Monthly budgets
The Budgets page (in the sidebar, from the bundled plugin
wickermoney.budgets) plans one amount per category per calendar month and
shows how much of it you have spent. This page covers those monthly lines. A
date range that isn't a month is a budget window, and money
set aside to spend from one checking account is an
account allowance. Both sit on the same page.
Added in 0.1.0.
One row per category per month
A budget isn't a template that you keep editing. Each month has its own row for each category, so the plan you made for October is still there, unchanged, when you look at it in March.
Only the plan is stored. Everything else on the page is worked out from your ledger every time the page loads:
- Spent is the money that left the category that month. A refund filed in the category reduces it, and a split transaction (the API can make one; the web app has no split editor) counts part by part, each part in its own category.
- Carried in (see Rollover) is replayed from earlier months.
- Left is planned plus carried in, minus spent.
Because of that, the Budgets page and the Transactions page can't disagree, and a receipt you import late against an old month corrects every month after it.
What counts as spending
The spent figure is deliberately narrow. These are not counted:
- Transfers. Both rows of a transfer are left out, however they were categorized.
- Categories that count as Income or Transfer (see Categories and rules). A category like that can't be given a line either: it isn't offered in the picker, because its line would always read zero.
- Uncategorized transactions. Spending that has no category isn't attributed to anything, so it appears in no line and not in Spent with no budget either. File it with a rule or from the Transactions page and it shows up.
Reading the page
Use Previous, Next and This month to move between months. The page opens on the current month in your time zone. The four figures at the top total the month's category lines and windows:
| Figure | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Planned | The sum of the plans (a window counts in its first month only) |
| Available | Planned plus what rolled in |
| Spent | Spent across those lines |
| Remaining | Available minus spent. Negative means over overall |
Account allowances are kept out of these totals, because the same spending is also counted in its categories.
Under Lines, each row shows:
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
| Category | The category, with "carried in" or "overdrawn" and an amount underneath when a rolling line brought something in |
| Planned | An editable amount |
| Spent | Spent in the month |
| Left | Available minus spent |
| Pace | A bar of spent against available, with a mark for today |
| Status | A coloured dot and a word (below) |
| Rolls over | A checkbox |
Pace and status
A bar at 80% is fine on the 28th and a problem on the 10th, so the bar carries a mark showing how far through the month today is. A past month is judged on its final total, so it reads Over, Nothing spent or On track, and a future month reads the same way, since none of it has elapsed.
The Status is worked out from three things, checked in this order:
| Status | When |
|---|---|
| Over | Left is below zero |
| Nothing spent | Nothing has been spent in the category yet |
| Ahead of pace | Spent as a share of available is at least 1.15 times the share of the month that has passed |
| Under pace | Spent is under three quarters of the share of the month that has passed |
| On track | Everything else |
The pace is deliberately naive: spending is lumpy, and rent paid on the 1st makes housing look "ahead of pace" all month. The status is a prompt to look, not a verdict.
Setting a plan
- Add a line. Pick a category under Add a category and press Add line. It starts at 0 with rollover off. The picker lists enabled categories that count as spending, grouped under their parents, and leaves out any that already have a line that month.
- Change the plan. Type in the Planned field. It saves when you leave the field, and Enter leaves it. Amounts can't be empty (enter 0 for no plan) or negative, and have at most four decimal places. The reason shows under the field if one is refused.
- Remove a line. Remove deletes that month's line for that category, and no other month's.
A category can't have two lines on the same day. If a window covers part of the month for that category, saving a monthly line for it is refused with a message that says so.
Rollover
Rolls over is a checkbox on each line, not a setting for the whole budget, because half of anyone's categories want it and half don't.
- Off (the default for a new line): a monthly allowance. It starts fresh every month and passes nothing on. Groceries is the usual example.
- On: a sinking fund. What is left at the end of the month is added to the next month's available amount, and overspending is carried too, as a negative. A car-maintenance fund you overdrew has less in it next month. Ticking the box saves straight away, along with any plan you had typed.
The carried amount is never stored. It is replayed from the earlier months each time, so editing an old month changes what every later month carries. Three limits to know:
- A month with no line for the category breaks the chain. The next month starts from zero rather than carrying a balance across a month you never planned.
- A month with rollover off passes nothing on, even if the month before it rolled in something.
- The replay looks back 24 months.
Starting the next month
Open a month you haven't planned and the page shows last month's lines as a draft: the same categories and plans, with a Draft — nothing saved yet badge. Looking ahead is a read and writes nothing. Nothing is saved until you act.
- Start Month from these saves all of the previewed lines, with their rollover settings, as that month's budget. A notice says how many were carried over.
- A draft never includes a category that a window already covers that month.
- A draft carries nothing in. The balance a rolling line inherits depends on how the month before actually ends, so it shows once the lines are saved.
The draft shows only while the month has no saved monthly lines. If you change a single draft line, that line is saved and the rest of the preview goes, and the button to carry the others over is no longer offered. Press Start Month from these first, then edit.
If the month before has no lines either, there is nothing to preview and the page shows Nothing budgeted yet.
Spent with no budget
At the bottom, Spent with no budget lists categories with spending that month and no line, with a total. Without it, a category you forgot to plan and one you never used would look the same, since both are simply missing from the lines. The list is left out when there is nothing to show. Spending in a window's category outside the window's dates lands here too.
On the dashboard
The Budget breakdown widget shows the current month's lines as tiles, trouble first. See The dashboard. It reads only lines you have saved: a month that is still a draft shows No budget this month there.
What it doesn't do
- Income isn't planned. There are no income lines; recurring income is planned on the Recurring page.
- No shared household budget. Each person on an instance has their own budget, and other people on the instance can't see it.
- No alerts. Nothing notifies you when a line goes over. The page and the dashboard are where you see it.
- A parent's line doesn't add up its children. A line measures only the transactions filed directly under its own category. Give each child its own line if you want to track them.
- No history of plan changes. Editing a plan replaces it.
Backups and removal
The plan is in your data export. Turning the Budgets plugin off keeps the lines and brings the page back when you turn it on (Plugins).
For the endpoints, see API reference.