FunancePlanned versus actual, per line
Every category carries both numbers and the variance between them. The point is not to be under budget everywhere, it is to know which line moved and why.
Budget planner for Australian householdsA budget that survives contact with a real month.
Most budgets fail in week three, when the car registration arrives and the plan quietly stops matching reality. Funance budgets on planned versus actual, so the gap is visible instead of fatal.
Free forever · no card required · no bank login · runs in your browser
The problem with a category budget is that it describes an average month, and there is no such thing. Rego, insurance, school fees and the quarterly water bill do not average out. They arrive.
Funance separates what you planned from what actually happened, line by line, and keeps the history. After two or three months you stop guessing at your grocery number and start reading it.
The mobile view exists for the boring half of this: opening the app on a phone to tick off a bill takes about ten seconds.
| Line | Planned vs actual |
|---|---|
| Income | $8,600 planned · $8,600 actual |
| Mortgage | $2,400 · $2,400 |
| Groceries | $1,000 · $1,180 |
| Utilities and water | $320 · $485 |
| Car rego, annual line | $0 · $865 |
| Everything else | $2,100 · $1,940 |
| Left over | $2,780 planned · $1,730 actual |
Illustrative figures for a two-income household. Not real user data.
How it is put together
What the tool actually does
Irregular bills get their own home
Annual and quarterly costs are entered as one-offs on the month they land, rather than being smeared into a monthly average that never matches your bank balance.
Month-by-month history
Each month is kept, so you get year-on-year comparison instead of a rolling snapshot that forgets last winter's power bill.
A phone view for bills
Opens straight into what is still owing and what is overdue, with one tap to mark it paid. Full planning stays on the laptop where it belongs.
What you can do without paying
- Full Budget tab on the free plan
- Bills, actuals and variance
- Overdue flagging on the phone view
- PDF export of any month
Questions
The things everyone asks
Do I have to categorise every transaction?
No. Funance is a planner rather than a transaction tracker, so you enter category totals instead of coding individual purchases. Most households update it once a week in a few minutes.
How do annual bills like rego work?
They are entered as one-off lines on the month they actually fall due, so your leftover figure for that month is honest rather than averaged.
Is the budget planner free?
Yes. The Budget tab is one of the three tabs included on the free plan, alongside Overview and Debts, with no card required.
Related
Other things you can work out here
Subscription tracker Australia
Subscriptions are priced monthly because monthly sounds small. Annualised and stacked together they are frequently one of the largest discretionary lines in a household budget, and the least examined.
Subscription tracker →Debt repayment calculator
Two households with identical debts and identical budgets can finish years apart, purely on payoff order. Funance shows both strategies side by side with your numbers, then gives you a date.
Debt repayment calculator →Personal finance app for Australia
Most finance apps are international products with the currency symbol swapped. Funance is built around the ATO, the states and the super system, because those are the rules that actually decide what you keep.
Personal finance app for Australia →Know where your money goes.
Know where you're going.
Set up your household in about ten minutes. No bank login, no card, no commitment.
Free forever · no card required · no bank login · runs in your browser