Quick answers for right now, and deeper guides for when you want the whole picture.
You only budget money you actually have, and every dollar gets a destination before you spend it. Assign your money to category envelopes until Available to Budget reads zero; each envelope holds what you can spend.
Full guide →The category shows Overspent, and until you settle up the rest of your budget overstates what is really available. Cover it by moving money from a category with slack. That is the budget working, not failing.
Full guide →Spending on a card is just spending: log it against a category like any purchase. Paying the bill is just moving money: a transfer from checking, no category needed.
Full guide →The ones money actually flows through: checking, savings, credit cards, cash. Enter each account’s posted balance today and start from there. No history, no bank logins.
Full guide →If the money is for spending, the account is on-budget and flows through your envelopes. If it is for growing or owing, like investments and loans, it is off-budget: tracked for the big picture, kept out of the envelopes.
Full guide →No. Moving money between your own accounts leaves your total unchanged, so a transfer needs no category. Logging it as an expense would drain an envelope for money you still have.
Full guide →Checking Climb against your bank and confirming they agree. Enter the bank’s balance, clear transactions until the difference reads zero, then lock it in. Five minutes a week keeps every number trustworthy.
Full guide →Build your runway: set aside a little each month until you can fund next month entirely, then release it. From then on, income that arrives this month simply becomes next month’s budget.
Full guide →The Climb method
Climb is a zero-sum budget: you only budget money you actually have, and every dollar has a destination before you spend it.
Offline, local, and in sync
Your budget lives on your device, not on a faraway server. That one design choice is why every screen opens instantly, why the app works with zero signal, and why logging a purchase in a basement grocery store is no different from logging one at home.
Adding accounts
An account in Climb mirrors a real account in your life: a checking account, a credit card, a car loan, a brokerage. Add the ones money actually flows through, and Climb keeps their balances alongside your budget.
On-budget vs. off-budget
Every account in Climb is one or the other, and the difference decides whether its money flows through your envelopes.
How credit cards work
Credit cards trip people up in every budget app, so here is Climb's whole model in one sentence: **spending on a card is just spending, and paying the bill is just moving money.**
Transfers between accounts
A transfer moves money from one of your accounts to another: checking to savings, checking to a credit card. The money never left your life, so a transfer is **not spending** and doesn't need a category.
Autopilot and Quick Budget
Most months look mostly alike: same rent, similar groceries, the usual subscriptions. Autopilot lets you design that default month once, and Quick Budget fills a real month from it in one move.
Goals
A goal gives an envelope or an account a finish line: save $3,000 for the trip, keep dining under $200 a month, pay off the card. Climb tracks progress from your real balances, so a goal is never a separate number you have to maintain.
Building your runway
Runway is Climb's name for being a month ahead: a set-aside fund that can pay for next month entirely, before next month's income exists. It's the calmest place a budget can be, and Climb helps you build it a little at a time.
Logging transactions fast
Logging your own spending is the deal you make for a budget that's always honest and never needs your bank login. Climb's job is to make that deal cheap: a routine purchase should cost you a few seconds, and the predictable ones should cost you nothing.
Importing bank statements
Climb never connects to your bank, but it happily reads what your bank gives you: export a statement file (CSV) from online banking and Climb matches it against your Logbook. It's the fast path through [[reconciling|reconciling]] and the safety net that catches anything you forgot to log.
Reconciling
Reconciling is checking Climb against your bank and confirming they agree. It's the habit that makes every other number in the app trustworthy: an envelope is only useful if the money it claims is really there.
Overspending
A category shows **Overspent** when you've spent more from it than it holds. It happens to everyone, every month. The point of a budget isn't to never overspend; it's to notice and settle up.
Plans: budgeting a project
Some spending doesn't fit a monthly envelope: the bathroom remodel, the wedding, Christmas. A plan gives a project its own budget, its own line items, and its own running total, without disturbing the month-to-month budget underneath.
Tracking investments, loans, and property
Off-budget accounts (your 401(k), the mortgage, the car loan, the house) stay out of your envelopes, but they're most of your net worth. The Planner is where Climb keeps their story: what they're worth, where they're heading, and how your budget is feeding them.
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