Budgeting
Budget by your pay cycle, always know what's left
Most budgets assume you're paid monthly and every month looks the same. Yours doesn't. SortMe budgets run on your pay cycle, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and a Budget Cycle Review lands every payday to tell you how it went.
- on Trustpilot
- ★ 4.6
- bank access
- Read-only
- money-back guarantee
- 30-day
Category groups
Household Essentials and Lifestyle Spending: the only split that matters
Forty categories with forty separate limits is a spreadsheet wearing a costume. SortMe groups your budget into what has to be paid (Household Essentials: mortgage, power, groceries, insurance) and what you choose to spend (Lifestyle Spending: eating out, streaming, the good coffee). You see instantly whether the essentials are covered and how much of the fun money is left this cycle.
- Categories auto-sorted into groups when you connect your banks, so setup is fast rather than a Sunday-afternoon project
- Rearrange groups however your household thinks about money
- Every transaction lands in the right group automatically (see Spend Tracking for how categorisation works)
Group caps
One number for all your lifestyle spending
You don't need a separate limit for eating out, takeaways, coffees and subscriptions. Set one cap of, say, $1,500 a month across the whole group and let the mix vary. A big restaurant week just means a quieter takeaway week. The cap holds; the guilt doesn't.
- Set caps on a whole group, a single category, or both
- Over-budget indicators show exactly which group is running hot, mid-cycle
- Your surplus sits at the top of the budget: what's left of your income once every cap is set, before the cycle starts
Pay-cycle native
Weekly, fortnightly, monthly: your budget resets when your money arrives
If you're paid fortnightly and your partner's paid monthly, a calendar-month budget is fiction by the 9th. SortMe budgets run on the cycle you choose, reset when the pay lands, and handle two incomes on two rhythms without you doing the maths.
- Choose weekly, fortnightly or monthly cycles
- Budget one-offs: the car rego, the school camp, the flights — planned once, not smeared across categories
- Income offsetting: refunds, reimbursements and side-hustle income can offset spending instead of inflating it, so your numbers stay honest
Budget Cycle Review
Every pay cycle ends with a review you'll read in one minute
At the end of each cycle, SortMe AI writes you a review: what went over, what went under, what's trending, and what to change before the next pay lands. It arrives as a push notification, so the day you get paid is the day you know where you stand. No monthly post-mortem in a spreadsheet. No wondering.
- Plain-language summary of the cycle that just closed
- Flags the categories drifting over, cycle after cycle
- Pairs with Cashflow Forecasting so a tight month never arrives unannounced
