Tags: the story inside an envelope

Envelopes answer "how much can I spend?" Tags remember what you spent it on. A tag is a small colored label you attach to transactions, one transaction can carry several, and the Logbook can pull up everything wearing one in a single filter. Categories keep the budget honest; tags keep the history readable.

One envelope, many stories

A category is a monthly number, and that's all it needs to be. But the spending inside it usually has more than one story to tell:

One Vacation envelope, many trips. Tag each trip (Orlando, California) and the envelope becomes a record: years later, "what did Orlando actually cost us?" is one filter, not an evening of scrolling.
One Fun Money envelope, different kinds of fun. Tag food separately from activities and you'll learn where the fun budget really goes, without splitting the envelope into pieces too small to manage.
One trip, many envelopes. A vacation touches Dining Out, Gas, Groceries, Lodging. A tag doesn't care about category lines: tag everything from the trip and its true, cross-category cost is right there.

That last one is the quiet superpower. Categories slice your money one way, by spending purpose. Tags let you slice the same transactions any other way you'll care about later.

How tags behave

Tags are created right where you log: name it, give it a color, and it's yours from then on. A transaction can hold any number of tags, and a tag can sit on any number of transactions in any category. The Logbook filters by tag, alone or stacked with the other filters, so "everything tagged Orlando at restaurants" is a real question it can answer. Tagging also works in bulk, which makes it painless to tag a trip after you're home, and presets can carry tags, so the purchases you log in two taps land pre-labeled.

Tags also connect to Plans: point a plan at a tag, and spending you tag on the go shows up in the plan, ready to assign to the line item it belongs to. Tag at the register, sort it out on the couch.

When to tag (and when not to)

The line between categories and tags: if it changes how much you can spend this month, it's a category. If it's something you'll want to look back on, it's a tag.

Tags are cheap, but attention isn't. The best tags answer a question you know you'll ask later: "what did that trip cost?", "how much of Fun Money is eating out?", "what has the dog cost this year?". If you can't name the question, skip the tag. A handful of tags you actually use beats a taxonomy you abandon by March.