A budget is a set amount of money assigned to a purpose (like meals, travel, office supplies) with rules for who can spend it, what it can be spent on, and how long it's available. Instead of managing spend after the fact, you set the intent up front and Mercury automatically routes transactions to the right budget at the point of purchase.
What are budgets
A budget is a defined amount of money paired with rules that determine how, when, and by whom it can be used. Each budget includes:
- A name and icon
- A per-person spend limit
- Recurrence (one-off or repeating)
- A start date and end date (defaults to starting today with no end date)
- Spending controls
- Who the budget applies to — specific team members, all members, or invite new team members
A budget refills on a set cadence, drains as spend occurs, and locks when it's empty or another condition (like an expiration date) is met. Budgets can be reassigned, edited, or archived at any time.
Spending controls
Every budget includes a per-person spending limit. You can choose to use just the spending limit or add a merchant-based spending control:
- Spend limit only: Overspend is prevented at the time of the transaction. If a budget doesn't have enough funds available to cover a transaction, that transaction is declined.
- Allow specific merchants: Only transactions with merchants on the allow list are approved. Any other merchant is automatically declined, even if the budget has funds available.
- Allow specific merchant types: Only transactions with merchant types on the allow list (for example, restaurants or airlines) are approved. Any other merchant type is automatically declined, even if the budget has funds available.
Budgets and cards
Budgets work with Mercury IO cards — debit cards* aren't currently supported. A team member needs at least one IO card to spend from a budget; if they don't have one, an admin can issue them one during budget setup.
Most budgets share a card: a single card can carry several budgets at once, and when it does, the cardholder spends normally while Mercury automatically routes each purchase to the most relevant budget. No extra steps for the employee.
Alternatively, an admin can restrict a budget to its own dedicated card by selecting “Restrict spending to single-budget cards” during setup. This isolates all spend for that budget to one card, rather than sharing a card with other budgets — useful for vendor or subscription spend where an admin wants tighter control (see FAQ: "What are single-budget cards, and how do they help?").
If a team member's existing card already has its own spending limit, what happens to it depends on the account's "Existing card limits" setting — see Setting up budgets below.
Who can use budgets
- Admins and custom roles with the manage spend permission can create budgets, edit them, and see spend across the team
- Team members spend from budgets assigned to them, using a card or by creating an expense to be reimbursed
What you can do with budgets
- Set a spend limit, and optionally restrict spend to specific merchants or merchant types
- Customize an individual team member's spend limit within a budget
- Attach one or more cards to a budget, or let a budget cover reimbursements
- Assign multiple budgets to a single card
- Reassign, edit, or archive a budget as needs change
- Track spend against budget purpose across Cards, Transactions, and Reimbursements
- Decide, at the account level, whether existing card limits convert into budgets or get replaced entirely
Setting up budgets on the Team Spend page
Admins and users with permission to manage spend can create and manage budgets from the Team Spend page. Here’s how to enable and set up your first budget(s):
- Select Team Spend from the left menu
- Click Create budgets to get started
- Select one or more common budget templates to customize, or start from scratch
- Set the budget's name, icon, per-person spend limit, and a description of what it's for
- Choose a spend control (see spending controls, above)
- Assign who the budget applies to, when it begins and ends, and an optional category applied to spend on that budget
- Review the budget preview on the right side of the screen, then click Next
- Choose which cards your team will spend their budgets from. For each assigned team member, select which card their budgets will be tied to:
- Team members with no cards can be issued a new virtual or physical IO card
- Team members with existing cards can have budgets added to an existing card, or be issued a new one instead
- If a team member's existing card already has its own spending limit, you'll be asked what should happen to it:
- Convert existing limit into a budget: keeps the current limit and adds the new budget on top of it
- Replace existing limit with budgets: removes the current limit and applies only the new budget's rules
Note: This is only configurable during initial budget set up. It’s a blanket setting across budgets but can be edited on your Team Spend Settings page
- Review the final budget details, who will be assigned, card issuances, then click Create budget
You can create another budget at any time by clicking + Create Budget from the Team Spend page, or when inviting new team members.
Reviewing budgets
The Team Spend page has two tabs for reviewing and managing budgets after they're created.
Employee budgets tab: Lists all existing budgets, showing each budget's name and spend limit. From here, you can add team members to a budget, or click into a budget to see who's assigned and each person's current spend
Team members tab: Lists team members and the budgets they're assigned to, and how much of their assigned budgets they've used
On the employee side:
- Employees can review and reassign a transaction to a different budget from their "Transactions" page — doing so may put the newly-assigned budget into an overspent state, which requires admin approval
- When submitting a reimbursement, employees can select which budget it should draw from
On mobile
You can view and use budgets in the Mercury mobile app for iOS and Android, but budgets can’t be created or edited from mobile. To create or edit budgets, use Mercury from a web browser.
Employees can use mobile to:
- View their assigned budgets and budget details
- See remaining budget amounts and recent activity
- See which budget a transaction or reimbursement was spent from
- Add or update the budget on eligible transactions and reimbursements, though some changes may require admin approval
- View budget information connected to their cards
Admins can use mobile to do the same for their own spend, plus:
- View budget information across team members
- See team members’ cards and connected budgets
- Assign budgets when issuing cards
- Add or update budgets on eligible team member transactions, when permitted
FAQs
Does a spend limit automatically decline a transaction once it's reached?
Yes. With spent limits, overspend is prevented at the time of the transaction — if the budget doesn't have enough funds available, the transaction is declined. Depending on your notifications, we’ll email or send you a push notification with the decline reason. You can also look up failed transactions from your Transactions page. If you have questions about the decline, reach out to an admin on file.
Can I apply multiple categories to a budget?
The category you set on a budget is used to automatically categorize transactions — and only one category can be set for this purpose. Transactions within the budget can still be individually assigned any category; the budget's category just determines what's applied by default.
Because of this, we recommend only setting a category on budgets where every transaction is expected to fall under that same category. If a budget covers a mix of spend types, it may be better to leave the category unset and categorize transactions individually.
How are categories applied to a budget?
Category isn't required when creating a budget, but if you set one, it's automatically applied to that budget's spend for accounting purposes. You can change or remove the category later by editing the budget if needed.
Can I customize an individual team member's spending limit within a budget?
Yes. From the budget's details, click into a team member to review their spend, including what's been spent and recent transactions. Click Customize to edit that person's individual spend limit, either for the current spend cycle or for all future cycles.
Who can set up and manage budgets?
Admins and users with spend management permissions can see their own cards and budgets, see team cards and budgets, and issue cards with budgets attached. Employees can view their own cards and budgets.
Can I change a budget's frequency after it's created?
No. Admins can edit any attribute of an existing budget except its frequency. To change how often a budget recurs, you'll need to delete the budget and create a new one.
What happens to a card's existing spending limit when a budget is added to it?
During your first budget setup, you'll choose one of two options for how existing card limits are handled:
- Convert existing limits into the budget to keep the current limit and add the new budget on top of it.
- Replace existing card limits to apply only the new budget's rules. This is a blanket setting across all budgets, not a per-budget choice, though you can change it later from Team Spend settings.
How does Mercury decide which budget to route a transaction to?
It depends on the card. If a card is dedicated to a single budget, every transaction on it goes to that budget automatically — there's nothing to decide.
For a card that carries multiple budgets, Mercury routes each transaction in two steps. First, it narrows down which budgets are actually eligible for the transaction — ruling out any with a merchant or merchant-type restriction that doesn't match, or that don't have enough funds left. If no budget can cover the purchase, the transaction is declined. If exactly one budget qualifies, the transaction goes there.
If more than one budget could apply, Mercury picks the most likely match based on the transaction details (merchant, business type, and amount) compared against what each eligible budget is for. It also factors in your past reassignments, so it improves over time if you've corrected similar transactions before.
Can I reassign a transaction to a different budget?
Yes. If a transaction was assigned to the wrong budget, open it from your Transactions page and select a new budget from the details panel. If the reassignment would push the new budget over its limit, an admin will need to approve it before the change takes effect.
How are single-budget cards useful?
Single-budget cards are assigned during budget creation and allow spend to come from only one specific budget. They're useful when an admin wants tighter control over spend for a specific purpose, vendor, or subscription — for example, isolating a software subscription on its own card, so cancelling or freezing it doesn't affect anyone's main card.
Admins can issue single-budget cards during budget setup by toggling “Restrict spending to single-budget cards”.
*The Mercury Debit Cards are issued by Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC, pursuant to licenses from Mastercard®. The IO Card is issued by Patriot Bank, N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated.