MINTRO · ENVELOPE BUDGETING
Envelope budgeting, with the sorting done for you.▮
Mintro is a zero-based envelope budget, the method YNAB made famous. Every dollar you earn is given a job, like rent, groceries, or savings, before you spend it.
The chore in any envelope budget is sorting each purchase into the right envelope. Mintro hands that chore to your agent: ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi, connected to your budget. It imports your bank transactions, puts each one in the right envelope, and keeps the month up to date. You open the Mintro app whenever you want to see where your money stands.
No card needed to start. The app is included on every plan.
In ChatGPT
- You:chequing-sept.csv · 212 rows
Please auto categorize all my bank transactions for me
- Did:imported 212 transactions · 0 duplicates filed 209 into 14 envelopes · split 3 · 2 left for you
- Agent:
Done. September is in your budget and filed. I split the Costco run between Groceries and Household, and two Amazon orders the same way. Two I wasn’t sure about are waiting in the inbox: a $140 e-transfer to J. Park and $62 at SQ *THE ANNEX.
groceries$612.40 spent$87.60eating out$318.00 spent−$18.00gas$161.20 spent$58.80Eating out is $18 over. Cover it from Fun money?
- You:
yes
- Did:moved $18.00 · fun money → eating out FILED
Ask it anything about your money.
Mintro keeps your budget, so ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi always has your real numbers to work from. When you ask a question, the answer comes from your actual envelopes, your scheduled bills, and your own plan, not from a guess. The chat reads your budget with the same tools the app uses, so anything it tells you, the app can show you too.
In Claude
- You:
I want to buy a new TV, do you think I can afford it?
- Did:read this month · read cashflow to 2026-10-15 · read upcoming bills
- Agent:
Say $900. Here is where you stand. Ready to assign is $0: every dollar already has a job, which is the point. Electronics has $340 available. Rent comes out on the 20th, and after it chequing is projected to sit at −$1,015.80 until you are paid on the 27th.
electronics$340.00 available2026-09-20rent−$1,200.002026-09-27paycheque$2,410.00So: not this week. After the 27th, move $560 from Vacation and buy it, or wait two months and Electronics covers it alone. Want me to set a $900 target so it’s funded by November?
- You:
set the target
- Did:target set · electronics $900.00 by 2026-11-01 FILED
In Kimi
- You:
How’s my retirement plan looking?
- Did:read the goal · read accounts, assets, and loans
- Agent:
Your retirement goal is $1,200,000 by 2051. Today you have $184,300 toward it: your accounts, the RRSP and the index funds, minus what’s left on the car loan. At $650 a month and a 5% return you would reach about $984,000 by 2051, which is 82% of the goal.
retirement205182%now$184,300projectedat 5%, $650/mo$984,000goal$1,200,000There are two ways to close the gap. The car loan ends in 2028, and putting that $410 payment into retirement from then on gets you to about $1,190,000. Or a tenth of Eating out, $32 a month, adds about $18,000. Want to try one? I’ll show you the result before I change anything.
- You:
try the car loan one
- Did:preview · $410/mo from 2028 → $1,190,000 · nothing applied
Every reply in these examples is something the chat can really do today with Mintro’s tools. If Mintro cannot do something, the chat cannot claim it did.
Other budgeting apps still leave the sorting to you.
With YNAB, you sort every purchase into an envelope yourself, often on a Sunday. Monarch guesses a category for each purchase and asks you to confirm it. Mintro uses the same envelope method as YNAB, but your agent does the sorting, and you look at the budget whenever you like.
competitor prices approximate · all prices USD
Coming from YNAB? Export your budget from YNAB, give the file to ChatGPT, and say “rebuild my budget.” Your envelopes, your targets, and your transaction history come across.
How it works.
1
Get your transactions in
Connect your bank on Plaid’s secure page, and your transactions arrive in Mintro on their own. Your bank login goes only to Plaid and your bank, never to ChatGPT and never to us. If you haven’t connected a bank, download a spreadsheet of transactions from your bank’s website and give it to ChatGPT, and it imports all of them.
2
Your agent sorts them
New transactions wait in an inbox until they are sorted. ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi puts each one in the right envelope, splits a purchase like a Costco run across more than one envelope, and gives new income a job. Anything it isn’t sure about, it leaves for you.
filed_by: your-agent · 09:14
3
You open the app
When you open Mintro, the month is already up to date. Every envelope shows what it has left to spend, and the only purchases waiting for you are the few your agent wasn’t sure about.
groceries$87.60 available
This is the Mintro app.
This is a real screen from a real budget: the Reyes household, the family the guides follow. At the top is Ready to assign, the money that has come in and doesn’t have a job yet. Across the page under it, the envelope check compares your envelopes with your bank: it says whether the money your envelopes are counting on will be in your accounts before your next pay, and Fix my envelopes offers to move money between envelopes to cover any gap, for you to tick and confirm. Below that, every envelope shows how much it needs this month and how much it has, and the transactions your agent sorted are already counted.
- Ready to assign: money that has come in and has not been given a job yet.
- The envelope check: whether your bank will have the money your envelopes are counting on before your next pay. Fix my envelopes offers to move money between envelopes to cover it, and nothing moves until you confirm.
- A bill whose envelope was funded in full and has been paid this month.
- An overspent envelope. One click covers the shortfall from Ready to assign or from another envelope.
Mintro warns you before an account runs short.
Mintro draws a chart of each account’s balance. The past month shows what actually happened. The months ahead are projected from the bills and paycheques you have scheduled and, if you choose, the everyday spending you usually do, like groceries and gas. You set an Alarm amount for each account, the lowest you want its balance to go. When the projected balance would fall below it, Mintro tells you ahead of time.
Chequing is projected to drop below your Alarm amount on Sep 20, counting your usual spending. Rent is the cause. Your savings account has enough to cover it.
Short before Sep 27
$1,290.80
Your balance goes below $0 before your next paycheque, by this much.
Lowest
Sep 26
Below Alarm
Rent
Today
Working balance
- Balance with your usual spending
- Balance with bills only
- Your usual spending
- Payday
The balance is $184.20 on 15 Sep. Rent on 20 Sep takes it to −$1,015.80 counting bills only, and to −$1,140.80 counting usual spending, both below the Alarm amount. The lowest balance before payday is −$1,290.80 on 26 Sep. The paycheque on 27 Sep brings it back up.
Sep 15 balance today$184.20
Sep 20 rent−$1,200.00
after rent, bills only−$1,015.80below Alarm
after rent, with usual spending−$1,140.80below Alarm
Sep 26 lowest before payday−$1,290.80below Alarm
Sep 27 paycheque$2,410.00
The projection counts your scheduled bills and income, plus the usual spending in 2 envelopes, Groceries and Gas. Move your pointer along the chart to see the balance on any day.
When a bill is going to take an account below your Alarm amount, Mintro sees it coming and tells you once, in the app, through your agent, or by email, whichever you choose. It does not keep reminding you. Mintro never moves money for you: whether to move money, pay the bill later, or spend less is your decision.
Before payday
How much is safe to spend
The amount you can spend before your next paycheque without your balance going below $0, with the lowest your balance will get and the day it happens. If it would go below $0, it says by how much.
Your choice
Bills only, or with your usual spending
The forecast always counts your scheduled bills and paycheques. You choose which envelopes' everyday spending it also counts, and how: last month, a three-month average, or the target.
Before it happens
Where to spend less, and which bill could wait
When a balance is going to drop too low, Mintro says how much less to spend each day and in which envelopes, and which bill could be paid on your next payday instead.
Plans
Test a purchase before you make it
Add a purchase, a bill paid on another day, or a cut to your spending, and the chart shows what your balance would do. Nothing in your budget changes until you apply the plan, and then Mintro keeps track of what you agreed to do.
Your current plan
What you agreed to do
Apply a plan and it becomes your current plan. Mintro draws it on every cashflow chart and shows how each promise is going, such as whether you are on track to spend $60 less on groceries.
Envelopes and the bank
Your envelopes and your bank before your pay
Your bank can be short of what your envelopes hold. Mintro checks every day until your next pay for money going out that no envelope has money for, says what it does to your balance, and Fix my envelopes proposes the moves between envelopes that cover it, for you to tick.
One budget for a household, or a separate one for a business.
A household
Two people share one budget. Each of them connects their own chat and their own bank, both of them see the same screen, and neither of them has to spend Sunday sorting purchases.
A company
The bookkeeper’s ChatGPT has a key that lets it sort transactions and nothing else. Every entry records which key made it, and you can switch off one key without affecting anyone else’s.
Use our app. Or have ChatGPT build you one.
Everything the Mintro app shows comes from Mintro’s public API, the same one ChatGPT can use. There is no private version that only our app can reach. So you can use our app, or ask ChatGPT to build you a different screen, like a display for your kitchen wall, and use both.
A screen built this way keeps your Mintro key on your own computer, never inside code that gets shared or published.
Anything you can do in the app, ChatGPT can do.
This is checked automatically. If we add a button to the app that ChatGPT has no way to press, our tests fail and the change cannot ship. The table shows five examples: what you do in the app, the web address an agent calls to do the same thing, and the name of the tool it uses.
file a transaction
POST /v1/budgets/{id}/entries
file_transaction
see cashflow
GET /v1/cashflow
get_cashflow
add a bill
POST /v1/budgets/{id}/recurring
add_recurring
record a transfer
POST /v1/transfers
record_transfer
take the whole budget
GET /v1/budgets/{id}/export
export_budget
You can use the app, ChatGPT, or both, and they always work on the same budget.
Your budget doesn’t depend on the bank connection.
If a bank connection stops working, your budget keeps everything it already has. Your envelopes and every sorted purchase are stored in Mintro, not at the bank.
In your budget
- your envelopes and their totals
- every sorted transaction, for good
- every entry, and who made it
- your targets and what they are for
Never stored
- your bank login
- your full bank history
- the raw data your bank sends
- anything that could be used to sell you ads
You can download your whole budget at any time. YOURS
We NEVER move your money.
We NEVER see your bank login.
We NEVER sell your data.
Mintro is a budget, not a bank, so it never holds or moves your money. ChatGPT can sort every transaction, but it never sees your bank login, and neither do we. Mintro makes its money from subscriptions only, never from ads or from your data.
Budgeting is free. Plus adds bank sync and planning.
Every plan, including Free, has unlimited budgets and envelopes and lets you connect your agent. Plus adds automatic bank sync, goals, a record of what you own and owe, and webhooks, which send notices to your own software when the budget changes. Household has everything in Plus, for more than one person sharing a budget.
Free
$0
Plus
$6/mo
Household
$10/mo
Founder
$500 once
unlimited budgets and envelopes on every plan
Mintro works with ChatGPT, Claude, and Kimi.
In claude.ai or ChatGPT, you add Mintro as a connector and sign in. Other chats use a key you create in the Mintro app. Once your chat is connected, you can type “file this week” and your agent sorts the week’s transactions into envelopes, instead of you dragging each one there yourself.