Paqid

Help & FAQ

Everything you need to get going with Paqid — a private, no-upsell way to steward your money with intention. Tap a question to expand it.

New here? Start with these steps
  1. Add your accounts. Checking, savings, cash and credit cards, each with today's balance. For a credit card, enter what you owe. Phone Accounts tab → ＋ Add account. Desktop Accounts in the sidebar → Add Account.
  2. Make the categories yours. You start with a common set (Rent/Mortgage, Groceries, Tithe/Alms and so on). Rename, delete or add until they match how you actually spend. Phone More → Manage categories. Desktop On the Budget screen, use the pencil or trash icon on a category, the ＋ on a group, or Add Group.
  3. Give every dollar a job. Ready to Assign, at the top of the Budget screen, is money that doesn't have a job yet. Assign it to categories until it reaches $0. Start with whatever is due before your next paycheck. Tap or click a category's Budgeted amount and type how much.
  4. Enter spending as it happens. Every purchase, in every account. When you get paid, enter it as money in with the category Ready to Assign, then give it jobs. Phone The ＋ button in the bottom bar. Desktop Open an account and click ＋ Add (or press N).
  5. When a category runs short, move money. Take it from a category that can spare it. Phone Budget → ⇄ Move money. Desktop Lower one category's Budgeted amount and raise the other's.
  6. Reconcile once a month. Check each account against your bank's balance so the numbers stay true. Open the account and tap or click Reconcile.

Bills that repeat every month? Set them up once under Recurring (in the desktop sidebar, or More on the phone).

Getting started

Paqid is envelope budgeting, plain and simple: instead of tracking where your money went, you decide where each dollar should go before you spend it. Think of it as dividing your paycheck into labelled envelopes (Rent, Groceries, Giving) and only spending what's in each one. No bank linking, no upsells.

No — never. Paqid does not link to your bank, import transactions, or ask for bank logins. You enter money movements yourself, and that's on purpose: typing in a purchase is the moment you actually notice it, the way handing over cash used to be. (Why that matters.) It also means your transaction history is never handed to a third-party aggregator.

You give every dollar you currently have a purpose by assigning it to a category (an "envelope"). When you spend, the money comes out of that category's balance. When an envelope is empty, you either stop spending there or move money from another envelope. It's a decision tool, not a spending report.
Budgeting

Money you have but haven't given a purpose yet. It's your on-budget account balances minus everything you've already made available in categories. The goal is $0 — every dollar assigned. When you get paid, your balance goes up and so does Ready to Assign; assign it before your next spending decision.

Desktop On the Budget screen, click a category's Budgeted amount and type the value.

Phone On the Budget tab, tap the Budgeted figure on a category row, enter the amount, and it saves — the category's Available and Ready to Assign update instantly.

Budgeted — how much you assigned to the category this month.
Activity — total spending or income recorded in it this month.
Available — what's actually left: prior balance + Budgeted − Activity. This is the number to watch.

Red means overspent — spending exceeded what was available in that category (Available is negative). Fix it by moving money in from another category or Ready to Assign. Green means money is available; grey means empty but not overspent.

Yes. Whatever is left in a category's Available balance rolls forward automatically — there's no month-end "zeroing out". A savings category's Available balance is simply your progress toward that goal.
Accounts & transactions

Accounts are where money physically lives — checking, savings, cash, or a credit card. On-budget accounts count toward Ready to Assign. Investment accounts are off-budget and excluded from the budgeting math. Adding an account with a starting balance creates an Opening Balance transaction so your numbers begin correctly.

Phone Tap the ＋ button in the bottom bar — the entry form slides up over whatever screen you're on. Pick the account, enter amount (In/Out), payee, category, and save. It stays open, cleared, for the next entry; close it with ✕ when you're done.

Desktop Open an account register and click ＋ Add in the top bar (or press N). An entry row appears under the column headings — step through the fields with Tab or Enter. It stays ready for the next one; Esc closes it.

Phone Open an account (or the Txns tab), tap a transaction, change any field and Save changes — or Delete.

Desktop Click any cell in a saved row to edit it inline; hover the row for the trash icon to delete. Split and transfer transactions are edited on the desktop site.

A transfer moves money between two of your accounts — Paqid records both sides automatically. A split is one transaction divided across several categories (e.g. a store run with groceries and household items). Phone The add-transaction sheet has Transfer and Split buttons. Changing the lines of an existing split, or the details of a transfer, is desktop-only for now.

You can download your whole budget as a single file at any time: accounts, envelopes, every month's amounts and all your transactions. Uploading a file always creates a new budget and never overwrites the one you have. You can bring it in as an exact copy, or as a fresh start that keeps your accounts and envelopes with today's balances. Phone More → Download this budget / Upload a budget. Desktop Click your budget's name at the top of the sidebar → Download This Budget / Upload a Budget.

Uploading only works with files Paqid made. It can't import from YNAB, a spreadsheet or your bank.
On your phone

Nearly everything: add and edit transactions, assign money and move it between categories, transfers and splits, reconcile, manage accounts, categories, payees and recurring items, and see reports. A few things are desktop-only for now: goals, reordering categories, and changing an existing split's lines or a transfer's details.

Paqid is an installable web app. In your phone browser, open the share/menu and choose Add to Home Screen. It then launches full-screen like a native app. (Your data still lives on the server, so you'll need a connection to sync.)

Phones are sent to the mobile UI automatically. To use the full desktop site on your phone, open the More tab and tap Switch to desktop site. You can switch back the same way.
What breaks?

Something not working, or an idea to make Paqid better? Tell me here.

Up to 5 MB. A screenshot can show your budget, so only send one you're comfortable sharing.

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