Australian-built · Envelope budgeting on your financial year

Budget the money you actually have.

KalaWorth follows your cash, not a P&L. It starts from the money already in your accounts and helps you give every dollar a purpose for the months ahead — so rego, insurance and Christmas are funded before they’re due, and one glance tells you how long every category will last.

No bank connection needed — enter accounts by hand or upload a CSV. Bank feeds are on the way, through the government’s Consumer Data Right: read-only, credentials never stored, and KalaWorth can never move your money.

Your categoriesYear view · FY26–27
Groceries
$1,214 left of $9,600
7.1 mo
Car — Rego & Insurance
$1,780 left · due March
Funded ✓
Eating Out
$96 left
0.8 mo
Eating Out is running short of the year plan. Move money from Fun Money?
The idea

Plan ahead with a forecast.
Spend only what’s real.

Your KalaWorth budget is a forward plan — a forecast that helps you decide how to share your cash across categories in the months ahead. Here’s the part that makes it work: your plan never turns into pretend money. What you can actually spend is always driven by the real cash in your accounts, never by the forecast. So you get the foresight of planning ahead, without ever fooling yourself into spending money that isn’t there.

Plan the months ahead

Allocate cash to your categories across the months to come, so the big stuff is handled before it arrives. The whole philosophy: decide where money goes before you spend it, never scramble after.

The forecast guides, real cash decides

The budget forecasts how you’d like to share money out. Your spendable balance is always the cash you actually hold. The plan can be ambitious — what’s available to spend never lies.

See it any way you need

Monthly, yearly, year-to-date, last 6 or last 12 months — dashboards that show how your cash is really performing, on whatever horizon makes sense to you.

The method

Cash control, in four moves

The mechanic is old — envelopes on the kitchen bench. KalaWorth makes it annual, Australian, and impossible to fool yourself with.

01

See your real cash

Add accounts by hand or upload a CSV from any bank — no connection needed. KalaWorth totals what you actually have, Personal and Shared, in one household picture.

02

Plan the months ahead

Allocate cash into categories for the months ahead: everyday costs, annual bills, goals, fun. You’re deciding before you spend — what’s left is genuinely available.

03

Spend from categories

Transactions land in their categories. A coffee on the card debits Coffee the moment it happens, and paying the card off is a transfer — no double-counting.

04

Watch the runway, adjust early

Each category shows months of cover at your actual pace. See something running short well before it matters. No guilt, no red marks — just foresight.

What’s inside

Built for how Australians actually handle money

Fortnightly pay, joint accounts, tax time in July, rego in March. KalaWorth is designed around the local reality, not a US template with the currency symbol swapped. A few pieces are still being built — they’re marked, so you always know what you’re signing up for.

Budget on your own year

Plan the months ahead against a full annual view, and set your financial year to start whenever suits you — 1 July by default for AU, but yours to change. Irregular expenses stop being surprises because the year already planned for them.

Runway ring

The signature gauge: how many months does each category’s available cash last at your current pace? You set your target months of cover in Settings — turquoise when it meets that target, coral when it needs attention. Never red, never a siren.

Useful dashboards

See how your cash is really performing across monthly, yearly, year-to-date, last 6 months and last 12 months — charts that make the numbers make sense at a glance, not a wall of rows to decode.

Flexible categories

Build the category structure that fits your life — everyday, annual, goals, projects — with subcategories where you want them and none where you don’t. Reshape it any time; nothing is locked in.

Personal & Shared, together

Tag accounts and categories Personal or Shared and see the household in one view — Combined, Personal only, or Shared only. Managing money together, not dividing it: no 50/50 splits, no scorekeeping.

Tax-time tagging

Tag a category or a single transaction as deductible while you budget — it takes one tap. Come July, export a clean list for your accountant. A record-keeping tool, not tax advice.

Receipts

Snap a photo receipt onto any transaction, stored securely for the five years the ATO expects, and bundled straight into your tax export — no shoebox, no separate collating step.

Projects & Goals

One-off budgets and savings goals with a target — the trip, the reno, Christmas, the emergency fund. Their ring shows how far you are from the target, not runway. Track who paid on group trips, and close them out with a summary.

Pay-day rules

Commit part of every pay automatically — 10% to investing, $50 to the holiday — before the rest lands as available to spend. Set once, runs every payday, overridable any time.

Sole-trader set-asides

Every time business income lands, KalaWorth can automatically put a set % or fixed amount aside for GST, PAYG, your super, and your own leave — before the rest is yours. No real money moves; it’s your budget setting it aside, honestly, in view.

Import from any bank

Export a statement from your bank’s website and drop it in. Every Australian bank formats its export differently, so KalaWorth maps the columns once and remembers your bank’s layout next time.

Net worth, the full picture

Credit cards, loans, mortgage, super, investments and even gift cards alongside your cash — assets minus liabilities, trended over time with the same flexible views.

Native AU bank feedsComing soon

Automatic transaction sync via the Consumer Data Right — the government’s Open Banking framework. Consent-based, revocable any time, read-only by law. In build now; today you import a CSV or enter transactions by hand.

AI that does the boring bitComing soon

KalaWorth will learn to categorise your spending automatically, with your own rules to sort transactions by description. The upkeep that kills every other budget app just… stops being upkeep.

Ask KalaWorthComing soon

“How much can I safely invest right now?” “Am I on track for rego?” Ask in plain English and get an answer from your own numbers — insight into your cash and where an allocation could work harder. Insight, never advice.

Sound familiar?

The moments every budget quietly fails

You’re not bad with money. The tools just start in the wrong place — a report of the past instead of the cash in front of you. Here’s what that feels like, and what KalaWorth does instead.

“I saw money in the account, so I spent it.”

…then the council rates bill landed. Your bank balance counts money that’s already spoken for. KalaWorth shows available to spend — real cash minus everything you’ve given a purpose — so the rates were already set aside.

“I invested my surplus — turns out it wasn’t surplus.”

Without a clear view of what’s truly free, “spare” money gets invested and then clawed back at the worst time. KalaWorth separates what’s funded from what’s genuinely spare, after every buffer and bill.

“Saving felt like a punishment.”

A savings account for irregular bills makes every withdrawal feel like failing a target — and some banks even dock your interest for it. KalaWorth lets you put cash where it belongs, so spending a funded category is the plan working, not a slip-up.

“My money’s across three banks and I can’t see it.”

Bank apps only see their own accounts. Upload a CSV from each — or add them by hand — so there’s finally one place that shows the whole flow, in and out.

“As a sole trader, GST and super sneak up on me.”

No cash set aside for GST, PAYG, your super, leave, or a business buffer — until it bites. KalaWorth auto-allocates a slice of every income deposit to each, the moment it lands.

“Keeping it updated is too much work.”

The reason budgets get abandoned. Flexible CSV import and remembered bank layouts keep it quick today; automatic categorisation is in build.

Why “budget vs actual” misses the point: grading yourself against last month’s budget doesn’t change anything — the past is spent. What matters is what you have now, what you need, and how you’ll make it work. That’s the only question KalaWorth asks.
How we compare

Plenty of apps track money.
Very few control it.

Trackers tell you what happened. Forecasters guess what will happen. KalaWorth manages what you actually have — planned across the whole Australian year. See the full comparison →

Trackers (bank apps, free trackers)Forecasters (spreadsheet-style, calendar apps)KalaWorth
What it showsWhat you spent, after the factWhat might happen, if guesses holdWhat you have, and what it’s for
When you find out about a problemAfter the money’s goneWhen reality drifts off the forecastMonths ahead — the runway is always visible
Annual bills (rego, insurance)A nasty surpriseA line in a projectionAlready funded, months in advance
Budgeting horizonBackward-lookingAny, forecast-basedThe whole financial year, on a start date you set
Pricing

Start free. Stay free if manual suits you.

Budgeting the KalaWorth way should never be locked behind a paywall. The free plan is a complete manual experience — no bank connection needed. A paid tier will unlock the automation once it ships.

Free — forever
$0
The full method, done by hand.
Start free

Manual accounts & CSV upload · annual budgeting · runway ring · dashboards · Personal/Shared · goals & projects · pay-day rules & set-asides · receipts · net worth · tax tagging. No card, no bank, no catch.

Paid — the automation
Not yet
Indicatively ~$6.99/mo, confirmed at launch. Nothing to buy today.
In build

Everything in Free, plus native bank feeds (CDR), AI auto-categorisation and “Ask KalaWorth”. Start on the free plan now — your budget, categories and history carry straight over, and export always works.

When bank feeds land they’ll be read-only via the Consumer Data Right — credentials never stored, revocable any time, and KalaWorth can never move your money.