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Until payday

Until payday is a dashboard widget that answers one question: will I make it to payday? It comes from the bundled plugin wickermoney.upcoming (plugins/upcoming), which is read-only and holds the recurring_items and accounts grants and nothing else.

Added in 0.2.0.

The window​

The widget looks from tomorrow through the next payday, inclusive. The next payday is the earliest expected income into any of your accounts. With no income expected, it looks 14 days ahead and says so.

It starts from tomorrow because today's actual balance is the starting point, so anything that already posted today isn't counted twice.

What it shows​

  • Safe to spend: the total you can spend before payday without any counted account dropping below its buffer.
  • Each account's outlook: every checking account, plus any savings account marked Safe to spend. For each one, its lowest point in the window and its room above buffer (lowest point minus buffer). An account that isn't counted toward safe to spend is still listed, marked not counted.
  • A shortfall banner for any listed account that dips below its buffer, naming the account, the day, and how far below it goes.
  • Coming up: what lands before payday. Transfers between your own accounts are hidden unless you tick Show transfers.

The rules behind the number​

These come from the recurring-items design decisions, and the Forecast follows the same ones:

  • Accounts are never pooled. Each account is projected on its own. One account's surplus doesn't cover another's shortfall, because the bank doesn't do that either. A transfer moves money between the two accounts it touches.
  • Outflows clear before inflows on the same day. Each day's low point assumes the bill goes out before the paycheck arrives, so rent due on payday shows as the dip it is if the paycheck lands late.
  • Safe to spend is the sum of positive room across the counted accounts. A short account adds nothing, and isn't netted against the others either. It gets the banner instead.
  • "Today" is yours, not the server's or the browser's. It's your calendar day in your account's time zone, worked out on the server.

Setting it up​

  1. Add your paychecks, bills and transfers on the Recurring page.
  2. On the Accounts page, set each checking account's buffer, and choose which accounts count toward safe to spend (checking accounts do by default; savings can opt in).
  3. Check Settings → Time zone.

The widget sits in the dashboard's main row, beside Budget breakdown when the budgets plugin is enabled.

Limits​

The widget projects the schedule. It doesn't know about everyday spending that isn't a recurring item. It does know what you've matched: a matched occurrence is already in the balance and isn't counted again, skipped and moved occurrences follow your change, and on an item you track, a late occurrence is still counted, on the first day of the window.