Credit cards are where most budgeting apps get confusing. Earmarkr's approach is to make the money movement explicit: when you spend on a card from a funded category, that money moves out of the spending category and into the card's payment category. It stops being grocery money and becomes money set aside to pay the card.
Every movement is recorded in a ledger you can open and read line by line.
The three rules
- A funded card charge moves money to the card's payment category. Spend $80.00 of groceries on your Visa, and $80.00 leaves Groceries and lands in Visa Payment. Your total money didn't change — its job did.
- An unfunded charge is debt, not a shortfall. If you charge more than the category had, the excess is tracked as card debt. It shows the category negative for that month so you can see it, but it does not reduce Ready to Assign, and it does not carry forward into next month.
- The budget tracks cash. Ready to Assign is cash you have minus cash you've assigned — and the card payment earmark is one of the things you've assigned.
A worked example
Groceries has $400.00 assigned and nothing spent yet. You buy $250.00 of groceries on the Visa.
Groceries
assigned $400.00
activity − $250.00 (the charge)
Available $150.00
Visa Payment
reserve held + $250.00 (moved in from Groceries)
You now have $150.00 left to spend on groceries, and $250.00 genuinely set aside to pay the Visa. Ready to Assign didn't move — no cash entered or left, it was only relabelled.
When the Visa bill arrives and you pay $250.00 from checking, the payment category drops back to $0.00 and your checking balance falls by $250.00. The money was there waiting.
What happens when you overspend the category
Same setup — Groceries has $400.00 assigned — but you charge $500.00.
Earmarkr splits the charge:
coverage = $400.00 (what Groceries had to spend)
funded = $400.00 (the part the budget covered)
unfunded = $100.00 (the part it didn't — this is card debt)
Groceries
assigned $400.00
activity − $500.00
Available − $100.00 ← shown in red, this month only
Visa Payment
reserve held + $400.00 ← only the funded part
Card gap + $100.00 ← tracked as unfunded debt
Ready to Assign does not change. You didn't spend cash you don't have — you borrowed $100.00. That's a debt to pay down, not a hole in this month's budget.
The −$100.00 on Groceries is deliberately visible so you can decide to cover it. If you assign $100.00 more to Groceries, it funds the charge, moves into Visa Payment, and the gap closes.
If you don't cover it, the negative does not carry into next month. Groceries starts fresh at $0.00, and the $100.00 stays where it belongs — as card debt.
This is the one place Earmarkr's behaviour differs sharply from a cash overspend. Spending cash you don't have reduces Ready to Assign, because the money really is gone. See overspending.
Reading the card ledger
Open a card from Cards to see every movement that built the earmark:
| Movement | What it means | Effect on the earmark |
|---|---|---|
| Charge funded | The budgeted part of a purchase | Increases |
| Charge unfunded | The part your budget didn't cover — card debt | No change (raises the gap) |
| Refund returned | A refund on the card | Decreases |
| Direct payment | You paid the card | Decreases |
| Starting debt | The balance you already owed when you added the card | No change (raises the gap) |
| Manual adjustment | You assigned money straight to the payment category | Increases |
The two numbers to read together at the top:
- Balance owed — what the bank says you owe.
- Reserve held — the cash you've actually set aside.
- The gap — the difference. This is old debt plus anything unfunded.
gap = balance owed − reserve held
A gap isn't an error. It's the honest amount of card debt you haven't funded yet. It reconciles exactly to the sum of your unfunded charges, your starting debt, and anything still uncategorized.
Uncategorized charges are a to-do, not interest
A card charge with no category yet produces no movement at all — it's excluded from the funded and unfunded math entirely, and shown under Needs review instead.
That's deliberate. Guessing would corrupt the arithmetic. Categorize it and it takes its proper place immediately.
Interest and fees are ordinary spending — categorize them to Interest & Fees (seeded for you) and they behave like any other charge.
Common questions
Why did my grocery category drop to almost nothing after one card purchase? Working as intended. The money moved to the card's payment category. Add up Groceries plus Visa Payment and it's unchanged.
I paid the card but the payment category still shows money. The earmark accumulates across months. If you funded $250.00 in charges and paid only $100.00, $150.00 correctly remains set aside for the rest of the balance.
The payment category is higher than my statement balance. You have more set aside than you currently owe — usually from paying down while still funding new charges. Release the excess: open the card and use Release to send it back to Ready to Assign.
My card shows a gap I don't recognise. Open the card and choose What's unfunded. It itemises every charge making up the gap, plus any uncategorized transactions, and offers a one-click Fund it for each. See closing the gap.