Log your first transaction

Budgets, reports and category breakdowns are all derived from transactions, so nothing else works until some exist.

Record one

1. Open Transactions and press Add Transaction.
2. Choose Income or Expense.
3. Enter the amount and a description you will understand in six months.
4. Set the date, and pick the money account it came from or went into.
5. Pick a category. If the one you want does not exist, type it and Hitaji offers to create it.
6. Save.

Category is the field to be disciplined about. It is what makes budgets and every report meaningful — an uncategorised transaction is money you cannot later explain.

Two things it handles that most tools do not

Paying more than something costs. If you hand over more than the price and are owed change, say so when recording it — there is an option to note that you paid more than it costs. Hitaji tracks the change owed to you rather than pretending you spent it.

Paying from more than one place. An expense can draw on several accounts at once — part cash, part mobile money. Add the extra funding sources on the form instead of splitting it into separate transactions that no longer look like one purchase.

A transaction funded from several sources, or one that is part of a transfer, is locked afterwards: its amount, account and type cannot be edited. If it is wrong, delete it and record it again.

What this form does not do

There is no recurring option and no receipt attachment here. A repeating payment belongs in Subscriptions, and receipts attach to a Work Expense — the place where you will actually need to prove one.