Two levels: main categories and subcategories
Categories are what turn a list of payments into an answer to "where does my money go?". Too few and everything lands in "Other"; too many and choosing one becomes a chore. SpendWe uses levels. A main category such as Restaurants & Bars holds subcategories such as Café / Bar, so you can log precisely and still read the big picture; a few subcategories, such as Groceries, have their own.
A new install starts with 122 categories across those levels. Nothing is locked: every one of them is yours to rename, recolour, give another icon, move under a different parent or delete. Creating your own categories is free, like logging expenses.
How to organise your categories
- Open Settings → Manage categories. Main categories are listed with their subcategories under them.
- Add what is missing. Create a new main category, or use Add a subcategory under an existing one.
- Rename, recolour and pick an icon. Choose from 97 icons in groups such as Food, Home, Transport, Health and Travel. The same icons exist on iPhone and Android, so an icon picked on one phone shows correctly on your partner's.
- Re-parent a category by changing its Parent category, or set it to the top level to make it a main category.
- Delete what you never use. Deleting a main category does not lose its expenses: SpendWe moves them to another category instead.
Adding an expense to a category in one tap
On the add sheet, type the amount and tap a category tile: the expense is saved. Hold a tile to see its subcategories and pick a more precise one. The categories you use most at that time of day come first, so the morning coffee and the evening groceries are rarely more than one tap away.
You can also type a sentence such as "24.80 coffee with Sam" and SpendWe picks the category from the words. When a receipt is scanned, the merchant and the receipt text suggest the category.
Automatic categories that learn
SpendWe recognises merchants and keywords in English and French, so "coffee" and "café" both land in Café / Bar. When you correct the category of a scanned receipt, SpendWe remembers that merchant and files it the same way next time. In a shared household, that learning is shared: what one of you teaches the app, the other benefits from.
Rows imported from a bank file are filed the same way. If the bank's file has its own category column, SpendWe only matches it to categories you already have; a bank file never creates new ones.
One household, two languages
Built-in category names are stored once and shown in each person's language. If you use SpendWe in English and your partner uses it in French, you share one household and one set of categories, and each of you reads them in your own language on your own phone. Totals, budgets and charts stay the same for both.
Budgets, tags and splits on top of categories
- A monthly budget per category, with the unused part optionally carried over to the next month, up to 12 months. Spending in a subcategory counts toward its main category's budget. See budgets and alerts.
- Tags for what cuts across categories, such as a trip or a project: up to 10 per expense, free.
- Split across categories: one supermarket receipt can be part groceries, part household. Enter each part with its amount until Left to assign reaches zero. Every per-category total then counts each part under its own category. Free.
Category totals feed the charts in Insights. All categories, tags and category splits are on the free plan.
