<title>Learn about Money's default budget values (Autobudget)</title>
<category>budgetplan</category>
<klink type="cncpt">Tell me about Money's default budget values (Autobudget)</klink>
</index>
<content>
<p>If you've entered transactions or set up recurring bills and deposits in Money, Autobudget will get you started on budgeting by estimating your expenses. It gathers up to a year's worth of your data, selects categories in which you commonly spend, and then averages an amount based on a small time period, such as a month. Then, Autobudget fills in that information for you. You can add, edit, or remove your budget groups and categories to arrange your budget according to your preferences.</p>
<p>Autobudget depends partially on the recurring bills and deposits you create in the Accounts & Bills area. If you want Autobudget to work as accurately as possible, review your bills to make sure they're accurate and delete any you no longer use.</p>
<p>Autobudget also depends on the categories to which you assign your transactions in the Accounts & Bills area. If you do not often assign categories, your budget values may look strange, because Autobudget ignores transactions that don't have categories. You can edit your budget, but keep in mind that categorizing your transactions in the future will be an important step in sticking to your budget. Categorizing can be easy if you use Money's AutoComplete. <alink type="cncpt" href="Learnaboutusingautocomplete.xml"/></p>
<p>You can view Autobudget values by clicking <emph>Enter values from Autobudget</emph> near the bottom of the Income and Expenses pages. If you want to accept a value from Autobudget, make sure you select only that check box and clear the others. Otherwise, Autobudget may overwrite amounts you have already edited.</p>
<p variant="note">Autobudget cannot pre-fill your budget if you have less than a month's worth of transactions in your Money file.</p>
