Alto Docs
Alto is a paycheck-to-paycheck budgeting app inspired by envelope budgeting. These docs are here to help you use the app day to day: set up your accounts, track transactions, and confidently assign money across your pay periods.
Recommended flow
- Create your account.
- Set your pay period in Settings.
- Add accounts (manual or bank-linked).
- Add and categorize transactions.
- Assign money in the Budget page until Ready to Assign is 0.
Key terms (quick definitions)
Ready to Assign
Money that exists in your tracked cash accounts and has not been assigned to an envelope yet.
Envelope
A record of how much you’ve assigned for a category occurrence in a time window (pay period or month).
Category frequency
How often the category "happens" (weekly/biweekly/1st & 15th/ monthly) and therefore how envelopes are generated.
Credit card tracking
Credit cards show spent and paid amounts per period in the budget sidebar, with payments tracked through auto-created expense categories.
What’s in here
The docs are split into step-by-step guides for each part of the app (budget, transactions, accounts, categories, savings, credit cards) plus a short “budgeting basics” section for core concepts.
Pages
Overview
What Alto is and how the app is organized.
Getting Started
Set up your budget and start using Alto.
Budget
User Guides
Transactions
User Guides
Accounts
User Guides
Categories
User Guides
Savings
User Guides
Credit Cards
User Guides
Pay Period & Settings
User Guides
Plaid Sync
User Guides
Budgeting Basics
Key concepts like Ready to Assign and envelopes.
Troubleshooting
Support