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Budget account allowances

A category line (see Monthly budgets) answers "how much have I spent on groceries". An account allowance answers a different question: "I put $150 a month into this checking account to spend on whatever, how much of it is left?" It is the envelope idea, measured against an account rather than a category.

Adding one​

Use the Account allowances section of the Budgets page: pick a checking account, the monthly amount, any categories it should not count, whether unspent money rolls over, and an optional note. Only checking accounts can have an allowance.

What counts as spending​

Everything that left the account during the month, with these exceptions:

  • Transfers, and anything in an income or transfer category.
  • Categories on the allowance's Don't count list. This is how holiday money sitting in the same account stays out of the number; give it a window of its own.
  • Split transactions count part by part, so an excluded part is left out and the rest counts.
  • Refunds in a category reduce spending. An uncategorized deposit is not treated as a refund.

Rollover​

Rollover is on by default. What you didn't spend is added to next month's allowance; an overspend carries forward as a negative. A month with no allowance breaks the chain, and a month with rollover off neither receives nor passes on anything.

Where it shows up​

  • The Budgets page lists it with planned, carried in, spent and left.
  • The Budget breakdown widget shows a tile named "<account> spending".
  • Allowances are judged on the total, never on pace, so they are over only when overdrawn.
  • They are kept out of the month's category totals and Unbudgeted, so nothing is counted twice.
  • Start from last month copies allowances too.

Upgrading​

The change adds migration 027 (one new table, plugin_budgets.account_lines) and gives the Budgets plugin read access to accounts. Both are applied at start up; going back is possible, since the migration has a down.

An account with an allowance counts as in use: deleting it asks for the usual confirmation and removes the allowances with it.