Switch between Spense Magic and Classic Mode.

Open Budget Mode on the More tab

Tap the More tab. On the Data Management card, the Budget Mode row shows the mode you're in now: either “Spense Magic - Spense Magically organizes your budget for you!” or “Classic Mode - Classic envelope style zero sum budgeting.” Tap the row.

Read the note, then confirm

Spense asks “Switch to Classic Mode?” (or “Switch to Spense Magic?”) and describes the mode you're moving to. The grey note underneath is the part to read, because it says what happens to transactions from now on:

• To Classic Mode: “New transactions will require manual review. You'll have full control over every transaction.”
• To Spense Magic: “New transactions will be auto-categorized. Existing uncategorized transactions will still need review.”

Tap the purple Switch to… button to go ahead. Cancel changes nothing.

Landed in Classic Mode? Review, then assign

Your history stays put. Everything Spense Magic already filed stays in its category and counts as approved, so it doesn't land back in front of you. Anything Spense Magic couldn't file is waiting in Review.

New bank transactions wait for you. On the Spending tab, the fish says how many are waiting (“Tap me! 3 transactions to review”). Tap it to go through them one card at a time. When Spense has seen the merchant before, the category it learned is already picked and marked Suggested, so approving it is one tap. If a pick is wrong, the category-fix guide shows how to change it.

The Budget tab becomes an envelope budget. At the top is Ready to assign: money that has no job yet. Tap a category row to open its sheet, type an amount, and tap Assign. The switch doesn't reset Ready to Assign or the amounts already on your rows, so look the numbers over before you start assigning.

Credit cards get a payment row. Each card you have gets a row named after it, tagged Card payment, under a new Credit Card Payments category. The row starts from what the card owes on the day you switch. Purchases from before the switch are already in that balance, so they aren't added to it a second time. The credit card guide explains how the row works from there.

Notifications follow the mode too. Instead of “Transaction categorized”, new bank transactions now send “Ready to categorize”.

Landed in Spense Magic? Let it file, clear what is left

New bank transactions file themselves. If you've categorized a merchant before, in either mode, Spense Magic files it in the same place, because approving a transaction in Classic Mode saves a rule for its merchant. A merchant Spense hasn't seen goes into one of Spense Magic's shared categories, such as Coffee Shops or Groceries. If that category doesn't exist yet, Spense creates it, so you may see a few new rows next to your own.

Your review queue doesn't vanish. Spense Magic doesn't go back and sort transactions you had left unreviewed. They stay in Review, and the fish on the Spending tab says so (“I auto-categorize most transactions, but 2 need your help!”). Clear them once and you're done.

Card payment rows go away. The Credit Card Payments category and its rows are a Classic Mode tool, so they're removed. Payments you recorded on them aren't deleted. They stay in your history as transfers between your own accounts, still out of your spending. Each card's balance stays on the Accounts tab.

Everything else stays: your own categories, the amounts on your rows, and every transaction where you put it. From here the first-budget guide covers reading the Spense Magic Budget tab and setting a spending limit on any row.

Changed your mind? Switch back the same way

Because nothing is deleted on the way out, the way back is the same two taps: More → Data Management → Budget Mode. The one thing a round trip doesn't restore is the card rows themselves. Going back to Classic Mode gives each card a fresh row that starts from what the card owes that day, and payments recorded on the old rows stay where they are, as transfers.