I have my own spreadsheet on which I record my account balances every Saturday. The sheet automatically calculates:

• My total "operating" funds--checking minus outstanding credit
• A six-week average of operating funds--since I get paid monthly this helps even things out instead of spiking on the 1st and declining until the next paycheck
• My savings balance change from the last week--I also have a "summary" column to describe the meanings for the balance change (monthly transfer from checking, withdrew to pay property taxes, etc.)

This provides a good snapshot of how I'm doing, where I've been, and where I'm headed. In addition to this, I use the online transaction record from my bank and credit cards to reconcile my account activity against the stack of receipts saved from the previous week.

I don't specifically budget for things on a monthly basis; my wife and I are just careful with spending and my 6-week operating average lets us know when we either have a bit extra or we need to back off. I do sketch out a rough budget whenever the financial situation changes (raise, new proposed monthly expenditure, etc.) just to see if I can change how much we're saving, but I haven't found it worthwhile to map all purchases to within a set of limited categories. I used to do that, but it was way more effort than it was worth for our situation.