Concepts
Treasury helps you understand and organize your finances by connecting your accounts, tracking transactions, and visualizing where your money goes. This page introduces the key building blocks of Treasury and how they work together.Connections
Connections link Treasury to your financial institutions through Plaid or other secure integrations. Once connected, Treasury automatically syncs your transactions — keeping your budgets, reports, and balances up to date in real time. You can also add Manual Accounts for assets or accounts that can’t be linked directly, such as cash, investment properties, or offline balances. Learn more in Connections and Manual Accounts.Categories
Categories are high-level groupings that organize your transactions for better reporting and budgeting. Examples include Food, Rent, Healthcare, or Salary. They’re the foundation of your budgets and spending summaries — helping you see where your money is going. Learn how to create and manage them in Categories.Tags
Tags are flexible labels that help you track spending across multiple categories or projects. Unlike categories (which represent types of spending), tags represent themes or contexts. For example:- Category: Food
- Tag: Trip to Japan
Tags vs. Categories — What’s the Difference?
Both tags and categories help organize your finances — but they serve different purposes:| Use Case | Categories | Tags |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Group transactions by spending type (e.g., Food, Rent) | Add flexible context (e.g., “Summer Trip,” “Work Expenses”) |
| Structure | Hierarchical — used for reporting and budgets | Non-hierarchical — can be added freely across transactions |
| Example | Category: Transportation | Tag: Seattle Commute |
Understanding these concepts will make Treasury more powerful — especially once you start combining categories, tags, and budgets to get a full picture of your spending and saving habits.
Budgets
Budgets help you plan and visualize your spending or saving over time. Treasury supports two types of budgets:- Ongoing Budgets — for regular spending that resets on a schedule (e.g., monthly groceries).
- Target Budgets — for one-time savings or spending goals (e.g., “New Laptop Fund” or “Vacation 2025”).