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Getting Started with vondo

Hi. Welcome to vondo.

If you’ve ever opened your banking app at the end of the month and thought “wait, where did my money actually go?” — you’re in the right place. vondo works on one simple idea: every dollar you bring in gets sorted into a category before you spend it. Rent, groceries, savings, that subscription you forgot about. By the time you’re done, every dollar has a destination, and you know exactly what you’ve got to spend on what.

Most budgeting tools tell you what you spent. vondo helps you decide what you’re going to spend. That’s the difference, and it’s why people stop dreading their budget and start kind of enjoying it.

This guide walks you through creating an account, setting up your first month, and pointing at the rest of the help pages.

Create your account (and start your free trial)

Every new vondo account gets a 45-day free trial — same length whether you sign up with email or with Google, Microsoft, or Apple. No credit card required up front, no surprise charges. Use it to get your bearings. Pick a paid plan when you’re ready, or don’t — vondo will remind you near the end.

When you sign up, vondo automatically creates a household for you, named after you, and makes you the Owner. If you ever want to share the budget with a partner or family member, you can invite them from Profile → Households later. Up to five people total per household. See Households for the full picture.

You’ve got four ways to sign up. Pick whichever feels easiest:

On the sign-up screen, click Continue with Google, Continue with Microsoft, or Continue with Apple. Confirm on the provider’s screen, and you’re in. No password to set, no email to verify, no waiting. (You can always add a password later if you want one.)

Using Sign in with Apple? At Apple’s consent screen you can choose Hide My Email — vondo works fine with the private relay address Apple generates for you.

Open the app and click Sign up.
Enter your display name, email, and a password (8 characters minimum), and accept the Terms of Service. Click Continue.
vondo emails you a 6-digit verification code. Enter it in the app to confirm your address.
- Don’t see it within a minute? Check your spam folder.
- The code expires after 10 minutes, and you get 5 attempts. If it expires or you run out, just request a new code.
That’s it — you’re in.

Pro tip: Use a password manager. The strongest password is one you don’t have to remember. See Security for more on locking down your account.

Forgot your password? From the sign-in screen, click Forgot password? and enter your email. vondo emails you a 6-digit code — enter it along with your new password. The code is valid for 15 minutes (5 attempts). For security, resetting your password signs you out on all your other devices, so you’ll sign in again afterward.

For two-factor authentication, trusted devices, and how to connect Google, Microsoft, or Apple to an existing account, jump to the Security page when you’re ready.

The onboarding wizard

The first time you sign in, vondo greets you with a short setup wizard. It walks you through three things:

Welcome — a quick reminder of how the budget works.
Add your accounts — up to 5 accounts to start (you can always add more later). Pick a name, type, and current balance for each.
Pick a category template — vondo can pre-build your category list using one of three templates:

Template	What you get	Good for
None	A blank slate	You know exactly what you want
Simple	8 categories across 8 groups (1 each)	First-timers, simple lives
Standard	21 categories across 8 groups (2–4 each)	Most people
Detailed	40 categories across 8 groups (4–6 each)	You like granularity

You can edit, rename, or delete anything the template creates. Don’t overthink it — pick Standard if you’re not sure.

Want to skip the wizard and set things up manually? Click Skip at any point. The wizard only runs once per account.

How budgeting in vondo works (in 90 seconds)

Here’s the whole concept:

Every dollar you have gets a category before you spend it.

That’s it. No spreadsheets, no envelopes, no fancy formulas — just the simple rule that money in your account should already be assigned to something specific.

It works like this:

Money comes in (paycheck, refund, whatever). vondo puts it in a bucket called Ready to Assign.
You go to the Budget page and decide where each dollar should live: rent, groceries, gas, savings.
As you spend, the categories deplete. When Ready to Assign hits zero, every dollar is accounted for.
Spend more in one category than planned? No problem — move money from another. Your overall budget stays balanced.

Here are the four words you’ll see everywhere:

Word	What it means
Ready to Assign	Money you’ve received but haven’t given a job to yet. The goal is to keep this at zero.
Assigned	What you’ve allocated to a category for the current month.
Spent	What you’ve actually spent in a category this month.
Available	What’s left to spend: `Assigned − Spent`.

That’s the whole vocabulary. You’re ready.

Your first month, step by step

Here’s the order I’d recommend the first time. Each step links to the deeper guide if you want details.

1. Add your accounts

Open Accounts → Add Account and create one entry for each real account you have: checking, savings, credit cards, cash, investments, loans. Enter today’s balance as the opening balance.

For example: Your checking account shows $2,847.13 right now? Type that. vondo creates an “Opening Balance” entry that doesn’t affect your budget — it just tells vondo where you’re starting from.

vondo supports six account types, and they each behave a little differently. Loan accounts in particular have some tricks worth knowing — check the Accounts page when you set those up.

If you used the onboarding template, you’ve already got categories. Otherwise, head to Categories and create the buckets you actually use.

A solid starter set looks something like this:

Bills: Rent / Mortgage, Utilities, Phone, Internet
Variable: Groceries, Transportation, Dining Out
Goals: Emergency Fund, Vacation
Quality of Life: Entertainment, Subscriptions, Hobbies

Don’t sweat the structure. You can rename, reorder, hide, or delete anything later. See Categories for groups, hiding, and emoji support (yes, your sidebar can have a 🛒 next to Groceries).

3. Record your transactions

Go to Transactions to log what’s happened. You’ve got four types:

Income — paychecks, refunds you got as cash, gifts, that $20 your aunt sent you
Expense — anything you spent
Transfer — moving money between two of your accounts (e.g. paying a credit card)
Credit — refunds on a previous purchase (cancels out an expense; doesn’t count as new income)

If you’re starting from a year’s worth of transactions in your bank’s CSV, skip to Import & Export for the CSV import wizard.

The Activity page covers splits, debt payments, and filters in detail.

4. Assign your money

This is the fun part. Open Budget.

The number at the top — Ready to Assign — is everything you’ve earned that doesn’t have a job yet. Click any category, type how much you want to spend there this month, save. Repeat until the number hits zero.

Walkthrough: Say you have $3,000 to budget for May. You assign $1,200 to Rent, $400 to Groceries, $200 to Gas, $150 to Internet/Phone, $300 to Dining Out, $250 to Emergency Fund, $200 to Hobbies, $300 to Savings. Ready to Assign: $0. You just made a budget.

Got recurring expenses? Set up Recurring Transactions so they fill in for you each month.

5. Live with it for a week

Spend like normal. Check vondo daily or every few days. Two things will happen:

You’ll overspend in a category. Totally fine. Move money from another category to cover it. The budget rebalances. No drama.
You’ll discover a category you forgot. Add it. Move money to it. Done.

Both of these are not failures — they’re the budget working. You’re learning what your real spending looks like, in detail, for the first time.

6. End of month: review

Open Reports and look at the month. Where did your money actually go? Anything surprise you? Carry forward what worked into next month, change what didn’t.

This is where the addiction starts. It feels good to know.

Using vondo on your phone

vondo is fully responsive — every page works on a phone, tablet, or desktop. On mobile:

The sidebar is hidden by default. Tap the ☰ icon in the top-left to open it.
Tap your avatar (top-right) for the user menu.
Forms and tables adapt to the smaller screen — some less-critical columns may be hidden.

Most people do their initial setup on a laptop and then check in from their phone during the day. Both work. Pick whichever is in front of you.

Undo (Cmd/Ctrl + Z)

Made a mistake? You can take it back.

vondo has system-wide undo and redo for almost every change you make — creating a transaction, editing a budget allocation, deleting a category, reassigning a payee, all of it. The history goes back 50 actions. Use it freely.

Shortcut	What it does
⌘Z (Mac) / Ctrl+Z (Windows / Linux)	Undo the last action
⇧⌘Z (Mac) / Ctrl+Shift+Z (Windows / Linux)	Redo the action you just undid

On mobile, the same controls live as ↶ and ↷ icons in the top bar.

A few details worth knowing:

Undo can navigate. If you undo something on a different page than the one you’re on, vondo jumps you back to where the change happened so you can see what reverted.
Doing something new clears the redo stack. Standard editor behavior — once you take a fresh action, the future you’d just undid is gone.
A few things are permanent. Password changes, OAuth provider linking, and account deletion don’t go on the undo stack. Everything else does.

Why this matters: Budget apps usually have a “delete forever” feel that makes people cautious — they hesitate, double-check, leave half-done categorizations because they’re afraid to be wrong. vondo removes that friction. Click around. If something turns out wrong, ⌘Z gets you back. Faster decisions, fewer regrets.

Where to go next

Topic	What’s covered
Budget	Assigning money, Ready to Assign, Quick-fill strategies, targets, moving money, the detail panel
Accounts	All six account types, loans with interest tracking, closing/reopening, drag-to-reorder
Activity	The four types, splits, debt payments, filters, cleared status
Categories	Groups, ordering, hiding, deletion with reassignment, templates
Recurring	Scheduled transactions, frequencies, applying due items
Payees	Creating, renaming, merging, deleting
Reports	Monthly trends, category breakdowns, top payees
Reconciliation	Matching vondo to your bank statement, finding discrepancies
Import & Export	CSV import wizard, exports for transactions/accounts/categories/payees
Profile & Settings	Display name, language, theme
Households	Sharing a budget with up to 5 people, roles, invites, switching, currency, timezone
Mobile App	iOS and Android, offline-first, pending-changes UI, what’s web-only
Plans & Billing	Trial, plans, invoices, cancellation, payment failures
Security	Two-factor authentication, recovery codes, password change, sessions

Welcome aboard. Now go put every dollar in its place.