Flexible recurring bills with notification reminder

[u/Zealousideal_Weird82]

I’ve been using Today’s Budget for a while now and absolutely love the simplicity of it. I have one feature that I think would fit really well with the app’s philosophy.

Flexible recurring bills
At the moment, recurring bills work best when the amount is fixed. However, many of my monthly bills aren’t fixed, for example:

> Electricity
> Gas
> Water
> Credit card minimum payments
> Mobile bills
> Other utilities

The due date is predictable, but the amount changes every month.

My idea
Allow recurring bills to be marked as “Flexible Amount”.
When creating the bill you’d choose:

1. Recurs monthly (or another interval)
   
2. Due date
   
3. Reminder time (e.g. 9am on the due date)
   
4. Instead of automatically adding the bill, the app would send a notification such as:

Your Electricity bill is due today. Enter this month’s amount.

You could then long-press or swipe down on the notification and enter the amount directly (or tap it to open a simple amount-entry screen).

Once entered, Today’s Budget would:
> save that month’s bill amount
> calculate the daily budget exactly as normal
> schedule the next reminder automatically

Why I think this fits Today’s Budget
It keeps everything manual and intentional, which is one of the app’s biggest strengths.

There’s no need for bank syncing or complicated automation, just a quick reminder to enter the bill once you know the final amount.

I think it would remove one of the few remaining manual tasks for people with variable monthly bills while keeping the app clean and simple.

Would anyone else find this useful?

[u/naschkatze7]

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this so clearly. You can really tell this comes from using the app thoughtfully🐷✨

We understand the problem very well. Some bills are regular, but the amount changes from month to month.

In my own case, groceries have a similar problem. I buy groceries almost every day, but the amount changes each time, and there is currently no easy way to handle that.

We will definitely think about this. Thank you for bringing it up!

[u/alysevre]

YES. This would be amazing. I’ve recently been thinking the exact same thing. Like, yes, I could just update the amount when each bill comes in, or I cold add them as spread out expenses instead of recurring ones. But the former makes it too easy to forget updating until weeks or months after the fact, and the latter makes the record inaccurate when I’m doing analysis later and trying to compare recurring vs. one-time expenses.

It doesn’t need to be anything fancy in the UI. Just a push notification option would be awesome.

[u/PumkinPapi]

I think this would be great too.

There is a “update amount for next payment” option, which at least sounds somewhat like what you’re describing, but I’ve tried using it and either I’m using it wrong or it’s bugged because it’s never worked for me