01
What a pocket actually is
A pocket is a named goal that holds money aside without spending it. Move ฿1,000 into a pocket and your spendable balance drops by ฿1,000; move it back out and it returns. The money never leaves your ledger — it just changes bucket.
That is the whole trick. Because a pocket subtracts from what's safe to spend, saving stops being something you promise yourself and starts being something the daily number already accounts for.
- A pocket balance is never an income or expense transaction — it never shows up in your totals, your categories, or your reports.
- Tagging a transaction to a pocket is tracking only — it labels the spending, it does not move the pocket's balance.
- Money for a pocket comes from your personal balance only. Shop and business money is excluded, so a shop sale can never quietly fund a savings goal.
02
Creating one
The "+" on the Pockets tab does not open a blank form. It opens "Choose a Goal" / "เลือกเป้าหมาย" — five presets with a suggested target, plus "Start from scratch" / "เริ่มเองตั้งแต่ต้น". Pick one and the picker is replaced in place by the pocket form, pre-filled and fully editable.
- "Emergency Fund" / "เงินฉุกเฉิน" — the only preset whose target is computed for you (see below).
- "Japan Trip" / "เที่ยวญี่ปุ่น" — suggests ฿50,000.
- "New Phone" / "มือถือใหม่" — suggests ฿30,000.
- "Pay off student loan" / "ปิดหนี้ กยศ." — suggests ฿20,000.
- "A Trip" / "ไปเที่ยว" — suggests ฿15,000.
Hidden feature
The emergency-fund target is your own three months, not a round number
Do thisPockets tab → "+" → "Emergency Fund" — read the "Suggested" line
The suggestion is three times your average monthly personal expense over the last three months. With no spending history it falls back to three times your configured salary; with neither, it leaves the target blank rather than inventing a number. Shop transactions are excluded from the average.
The form itself is short. Only the name is required — everything else can stay empty and be added later.
TipYou cannot type a starting balance into the form. A pocket's balance only ever changes through a transfer, an auto-save or a round-up — which is why the history always reconciles with the number on screen.
Hidden feature
A calculator hides inside every money field
Do thisTap into any amount field, then tap the ± icon that appears at its right edge
The keypad is replaced by a real calculator — digits, + − × ÷, brackets, %, and a running total — and "=" writes the result back into the field. Useful for "three months of rent" or "half of 12,400". A malformed expression just says "Check the expression" / "ตรวจสอบสิ่งที่พิมพ์อีกครั้ง" instead of booking a wrong number.
03
Moving money in and out
- Open the transfer sheet — from the pocket's detail screen, or straight from the list (see the swipe below). The keypad is already up.
- Pick a direction: "Deposit" / "โอนเข้า" (the default) or "Withdraw" / "ถอนออก".
- Type the amount, checking the two read-outs — "In This Pocket" / "ในกระเป๋านี้" and "Available" / "ยอดว่างให้โอน".
- Tap "Transfer" / "โอน".
- A deposit is capped at "Available" — you cannot set aside money you don't have. Over-type and the button stays disabled with "Not enough available to deposit" / "ยอดใช้ได้ไม่พอสำหรับโอนเข้า".
- A withdrawal is capped at the pocket balance — "Can't withdraw more than the pocket holds" / "ถอนเกินยอดที่มีในกระเป๋าไม่ได้".
- "Available" is your all-history personal balance minus everything already set aside in every pocket. It is not a per-cycle figure.
- Every committed transfer writes one row in the pocket's history, so the balance is always explainable.
Hidden feature
Swipe a pocket right to transfer
Do thisOn the Pockets list, swipe a row from the left edge
A green "Transfer" / "โอน" action opens the transfer sheet for that pocket, skipping the detail screen entirely. On iPad, where there are no row swipes, press and hold the card instead — the same Transfer and Delete actions appear in a context menu.
Hidden feature
Swipe a transfer in the history to undo it
Do thisPocket detail → "Transfers" → swipe a row left → Delete
The move is reversed — a deposit is withdrawn back out, a withdrawal is re-deposited — and the row disappears. There is no confirmation step, so be deliberate. The derived "Opening balance" / "ยอดยกมา" row is the one row you cannot swipe away.
TipIf a pocket's visible transfers don't add up to its balance — usually a pocket carried over from an older version — a non-deletable "Opening balance" / "ยอดยกมา" row appears at the bottom of the history to close the gap, rather than letting the number look wrong.
04
Auto-save on payday
Give a pocket an auto-save rule and it funds itself at the start of every budget cycle. Two modes, and only one can be active at a time.
Hidden feature
Auto-save runs even if you never open the Pockets tab
Do thisJust open the app, or switch back to it, on or after your payday
Funding happens on launch and on every return to the foreground, alongside the recurring-transaction post — not when you visit the screen. It runs at most once per cycle per pocket, and the marker syncs, so two devices can never double-save.
Hidden feature
Auto-save skips itself rather than push you into the red
Do thisWatch for the "Auto-save paused this cycle" line on a pocket's detail screen
Each deposit is clamped to the spendable money left at that moment, and pockets are funded in order, so the pool shrinks as it goes. If only part fits you get a partial deposit and "Auto-save partial this cycle" / "ออมอัตโนมัติบางส่วนรอบนี้"; if nothing fits, the pocket is skipped and marked paused. Either way it resumes next payday — there is never a surprise mid-cycle catch-up.
Heads upPercent mode with no Monthly Salary set deposits nothing at all — it never guesses a base. The form nudges you about it, and the pocket reads paused until you fill your income in.
05
Round-up savings
Round-up is a single global setting, off until you turn it on: every expense you log is rounded up to the nearest ฿5, ฿10, ฿20 or ฿50, and the spare change is deposited into one pocket of your choosing.
- Go to More → Settings → "Profile & Setup" → "Round-Up Savings".
- Turn it on and pick the rounding step.
- Choose which pocket the change goes into.
Hidden feature
Round-up rewinds itself when you fix a mistake
Do thisEdit a rounded-up expense's amount, or delete it
The original round-up deposit is taken back out of the pocket, and on an edit a fresh one is computed against the new amount. Changing only the note or the date leaves the round-up alone. This also works through a bulk multi-select delete.
TipRound-up skips itself entirely — never partially — if stashing the change would take your spendable to zero or below. Same principle as auto-save: the savings feature is not allowed to be the reason you run out.
06
Progress, pace and celebrations
With a target set, each pocket row shows a progress bar with milestone ticks and a percentage. Add a target date and you also get a weekly pace — how much per week gets you there on time — plus a calm status chip.
TipThe weekly figure divides by whole weeks remaining and drops the partial one, so following it lands you on or before the deadline rather than a day after it.
Hidden feature
Confetti at 25, 50 and 75% — but the 100% party happens elsewhere
Do thisMake a deposit that pushes a pocket past a quarter mark
Confetti bursts inside the transfer sheet and it closes itself about a second later. Hitting 100% deliberately does not celebrate there — the Pockets list does that instead, so a completed goal is celebrated exactly once. Reduce Motion suppresses the confetti and keeps the haptic.
Hidden feature
A funded-but-tiny pocket says "<1%", never "0%"
Do thisPut ฿20 towards a ฿50,000 goal
The percentage rounds down everywhere else, but a pocket with real money in it is never shown as "0%" — "0%" is reserved for a genuinely empty one. Over-funding caps the display at "100%" rather than showing 143%.
07
Locking and deleting
A locked pocket asks for one confirmation before a withdrawal. That's the whole feature: friction, not a wall. Deposits are untouched, the balance is untouched, and the app never refuses to give the money back.
Hidden feature
The lock has a one-tap switch outside the edit form
Do thisPocket detail → the "Lock this pocket" toggle in the actions section
It flips immediately — no Edit, no Save. Handy for unlocking, taking the money out, and locking it straight back.
Heads upDeleting a pocket returns everything in it to your spendable balance. The pocket and its transfer history go; the money does not.
08
Where pockets show up elsewhere
- Safe-to-spend and your spendable balance are both computed after pockets are subtracted — that is the point of the feature.
- Pocket names are indexed in iOS Spotlight, so you can search for a goal from the home screen.
- Ask Pocketbird can answer questions about your pockets, and Siri can move money into one.
- A reached goal raises an insight card on Summary; tapping it jumps straight to that pocket.
Hidden feature
Tap "Set Aside in Pockets" on Summary to see the breakdown
Do thisSummary tab → the budget card → tap the "Set Aside in Pockets" row
The row expands in place to list every pocket and its amount, so you can see exactly what is holding your spendable down without leaving the card. The row is hidden entirely when nothing is set aside.
Hidden feature
Pull down to force a real sync
Do thisPull down on the Pockets list or on a pocket's detail screen
This is not a cosmetic refresh — it pushes your queued local changes and pulls remote ones, holding the spinner until the round trip actually finishes. Useful right after saving on another device.