Budgeting features with good ideas built in

Most budgeting apps let you invent the categories, configure the rules, and arrange the colors. You get full control and full responsibility for figuring out the best way to budget.

Tend skips all that. Best practices are built right, developed by someone who spent years discovering what worked and what didn’t. Because, while the numbers might be different, good financial principles are the same for all of us.

You don't have to start from scratch.

Calendar-based budgeting

If you've ever divided a yearly expense by 12 to make it fit your monthly budget, you're going to love this.

Paychecks, mortgages, rent, utilities, subscriptions, auto-transfers, tuition, memberships — they all have known amounts, dates, and repeating schedules. Simply add them to the calendar.

Tend lets you model these commitments exactly as they occur in real life.

• Paycheck — $6,000 every other Friday
• Rent — $3,200 monthly on the 1st
• Amazon Prime — $117 yearly on March 15

These calendar entries are the foundation of Tend, unlocking everything else. You'll never need to divide by 12 again.

Curated categories

"How do I organize my categories?"

It's the most-asked question in every budgeting app's help forum. Too many categories and you're overwhelmed. Too few and you're not prepared. Even when you get the number right, the lines between are often blurry.

Tend solves this problem. The categories are built in.

After analyzing thousands of transactions, we made the tough calls to keep the list short, high-level, and well-defined. Tend's categories are based on how much control you had over the purchase — not the type of thing you bought.

Income

• Planned Income — Regular, scheduled income you rely on for budgeting
• Reimbursement — Refunds or getting paid back for a previous expense
• Extra Income — Money you receive but don't count on when planning
• Savings Withdrawal — Moving money from savings into a spending account

Expenses

• Discretionary — A variable expense you chose to make
• Fixed — A scheduled expense you've already committed to
• Special — A meaningful purchase you saved up for
• Unexpected — An expense you had no choice but to pay for
• Savings Deposit — Moving money from checking into savings
• Reimbursable — A purchase you expect to be paid back for

Transfers

• Credit Card Payment — A payment made to your credit card
• Transfer — A move between your spending accounts

You don't need to be a taxonomist to manage your money.

Bank syncing

Tend syncs your bank accounts automatically, keeping your transactions and balances up to date.

Tend uses Plaid for secure, read-only access to your transactions and balances — your credentials are never stored in Tend.

Prefer to go manual? You can add transactions by hand or import via CSV on any plan.

Transaction review

"Keeping up on categorizing has been the #1 blocker to maintaining a regular spending plan."
— Wade, paid Tend subscriber

When categorizing is tedious, you won't do it. When it's fully automated, you won't trust it. Tend makes reviewing quick, without taking it out of your hands.

It does this by making smart suggestions using context from your calendar and past behavior. Transfers and credit card payments are recognized automatically and related transactions are grouped so you can approve them all in bulk.

If there are no suggestions for a transaction, Tend's crystal-clear category definitions mean picking the right one is obvious.

Reviewing your transactions with Tend is easy enough that you'll actually do it. You might even think it's fun.

Households and partners

One partner usually does more of the money work, but that doesn't mean the other needs to be in the dark.

Tend supports shared household access. One person pays for Tend and all invited members get to use it for free. You can even create multiple households to keep personal accounts and family accounts separate.

Conversations about money get a lot easier when you're both looking at real numbers.