Your first profile
Name the budget, choose how it starts, and learn what the profile actually is.
A profile is one complete budget — its own accounts, categories, transactions, goals, and history. On a fresh visit the app loads a read-only sample profile so you can poke around. Your first real step is creating your own.
Create the profile
Open Profiles and click New profile. You'll be asked for:
- Name — anything you'll recognize in the switcher. Household, Personal, 2026 budget are all fine.
- Start month — the first month the budget covers. Default is the current month. Pick an earlier month only if you also plan to back-fill transactions; otherwise leave it.
- Currency display — the symbol shown in the UI. Stored numbers are cents; the symbol is cosmetic.
When you click Create, the new profile becomes active and the sample profile is left untouched.
Start from scratch vs. import
If you have a JSON export from another Project Budget profile (yours or someone else's), pick Import from file instead. The file is validated, migrated to the current schema if needed, and loaded as a new profile with a new id. See Backups and export for the export shape.
What you can change later
Almost everything. The name, the currency display, and the start month are all editable from Settings. The only thing fixed at creation is the internal profile id, which you'll never see.
Where it lives
The new profile is written to both browser stores immediately — see How storage works for the two-backend mirror. There is no server call; no network request leaves your browser. Confirm this by opening DevTools, going to the Network tab, and watching while you click Create profile: zero requests.
Next
With a profile in hand, add accounts. See Your first account.