Key Concepts
Before diving deeper, here are the key concepts you’ll encounter when using Plutus.
Workspaces
Section titled “Workspaces”A Workspace is your top-level financial workspace. All accounts, transactions, and budgets belong to a Workspace. You can invite family members to collaborate within the same Workspace.
Members have one of two roles:
- Owner — Full access to all settings, billing, and member management
- Member — Can view and manage accounts, transactions, budgets, and categories
Accounts
Section titled “Accounts”Accounts represent your real-world financial accounts, organized into four groups:
- Cash & Savings — Checking accounts, savings accounts, cash on hand
- Investments — Crypto, taxable, tax-free, and tax-deferred portfolios
- Physical Assets — Property, vehicles, valuables
- Debt — Mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, student loans
Accounts can be connected to your bank via Plaid for automatic transaction syncing, or managed manually.
Transactions
Section titled “Transactions”Every inflow and outflow of money is recorded as a transaction. Each transaction has a date, amount, payee, category, and status.
Transaction statuses:
- Pending — Not yet processed by the bank
- Cleared — Confirmed by the bank
- Reviewed — Manually verified by you
Categories & Category Groups
Section titled “Categories & Category Groups”Categories organize your transactions by spending type (e.g., Groceries, Rent, Salary). Categories are arranged into groups (e.g., Housing, Food & Drink, Transport) for better structure.
There are two group types: Inflow (for income) and Outflow (for expenses).
Budgets
Section titled “Budgets”Budgets let you allocate a spending target for each category per month. Plutus tracks actual spending against your budget with color-coded indicators.
Each category has a rollover mode that controls what happens at month end:
- Carry Forward — Surplus or deficit rolls to the next month
- Release to Pool — Surplus or deficit adjusts the Ready to Assign total
- Reset — Clean slate each month
Tags are colored labels you can attach to transactions for flexible, cross-cutting organization. Unlike categories (one per transaction), a transaction can have multiple tags.
Payees
Section titled “Payees”Payees are the people or businesses you transact with. Plutus auto-creates payees from your transactions and bank connection data. You can rename or merge payees from Settings.
Recurring Transactions
Section titled “Recurring Transactions”Scheduled entries that repeat on a regular basis — like rent, subscriptions, or salary. Two modes are available:
- Generate — Automatically creates transactions on the scheduled date
- Track — Watches for matching incoming transactions instead of auto-creating
Rules automatically categorize or modify transactions based on conditions you define. For example, a rule can set the category to “Groceries” whenever the payee contains “Tesco”. Rules reduce manual data entry, especially for imported transactions.
Insights
Section titled “Insights”Insights provide visual analysis of your finances:
- Spending Insights — Breakdowns by category, category group, payee, or tag
- Net Worth — Track total assets vs liabilities over time
Bank Connections
Section titled “Bank Connections”Plutus integrates with Plaid to securely connect your bank accounts. Once connected, transactions sync automatically so your data stays current without manual entry.