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Set up your budget and learn the core workflow.

Getting Started

Set up your zero-based budget in 15 minutes. Add accounts, create categories, budget every dollar a job, and build a weekly reconcile rhythm.

Get started with Zerosum

Learn what zero-based budgeting is and how Zerosum helps you give every dollar a job. A beginner's guide to ZBB.

Zero-Based Budgeting

Install Zerosum on your phone, tablet, or computer. Download the iPhone app from the App Store, or install straight from your browser on Android, macOS, and Windows.

Install Zerosum

Light and dark mode, the nine color themes, high contrast, and font size.

Themes & Appearance

Feedback

Roadmap

Changelog

Budget every dollar, roll with the punches, and hit your goals.

Budgeting

Learn how to create and manage budget categories in Zerosum. Organize your spending with category groups and budgets.

Budgets & Categories

Zerosum goals pair a frequency with a behavior: Budget another, Refill up to, or Reach a balance, from weekly to yearly, by a date, or open-ended.

Budget Goals

The budget side panel shows monthly breakdown, next-month coverage, goals, trends, and notes. Learn how to reorder and collapse sections to fit your workflow.

Side Panel

Understand your finances with Zerosum analytics. Explore spending, income, net worth, forecasts, custom dashboards, and more.

Analytics & Reports

Set aside income or Ready to Budget money for next month. Learn how For Next Month supports month-ahead budgeting in Zerosum.

For Next Month

Choose where cash and debit overspending lives. Credit-card-funded overspending stays on the card.

Carry Over Negative Balances

Learn how to use multiple budgets in Zerosum. Create separate budgets for different financial goals or accounts.

Multiple Budgets

Track accounts, record spending, reconcile, and manage payees.

Accounts & Transactions

Learn how to manage your accounts in Zerosum. Add and organize budget, tracking, and loan accounts.

Accounts & Transfers

Add, edit, review, match, split, and manage transactions across desktop and mobile.

Transactions

Clean up payees, control category, tag, and account behavior, and teach imports how to match noisy bank names and internal transfers.

Manage Payees

Organize transactions with custom tags. Create colored labels, drag to set priority, filter by tag, and track spending across categories.

Reconciling accounts

Almost everything in Zerosum is reversible. Undo, redo, or browse your full history timeline to recover from mistakes.

Undo, Redo & History

Plan future bills, income, transfers, and recurring activity. Learn what happens on the scheduled date, how Review and account defaults work, and how early bank matches are resolved.

Scheduled & recurring transactions

Search your Zerosum transactions by payee, category, tag, account, amount, date, or status. Learn the search prefixes, how to combine them, and how search works with the filter controls.

Searching transactions

Know when to use Working, Cleared, and Uncleared balances—and why reconciliation ignores pending transactions.

Understanding account balances

See your money on a month grid, open day details, and select several days for combined totals.

Calendar

Two models for handling credit cards the right way.

Credit Cards

Two ways to handle credit cards in Zerosum: the simple Budget Account model, or a Credit Card Account with auto payment-tracking. Pick the one that fits how you use the card.

How Zerosum's Credit Card account type works: funded card spending auto-moves into the card's payment category, then pay from there. Best if you carry a balance.

Credit Card Accounts

The simple credit-card model in Zerosum: add the card as a Budget account, categorize spending normally, and pay it with transfers. Best if you pay in full most months.

Credit cards as Budget Accounts

Bring in transactions by file, bank sync, or from another app.

Importing & Bank Sync

Connect through Plaid or Lunch Flow, link accounts, control pending imports, and understand review, matching, duplicate prevention, and provider management.

Bank Sync

Sync banks through your own SimpleFIN or Lunch Flow Personal API account.

Bring your own provider

Learn how imported transactions are reviewed, matched, linked, approved, rejected, and unlinked—including pending-to-posted changes, bank payee icons, splits, and duplicates.

Reviewing, matching & linking imported transactions

Import CSV, OFX, QFX, and QIF files safely, review matches, prevent duplicates, and recover from import mistakes.

Importing Transactions

Learn how to import your YNAB budget into Zerosum. Migrate accounts, categories, transactions, transfers, and monthly budgeted amounts.

Import from YNAB

Learn how to import your Actual Budget data into Zerosum. Migrate accounts, categories, transactions, transfers, and monthly budget assignments.

Import from Actual Budget

Settings, sharing, billing, and keeping your data safe.

Account, Billing & Security

Profile, security, preferences, and data. Everything inside the Zerosum Settings page explained.

Settings

Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate, edit, search, and approve transactions faster in Zerosum.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Share your budgets with a partner or family. Basic includes 1 seat; Pro includes 5 seats across all of your budgets.

Sharing & Collaboration

Learn how automatic budget backups, restore, backup downloads, and GDPR data exports work in Zerosum.

Backups & Data Exports

Protect your Zerosum account with two-factor authentication, backup codes, trusted browsers, and session management.

Account Security

How billing works on Zerosum: who you pay, why prices are shown before tax, how VAT, GST, and sales tax are added at checkout, business VAT IDs, and receipts.

Billing & Tax

How Zerosum protects your financial data: encryption in transit and at rest, secure sign-in, bank connection security, what we never track, and the controls you have.