Creating a Cost Center takes five seconds and three choices: name, icon, color. It's deliberately lightweight — a Center isn't a contract, you can change it whenever.
Where to start
From any screen, New Cost Center opens the form. You'll find it on the dashboard (label New Cost Center), in the Cost Centers view (label Create cost center), and as a FAB option on mobile.
Name: speak like you speak
The name is what you'll see every time you open the Center or search the lists. Write it like you'd say it: "Milan home", "Car", "Vacation 2026". No enterprise names like "Housing Expenses — Primary Residence".
If you have multiple areas of the same kind (more houses, more cars), distinguish them with a short detail: "Milan home", "Beach house", "Company car", "Personal car".
Icon: instant recognition
The icon helps when you have 5+ Centers and want to distinguish them at a glance. FamSpend offers a library of ready icons (house, car, bag, suitcase, shoes, gift, heart, book...).
Pick an icon that represents the area literally, not metaphorically: the car is a car, the home is a home. The metaphor feels elegant until you don't recognize it.
Color: the visual cue in the Calendar view
The Center color is what you'll see in the calendar dots and the total bars. The more Centers you use, the more the colors must be distinguishable from one another.
FamSpend offers 8 pre-defined colors that read well on both light and dark backgrounds. With 4 Centers, pick distant colors (red, blue, green, orange). With 6+, take the intermediate tones too (purple, teal, amber).
Monthly budget: optional
When you create a Center you can (don't have to) set an indicative monthly budget. If you do, the Center will show monthly spend vs budget — under, on track, or over.
If you prefer to plan without a budget, leave it empty. The Center works the same, just without the budget progress bar.
Associated people: optional at the start
You can (and probably should) link the Center to people. "Milan home" probably involves you + your partner; "Car" just you. The person is inherited by expenses entering the Center, unless overridden.
Skip it on creation if you don't have people configured yet — add it later.
How many Centers to create on day one
Three or four. The ones covering 70-80% of your recurring spend:
- Home (rent/mortgage + bills + maintenance)
- Car / transport
- Groceries & daily
- The one keeping you up at night (kids, health, vacation...)
The others come when you need them. Adding a Center later is painless — move two expenses and done.
What NOT to do
- Don't create a "Misc" or "Other" Center — it would end up holding 20% of your spend with no distinction, destroying the whole point of Centers
- Don't create Centers with vague scope like "Lifestyle" or "Personal expenses" — they don't help answer "how much is X costing me?"
- Don't create a hierarchy — there are no sub-Centers, and trying to simulate them with name prefixes ("Home - Bills", "Home - Maintenance") leads to frustration
Editing and archiving a Center
Everything is editable later: name, icon, color, budget. If a Center doesn't serve you anymore (vacation over, house sold), you can archive it: expenses stay in history but the Center disappears from the active list. No catastrophic delete.