Your first month

Onboarding takes you through a series of short steps: what you own, what you owe, retirement, the accounts where your money is, and your envelopes. On the Free plan it skips the steps that need Plus and lists them once at the end. A second budget, for a shop or a new year, starts with its accounts and envelopes instead. Every step shows what is already there, so you can stop in the middle and come back, or run any step again later from Settings to review everything. Nothing has to be right the first time: you can rename an envelope, change a target, or add an account later.

Or skip the setup screens and tell ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi about your money instead. It asks the same questions and creates the same things. Anything you can do with a mouse in the app, your agent can do for you.

Connect your bank on Plaid's page. Your login goes only to Plaid and your bank, never to Mintro. Mintro then asks what each of the bank's accounts is: one you already have in Mintro, a new one, or not part of this budget. Nothing is added until you answer, and you choose which transactions come in; after that, new transactions arrive on their own. For a bank Plaid does not cover, use a spreadsheet instead: download a CSV file from your bank's website (most include a date, an amount, and a payee) and paste it into Import, or give the file to your agent. Transactions already in Mintro are skipped, so importing the same month twice changes nothing. A paycheque in the file is added to Ready to assign as soon as it is imported.

Every imported purchase starts out waiting to file, which means it is not in an envelope yet. Your agent reads them and puts each one in the right envelope: Safeway to Groceries, Tim Hortons to Dining out, and the Costco receipt split between Groceries and Kids. Then it tells you what it did and what it left for you. You look at the few it was not sure about, and the week's sorting is done.

Ready to assign is the paycheque before any of it has a job. You can give it jobs one envelope at a time: click an envelope's Assigned figure and type an amount. Or open Assign at the top and pick a way to fill the whole month at once: cover what is underfunded, match last month, or use the average. Or tell your agent the order you want and let it fill the envelopes. Either way, the month is planned when Ready to assign reads $0.

The Accounts screen is your register, the list of every transaction. Along the top, each account shows its working balance, which counts every transaction whether or not the bank has cleared it. Under that is the cashflow chart, for all your cash or for the one account you pick. Below the chart are a search box and an envelope filter, the bills coming up, and then the transactions themselves, newest first, each with its envelope. The budget shows what your money is for; Accounts shows where it actually is. Both are the same dollars, and Mintro never moves them.