Good news: you can track gift cards in Waypoint Budget today with a manual account.
Here's the setup:
1. On the Accounts page, add a manual account and pick the Cash type.
2. Name it after the card, like "Amazon Gift Card", and enter the balance on it.
3. When you spend from the card, log the purchase as a transaction on that account. The balance draws down as you spend, and the purchase still counts in your budget categories like normal spending.
When the card is used up, you can delete the account or keep it at zero for the record.
We did look at deeper gift card tracking, like storing card numbers and checking live balances with issuers. We're going to pass on that part: gift cards are essentially cash, so storing card numbers would make the app a target, and there's no reliable way to look up balances across all the different issuers. The manual account route keeps the useful part, how much is left and what you've used, without those risks.
If anything about manual accounts falls short for gift cards, tell us here and we'll take another look.
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Comments1
team@waypointbudget
Aug 23
Hey @Cadin , thanks for posting this!
Good news: you can track gift cards in Waypoint Budget today with a manual account.
Here's the setup:
1. On the Accounts page, add a manual account and pick the Cash type.
2. Name it after the card, like "Amazon Gift Card", and enter the balance on it.
3. When you spend from the card, log the purchase as a transaction on that account. The balance draws down as you spend, and the purchase still counts in your budget categories like normal spending.
When the card is used up, you can delete the account or keep it at zero for the record.
We did look at deeper gift card tracking, like storing card numbers and checking live balances with issuers. We're going to pass on that part: gift cards are essentially cash, so storing card numbers would make the app a target, and there's no reliable way to look up balances across all the different issuers. The manual account route keeps the useful part, how much is left and what you've used, without those risks.
If anything about manual accounts falls short for gift cards, tell us here and we'll take another look.