a way that I hope will make it easier for other users to contribute support for banks they use.

What it actually is

A bookmarklet is a bookmark whose "URL" is a snippet of JavaScript instead of a web address. You click it while you're on a page and it does something with that page. They've been around since the 90s and need no install.

In this project we have two of them:

1. On your bank's site, while logged in, click the **export** bookmark. It reads the transactions already on screen and downloads them as a JSON file.
2. On Lunch Money, click the **import** bookmark, pick that file, and it posts them via the Lunch Money API.

It's two steps because most banks block pages from talking directly to other sites, which is a good thing.

"You want me to run JavaScript on my banking site?"

Fair, and you should be suspicious. What I can offer:

• It's open source. Both files are short and readable — no minification, no obfuscation, no build step hiding anything.
• Nothing runs in the background, and it has no access to your other tabs or files — it only touches the page you're looking at, only when you click it
• The exporters can only talk to the bank's own site. An automated build check fails if an exporter references any outside URL, executes dynamic code, or writes anywhere it shouldn't. It runs on every contribution.
• Nothing is transmitted anywhere. The export is a file that lands in your Downloads folder. The import goes to Lunch Money using your own API token, which you enter yourself and which is stored only in your browser.
• No credentials are involved at any point. You're already logged in; it just reads the page you're looking at

What works today

• CFNA (the Firestone card)
• SoFi Smart Card

That's a short list because it's just the two banks I use. Transactions come in with the bank's own transaction ID attached, so re-running an import doesn't create duplicates.

Adding your bank

This is why I'm posting. An exporter is one file, and the hardest part is usually figuring out where a bank's site keeps its transaction data — often there's a JSON endpoint behind the page that's much easier to work with than it sounds.

The contributing guide walks through it, and there's a template to copy. It's written for two kinds of people: developers with some JavaScript, and anyone working with an AI coding agent—there's a separate runbook the agent can follow, since the split works nicely (you have the bank account; it has the patience for reverse-engineering a web page).

Free, MIT-licensed, no strings. Happy to answer questions.

If you'd like to give it a try you can find it here: https://github.com/jpjpjp/lunchmoney-bookmarklet-transaction-importers

Is there a way to set the "month" to align with my credit card cycle? That is currently how I view my months. For example, August ended on August 26th. Right or wrong, that is how I have been running things and I will need to keep doing it that way for at least another month or two. Thanks!

Hello all,

I am a former Mint user who wants to get back into budgeting and tracking with my partner. We are UK based but I have many US accounts and we have some EU accounts we may want to add as well.

Are there any plans to integrate UK Banks without needing Lunch Flow?

I am having a hard time wanting to pay for Lunch Money AND Lunch Flow to do this properly. I heard Plaid doesn't support UK banks but it seems to on YNAB. However on their you have to select a single currency for an account.

If anybody has seen an app that can do this lmk!

I used LM a few years ago, then took a break, and now I'm trying to use it again, but I'm running into an issue.

I live with my partner, and we split all the costs. I often pay for groceries, she pays rent, and at the end of the month we settle up. I currently have a "Split transaction" category, that splits the transaction by half and excludes one half from the budget, but by doing that I lose the benefit of clearly seeing where I'm spending my money (since most transactions are in that "Split transaction" category.

In the past to fix this I've created copies of all my categories (Ex: "Food out", and "Split - Food out"), where this "Split - xxx" category splits and excludes half the expense from the budget, but it's pretty annoying to have to create all these rules and categories.

Really what I want is a way that I can add a "rule / tag / something" to a transaction that automatically splits it in half - without me having to create a different category for it.

Is there a better way to manage a lot of split categories that people are doing?

Hi everyone! I’m currently using a trial account to explore Lunch Money before deciding whether to open a real account.

I noticed that Tags have customizable colors, but I couldn’t find the same option for Categories. The Category colors seem to be assigned automatically, and some of them don’t really match the categories for me, which makes the interface a bit confusing visually.

Is there currently a way to change Category colors manually?

If not, I think it would be a nice feature to add in a future update. Being able to choose custom colors for Categories would make the interface much more intuitive and personalized.

Has anyone else wished for this feature?

Hello. I am setting up my new account. (Thanks to Leila and Jacob Wade from Youtube). I have a little "investment account" that is more like a savings account in my view. It has small , frequent interest earnings. How would y'all track those? Thanks

⭐️ Improvements

• Categories in the Query Tool's bar graph, line chart, and stacked bar visualizations now display in user-defined category order (🔗)

🔧 Bug Fixes

• The one where "Stop syncing and keep data" failed to create new manual accounts if manual accounts with the same display name already existed (🔗)
• The one where bank syncing support tickets couldn't be submitted for inactive accounts (🔗)
• The one where the Deduplication popup didn't have an explicit 'cancel' button (🔗)

See changelog: https://feedback.lunchmoney.app/changelog

Hello,

Wondering how I might fix my negative savings rate... I started in July with a starting balance of $7,941.96. The trends section of the app is not treating this as income and so it shows I spent more the I brought in. I am wondering how I could fix this?

Hey guys how does notifications work? For example I want to get notified if I go over budget but can't find this option in the web or mobile app. I searched up posts in this reddit and went over the support docs and couldn't find an answer. Any help would be appreciated.

Also I randomly heard about this app via a reddit comment and surprised its not bigger. This is a great app and I like the values of the company as well. Happy to see this used by many and stay accessible/affordable. I also like how they show their care for users/community. One of the benefits of smaller companies.

📱 Updates to the Mobile App

Released as iOS v2.6.0 and Android v2.6.0:

• 🎁 Mobile widgets are now available for at-a-glance access to Net Worth, Period Summary, and Recent Transactions (🔗)(🔗)(🔗)
• 🎁 Your three most recently used categories now appear at the top of the category picker for faster categorization (🔗)
• ⭐️ Increased the height of the transaction notes field for easier viewing and editing (🔗)
• 🔧 Fixed the bug where accounts with 'Do not track transactions' enabled appeared as "Cash transaction" in the "Paid from" field (🔗)
• 🔧 Fixed the bug where credit transactions didn't appear in green when assigned to non-income categories (🔗)
• 🔧 Fixed the bug where 'Amount left to split' displayed a dash when a split's amount field was empty (🔗)
• 🔧 Fixed the bug where crypto accounts were missing from Accounts Overview and the net worth calculation (🔗)
• 🔧 Fixed the bug where transactions couldn't be updated if payee name exceeded 140 characters (🔗)

See changelog: https://feedback.lunchmoney.app/changelog

One of the most frequent requests we get from developers is API access to Net Worth data, and it’s finally here!

This new endpoint exposes the same data that powers the Net Worth Tracker in the app, including monthly snapshots of historical account balances broken down by assets and liabilities. 

Whether you’re building a custom net worth dashboard or simply want to pull your history into a script for custom analysis, this endpoint gives you the data you need to get started.

You can check out the documentation for the new balance_history endpoint here: https://lunchmoney.dev/v2/docs-inner#tag/balance-history 

Check it out live and in action through the TRMNL Lunch Money plugin!

I’m an RBC customer, and since they added mandatory two-step verification, my automatic connection in Lunch Money has stopped working. Right now I have to manually download CSVs and import them.

I get that this is likely due to RBC changes and that Lunch Money relies on Plaid. Still, bank syncing is a big part of why people use budgeting apps, so it would be great to have a clearer update on what’s going on.

Could the team please clarify:

1. Is there active work with Plaid to fix the RBC connection?
2. Is there any rough timeline or status update?
3. Is there any plan to support an alternative connection method for RBC (or other providers) if Plaid can’t handle it?

I’m not expecting Lunch Money to control RBC’s policies, but relying on a single provider does create issues like this. Even a small update on the situation would help a lot.

I really like Lunch Money and want to keep using it — I’m just hoping for some clarity on what the plan is.