Project Description
Budgeteer is a personal finance web application designed to make monthly budgeting actionable rather than retrospective. It allows users to track income and expenses, assign monthly budgets, automate recurring transactions, and view real-time dashboard insights such as spending pace, daily spending caps, projected savings, and net worth trends.
The project emphasizes correct financial modeling and clear decision-making metrics, prioritizing accuracy and usability over unnecessary complexity.
Functionalities
1) Transaction Tracking (Income + Expenses)
- Add transactions with date, account, category, tags, description, and direction (income vs expense).
- Uses a clear sign convention: income (+) and expenses (−), simplifying aggregation logic and reducing edge cases in monthly summaries and charts.
- Category assignment is required so analytics are always accurate and complete.
2) Monthly Budgeting + Rollover Suggestions
- Set budgets per category by month (
YYYY-MM). - Shows rollover hints based on last month’s budget vs spending to encourage realistic planning.
- Budgets stack up cleanly into category groups (Food, Housing, Utilities, etc.) so that users can see both detailed and high-level spending plans.
3) Recurring Items (Auto-post)
- Create recurring income (paychecks) and recurring expenses (rent, subscriptions, bills).
- Recurring items auto-post to the month as real transactions so the dashboard reflects reality.
- Recurring entries can be disabled without deleting historical data.
4) Dashboard Insights (Actionable Metrics)
- Income (Monthly): total income recorded for the month.
- Total Budget: sum of all expense-category budgets for the month.
- Spent MTD: expenses recorded so far this month (does not include income).
- Variance vs Pro-Rata: compares actual spending to a time-based pacing target.
- Daily Cap: how much can be spent per day for the remainder of the month to stay within budget.
- Projected Savings: estimated leftover money after expenses this month.
Together, these metrics turn raw transaction data into daily spending guidance, not just historical reporting.
5) Net Worth Tracking (Snapshots)
- Enter account balances as-of a date (checking, savings, credit card, investment).
- Credit accounts are treated as liabilities automatically.
- Displays assets, liabilities, and net worth, plus a net worth trend chart over time.
Net worth is tracked using balance snapshots (stock) rather than being derived from transactions (flow), avoiding the need for full bank reconciliation logic while maintaining accuracy.
Tech Stack
Backend: Python, Flask, SQLite
Frontend: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Jinja2
Charts: Chart.js
Conclusion
This project demonstrates full-stack development with a focus on data correctness and practical analytics. Budgeteer isn’t just CRUD it includes the kind of logic that matters in real products: schema design, aggregation queries, time-based calculations, and dashboards that help users make better day-to-day decisions.
If I continue iterating, the next additions would be CSV import, account transfers, and exportable reports but the foundation (clean modeling + clear insights) is already in place.