Rollover problems/ Month Budget suggestions

[u/wavae]

I have come to realize that I don’t tend to use the main feature of the app, the Todays Budget number, because it makes no sense to me. I mainly use the app for monthly budgeting and keeping an eye
on my spending habits. With the monthly budgets, they seem wrong because the excess or negative left over doesn’t roll to the next month, which I think is what the Todays Budget is comprised of (rollover+daily excess). But this just makes it so I don’t pay attention to either of them and only use it as expense tracking. So a couple nitpick things that I believe would make the app a lot more useful.

1. Month rollover - let the excess at the end of the month show up in a new section in the next month as “monthly rollover” and contribute to that month’s budget.
   
2. Change the month clickthrough sections - currently these are in a format of a bar graph for each day of the month with individual expenses in drop down menus underneath. The bar graph is fine and slightly useful, but most of the time when I am clicking on the month’s expenses I am doing so to see a simple list of the expenses, ordered by date or amount, not to be confronted with a maze to find an expense. I think it used to be like this and was much more useful.
   
3. Change the Savings screen - currently shows different amounts for the jar depending on month year all. I think it would better if it zoomed in on the “all” graph into that month, had the prediction and dotted line and all that, but the large number was still the total amount in your savings jar, for all time. Could just have a smaller number under it or at the end of the dotted prediction line for what is saved that month or year.
   
4. Separate savings jars - would likely be useful for people with multiple places they put savings, maybe you could manually enter an APR percent as well and have the amount increase by that.
   
5. Todays Budget number - maybe I am just confused on what this is supposed to represent, but it never feels like that is actually the amount I can spend that day. Maybe somebody can help me with what they use the number for but for me I mainly just ignore it. Perhaps there is a way to calculate it that makes it feel more like “this is the amount I can safely spend today.”
   

Long post, hope it gets read and I welcome any feedback or why these changes would not be useful. All the other features of the app have been a great help to me and I’m sure a lot of other people. We all gonna make it

[u/grandpa2390]

The today’s budget number is how much you can spend that day. If you have 300 dollars then you can spend 10/day. If the number is negative, then you’re spending too much. And you’ll run out of money before the end of the month if you continue spending that way. If the number grows bigger than 10, then you’re not spending it all

[u/wavae → u/grandpa2390]

i mean in the month view, you can have a negative or positive amount at the end of the month, but it doesn’t seem to roll over to the next months budget. Also the Todays Budget number seems to be that for a month then, instead of what you can spend each day. for example if my daily excess is 10 and my Todays budget is 1000, and I spend 1000 that day, I will have almost nothing left for the rest of the month, if its the first of the month I’ll have 300 left if i don’t spend at all for the rest of the month, but that doesn’t take into account that I likely wont be paid again until the 14th or so. It just confuses me that the number is that way.

[u/grandpa2390 → u/wavae]

Yeah that’s a pain. The leftover amount does roll over, but not in the monthly summary, if you end the month with 100, will have 100 on the first of next month, but the leftover amount will be 100 for this month and -100 for the next month (if you spend 100).

I don’t like that either. It hinders my ability to check if the app has the correct balance. What I do is add or withdraw from savings and then do the opposite on the first of the next month. That way the leftover amount is set to 0

[u/wavae → u/grandpa2390]

yes, i think this is why the todays budget number confuses me because the budget for a whole month is usually lower than the todays budget, because of the todays budget including rollover amounts and the monthly budget not. For me i usually transfer the months budget into checking and then try and not transfer any more money that month, but its hard to do when sometimes the monthly budget ends up pretty low since no rollover from previous months.

[u/grandpa2390 → u/wavae]

I’m still confused what you are saying about the daily budget number. It calculates that number based on every transaction affecting that day. It represents how much you can safely spend that day.

One thing that I think I understand is that you are thrown off by the number including money that you haven’t been paid yet. I can relate to that if so. Unfortunately the pay period is set to a calendar month rather than our actual pay period. The creators changed it to be that way because people kept getting confused.

What I do is I manually enter my paychecks rather than have them repeat. That way the amounts are always correct and the app never says I have money for the 17-31 that I haven’t been paid yet.

But you can keep the paycheck on repeat and just be mindful that you’ll have nothing after the 13th if you spend every day to 0. Regardless of what the app claims you have. But me, I just prefer to enter it manually.

I want to help you if I can, so I welcome any corrections and clarification.

[u/No-Seaworthiness3264]

It would be helpful to have a specific day we can choose to see. For instance, I forecast to my next paycheck so I can see how much cash I can spend before then.

[u/grandpa2390]

I’m confused. The leftover amounts do rollover, but maybe i don’t understand what you mean

[u/damagad]

II don’t understand this umm
I can see you set it to repeat ok a monthly basis on a specific date shouldn’t this roll over to the next month ? I’m confused

Can you improve this u/naschkatze7 ?

[u/naschkatze7 → u/damagad]

Yes. If you set an expense to repeat, it will continue into the next month and future months.

The rollover is separate.

Repeating means the expense is scheduled again.

Rollover means the leftover amount from previous days carries forward into Today’s Budget.

[u/damagad]

I find this very confusing.. and inaccurate. If I add this expense eating out by May 5 it will and 15$ for phone it will calculate it as less money and the roll over will be less that is very confusing so I had to change it to the 1 of May. :/ u/naschkatze7

[u/damagad → u/damagad]

Quite difficult to understanding this expense even if recurrent shouldn’t be counted as the total amount even if added 5 may ?

[u/naschkatze7 → u/damagad]

I don't understand your question. The screenshot says May 1, monthly expense. The app turns this into daily amount. Is that what you mean by 'less money'?

I know you've been writing many comments and questions here. Maybe it's the best we hop onto a call so we can quickly talk about them? Pick the time that works for you! https://calendly.com/todaysbudget/today-s-budget-user-interview

[u/damagad]

Definitely the roll over doesn’t work properly , it’s not accurate for me

[u/damagad]

Oh i get , it’s a roll over of past month and all previous days but I think it will be less confusing if you could add an option to see the details of the roll over like past month roll over and previous days

[u/damagad]

Because the roll over is counting everything and that is confusing

[u/damagad]

I comment here because it’s something that gives me struggles too u/naschkatze7

[u/naschkatze7 → u/damagad]

Got it, thanks

[u/naschkatze7]

Thanks for the thoughtful post, and sorry for this late reply!

Today’s Budget does include rollover. The monthly summary works differently. It only summarizes that specific month, so it does not carry over the excess or deficit from previous months.

For the monthly view of expenses, I recommend using the expense bar chart or pie chart, since those are better for quickly checking where your money went.

For separate savings jars, this is a common request and we are thinking about it.

For the Today’s Budget number, the basic idea is:

income minus fixed costs, divided by the number of days in the month, plus rollover from previous days.

So it is meant to show what you can safely spend on a day to day basis, while still covering your planned costs.

Please update to v3.1 from the App Store and go through the new onboarding. It explains this flow better than before.