BudgetMaster can help keep track of how much money is being spent in different areas. First a budget spending plan is created. Then during the budget period as spending is entered, BudgetMaster tracks spending against the budgeted spending goals. BudgetMaster provides the ability to see both in particular areas of the budget and in the budget plan as a whole how much money has been spent versus how much you have designated to be spent. BudgetMaster can let you know if you spend too much in a particular area, or if you budget plan exceeds your total income. In addition, BudgetMaster can remind you of bills that are due or coming due. BudgetMaster can be compared to a manual system where a user would take all of the bills and upcoming expenses and record them in a ledger to see how much money is needed during the budget period. He would probably also write down any fixed income such as income from an employer. Then he would appropriate his income against these known expenses. What was left might be appropriated to a savings account. If the budgeted amount exceeded his income, he might try to eliminate some spending that was not necessary.

Next he could take his money [if it were all in cash] and divide it into envelopes; each one having a label for the area it was to be spent. Then during the budget period, he would take money from those envelopes each time he needed to spend some for those particular areas. At any time during the month, he could open an envelope, see how much was remaining, and know if he was meeting his budget plans.

BudgetMaster works in a similar fashion. Envelopes [categories as they are called in BudgetMaster] are defined and a budget amount is assigned to each. The amount assigned could be thought of as the amount of money initially placed in each envelope in the example above.