Introduction

Overview

Principal Plan is a desktop personal finance application built around envelope budgeting. Instead of only reviewing spending after the fact, you assign income to virtual envelopes as it arrives, giving every dollar a job before you spend it.

The application runs entirely on your computer. Your data is stored locally in a single file, and there is no cloud account to create. Your financial data never leaves your machine.

Principal Plan is available for Windows (via the Microsoft Store) and macOS (via the Mac App Store).

Main Window

The main window has three main areas: a left panel, a central workspace, and a menu bar along the top.

Left Panel

The left panel contains three sections, shown either as tabs or stacked vertically:

• Accounts -- A tree view showing your financial accounts. Each account displays its current balance and cleared balance. Accounts can be organized into groups and reordered by dragging.

• Envelopes -- A tree view showing your spending categories. Each envelope displays its current balance. Envelopes can be nested inside other envelopes for hierarchical organization.

• Templates -- A list of reusable transaction blueprints. Templates capture recurring patterns like monthly bills or regular income and feed into the Allocation Plan.

Central Content Area

The central workspace uses tabs. Double-click an account or envelope in the left panel to open a ledger tab for that item's transactions. You can keep multiple ledgers open while moving between accounts and envelopes.

Each ledger tab includes a filter toolbar for narrowing the displayed transactions by date, clearing status, or custom criteria.

Menu Bar

The menu bar contains three menus:

File -- File operations and application settings:

• New -- Create a new Principal Plan file.
• Open -- Open an existing file.
• Save / Save As -- Save the current file.
• Revert -- Revert the file to the state it was in when first opened this session.
• Import -- Import transactions from CSV, OFX/QFX, or QIF files.
• Create Checkpoint / Restore Checkpoint -- Save and restore named snapshots of your data.
• Settings -- Open the settings dialog.

View -- Open ledger views and the budgeting tool:

• Account Ledger -- Open a ledger tab for a selected account.
• Envelope Ledger -- Open a ledger tab for a selected envelope.
• Allocation Plan -- Open the budget allocation dialog.

Help -- Help, registration, and licensing:

• Help Contents -- Open the help website.
• Website -- Open the Principal Plan website.
• License -- Check your license status or purchase a license.
• Registration -- Open the registration and telemetry dialog.
• About Principal Plan -- View version information.

Key Features

Envelope Budgeting

The core workflow is simple: income arrives, you distribute it across envelopes, and spending draws from those envelopes. This encourages a plan-before-you-spend habit. Envelopes also support spending limits and watchdog alerts for low balances.

Allocation Plan

The Allocation Plan is a forward-looking budget view. It uses your templates to project expected income and expenses, then shows how each deposit should be divided across your envelopes. You can view the plan by day, week, month, or year.

Importing

Principal Plan imports transaction data from bank downloads in CSV, OFX/QFX, and QIF formats. The import system includes automatic transaction matching to avoid duplicates, payee and memo filtering, and a file watch feature that can monitor a download path and trigger an import automatically.

Search and Replace

The Search and Replace tool operates on the visible transactions in the current ledger. It can search in payee, memo, and code fields with options for case sensitivity and exact matching.

Reports

Three report dialogs provide financial summaries:

• Account Activity Report -- Current and cleared balances for selected accounts as of a chosen date.
• Envelope Summary Report -- Envelope balances with allocation plan integration.
• Envelope Activity Report -- Allocation, expenses, and transfers per envelope over a date range.

Each report supports printing, print preview, copy to clipboard, and CSV export.

Printing

Print preview renders account and envelope ledgers before they are sent to the printer. Ledger and report dialogs can print, preview, export, or copy their output where those options are available.

Backup and Recovery

Automatic backups are created once per session when you save a changed file. If you open a file and close it without making changes, no backup is created. The backup depth setting controls how many backup copies are retained. Checkpoints provide named snapshots you can restore at any time. An archive feature moves historical data to a separate file to keep your working file lean.

Account Types

Principal Plan supports twenty account types:

Type	Description
Checking	A standard checking account.
Savings	A savings account.
Credit Card	A credit card account. The balance represents the amount owed.
Cash	Physical cash on hand.
E-Cash	Electronic cash accounts such as PayPal or Venmo.
Investment	General investment accounts.
Group	An organizational container that holds other accounts. Groups do not have their own transactions.
Loan	A personal or auto loan.
Mortgage	A home mortgage.
Retirement	Retirement accounts such as 401(k) or IRA.
Brokerage	A brokerage or trading account.
HSA	A Health Savings Account.
Crypto	Cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges.
Prepaid	Prepaid debit cards.
Money Market	A money market account.
CD	A certificate of deposit.
Business	A business or commercial account.
Property	Real estate or other property assets.
Insurance	Insurance policies with a cash value.
Gift Card	Gift cards and store credit.

Transaction Types

The transaction editor exposes four transaction types:

Type	Description
Simple	A single deposit or payment in one account assigned to one envelope.
Transfer	Moves money between accounts, between envelopes, or both.
Regular Multiple	Splits one deposit or payment across multiple envelope allocations. With Enable Account Transfers in Multiples enabled, it can also transfer part of the amount to another account.
Multiple Envelope Transfer	Moves budget amounts among multiple envelopes in one transaction.

Each transaction carries a date, amount, payee, memo, check code, and clearing status (none, pending, or cleared).

Languages

Principal Plan is available in six languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. The language can be changed in the Settings dialog.

Getting Started

When you launch Principal Plan for the first time, the Start Wizard walks you through creating your initial accounts, setting up income templates, and building a basic allocation plan.