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Getting set up

Setup starts the moment your account exists

Section titled “Setup starts the moment your account exists”

Once you have signed up, Tovari walks you through setup. It is short on purpose: two steps, in this order, and both of them can be skipped.

  1. Add your accounts — the places your money actually sits.
  2. The budget interview — which of your spending you want to manage with an envelope.

That is the whole of setup, and it is the same two steps in the same order wherever you signed up. When you finish (or skip), you land on your dashboard with a working app.

Step 1 — Add your accounts

Section titled “Step 1 — Add your accounts”

Setup opens on Add your accounts. You have two ways to add one, and you can mix them freely:

  • Connect a bank. The account is created for you, and its balances and transactions keep themselves up to date. See Bank connections.
  • Add one by hand. You give it a name, a type, and a starting balance, and you record its transactions yourself. See Accounts.

Everything you add appears in a short list on the step as you go, so you can see what you have so far and add another.

You do not have to add anything here. The button at the bottom reads Skip for now until you have at least one account, and reads Continue once you do. Adding accounts later from the Accounts screen works exactly the same way — nothing about setup is a one-time offer.

Step 2 — The budget interview

Section titled “Step 2 — The budget interview”

The second step asks what do you want to budget? — a few short questions, each answered by tapping as many choices as apply.

This is not a list of things Tovari will start tracking. Tovari already tracks all of it. Its full category library is added to your household the moment you sign up, so every transaction can be categorized from day one. The interview asks the narrower question: of everything already being tracked, which handful do you want to manage with a budget envelope and a monthly target?

That is why there is no “choose what to track” step anywhere in setup. There is nothing to choose — you already have everything.

Picking nothing is a valid answer. Your spending is still categorized, your register still works, and you can flag an envelope at any time from the Budget screen.

What setup does not ask you for

Section titled “What setup does not ask you for”
  • It does not ask you to connect a bank. Manual accounts are a first-class way to use Tovari, and you can add a connection later.
  • It does not ask you to categorize anything. That happens as transactions arrive.
  • It does not ask you to set amounts. The interview flags which categories you want to budget; you set the numbers later on the Budget screen.

If something goes wrong part-way through the interview, Tovari tells you how much of your selection it saved and offers both a retry and a way straight to the dashboard — you are never stuck on the last step of setup.

What the accounts step looks like

Section titled “What the accounts step looks like”

The window splits: Tovari branding on the left, the step itself on the right, headed Add your Accounts with the line Add the accounts you want to track. You can always add or edit more later. Two short help links sit under it — one for adding an account, one for connecting a bank.

With no accounts yet, the body is a large dashed panel reading Add your first account. Once you have one, the panel is replaced by your account list plus an Add another account button.

Choosing to add an account offers the same two options described above; picking the manual route opens the Add Account dialog with name, type, bank, last four digits, starting balance, and — on a checking or savings account — the Include in Safe to Spend switch.

The footer button reads Skip for now with no accounts and Continue → once you have one.

What the budget interview looks like

Section titled “What the budget interview looks like”

The interview takes over the right panel entirely, headed What do you want to budget? with its questions rendered as rows of multi-select chips. The footer button counts your picks: it reads Skip for now → with nothing selected and Budget N items → otherwise. Either way, the next thing you see is your dashboard.

On a phone browser

Section titled “On a phone browser”

Opening the web app on a phone runs the same two steps in the same order. The branding panel is dropped — it would squeeze the content to nothing on a narrow screen — so each step fills the width under a compact step header, and the account list, the add controls and the footer button behave exactly as described above.
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