Planned spending

Concepts

Transactions dated in the future are your plan for the rest of the month. Balanced takes them off your categories ahead of time, so what's available is really available.

Your rent is due at the end of the month, and the phone bill comes on the 20th. You know about them now, so Balanced can count them now, before the money actually leaves your account.

Transactions in the future

Any transaction dated after today is planned. You can enter one yourself by picking a later Date. In transaction lists it appears dimmed until its day comes.

A planned transaction doesn’t change your account balances yet: the overview shows each balance as of today. Planned income doesn’t count towards Available either, until its date has come and you’ve cleared it.

Repeating transactions show up early

When you turn on Repeat for a transaction, Balanced creates the coming occurrences up to the end of next month. So on any day, this month’s rent, subscriptions and salary are already in your lists, and next month’s too. You see what’s coming before it happens.

How to set one up: Repeating transactions.

Planned spending in your budget

The budget editor splits this month’s spending in two:

• Spent: what you spent from your categories, dated today or earlier.
• Planned spending: the same, dated after today.

Payments to a credit card or loan don’t count as spending here. You see them on the card’s or loan’s own row in the budget editor.

For each category, what’s available is its budget minus its planned spending. Say Groceries has €150 left, and you’ve entered next week’s shop for €60. Groceries shows €90 available. Spend more than that, and you’d be using money that’s meant for next week.

What the colors mean

The overview shows each expense account with what’s available, in one of four colors. The budget editor uses the same colors.

Accounts

Expenses

🚗 Car0.001

🎉 Fun−30.002

🛒 Groceries90.003

📱 Phone−5.004

1. Gray: nothing left over once planned spending is covered, for example when nothing was assigned.
2. Red: overspent. You’ve spent more than the category had. In the budget editor it’s marked Overspent.
3. Green: money available, after subtracting planned spending.
4. Orange: planned spending is more than what’s left. Phone has €40, but the €45 bill is still to come. Assign €5 more before it’s due.

Orange is an early warning: nothing is overspent yet, but it will be if the plan comes true. Rebalance now, while it’s still easy. Month to month shows how.

Under the hood · for the curious

A planned transaction is an ordinary transaction with a later date:

Rent · Oct 31

Expenses:Rent

+850.00

Assets:Checking

−850.00

Balanced

0.00 ✓

For each category, Balanced works out:

budget balance =
    left from last month
  + assigned − spent so far
available =
    budget balance − planned

budget balance < 0        → red
budget balance < planned  → orange
available > 0             → green
otherwise                 → gray