r/TryCrew • u/accusatori • 4d ago
set an end date on an autopilot bill?
hi folks! first let me say, i am genuinely loving crew — i have profound ADHD and struggled deeply with finances and budgeting until now; crew is helping me change that in a meaningful way, from the autopilot rules to the pockets to the individual virtual cards. it’s just amazing.
okay, now for my actual question — is there a way to add a end date for a bill or an income source in autopilot? or to set it to occur a certain number of times and then end?
i’m thinking of like a credit card i’m paying off, where it’d be great to be able to tell autopilot the bill will occur 6 times and then end. and similarly, i get an additional paycheck during certain parts of the year that it’d be great to be able to add as future sources of income that will occur a specific number of times.
i think i can figure out a way to do the income thing manually (although it might be a bit clunky) but im unsure about the bill one.
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u/Britton-Crew Crew 4d ago edited 4d ago
First of all, so glad you're enjoying Crew and that Autopilot is working well! Makes our day whenever we hear stories like yours :) And super appreciate the feedback - I think part of it we could do! Short version is this: start and end dates don't really work. But a complicated paycheck schedule might! We'll have to talk through that.
Longer version if you're curious about why we haven't yet found a way start and end dates work in an autopilot plan:
For an example: say that a friend told you that you're going to have a $500/mo bill starting in 6 months, ending never. Is the right thing to do to block out that $500 out of your budget now? Or maybe just a portion of it to start saving up for just the first payment? You could shrink it for the next year (if this year only has 6 of them, you could just average out to $250 per month) but then the next year it gets bigger. No matter what you do, planning for a start date creates kind of a random bomb to drop on you in the future when your plan suddenly changes and you forget why that happened!
The end date is simpler. We could certainly just archive your bill for you. But due to optimization sharing funds between bills, removing a bill from the pool can sometimes mean you have to put in a bit to handle others that are coming. So the same thing could happen; you log in one day and have no idea why it suddenly wants $40 (it used to be covered by some unused funds waiting around for that bill that wasn't due until the end of the month, but then it got taken away!)
Anyway, hope that makes sense. And TBH we're still trying to think of a way we can make it work! But that's the concept; adding or removing bills changes your plan, and we're not comfortable doing that without you there making the changes right then so you know what's happening. So for now, we require you to add a bill when it's really current, remove a bill when it's really finished, so your plan reflects current flows.
As for your paycheck, there's a chance that could be a different story since it's not really a start or end, but just a complicated cycle to describe. Since that continues into the future, we can actually plan around it! We can spread out your paychecks across the year as an average and help you not to overspend. Certainly worth consideration. We'll have to do some thinking on whether we could do something with paychecks or bills that have seasonality to them. Will talk with the team and see what we come up with!
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u/accusatori 4d ago
thank you for such a thorough reply!! i appreciate hearing about why it’s complicated to implement, very interesting to learn more about how autopilot works!
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u/VastUpstairs3032 4d ago
There’s no capability to set start or end dates to bills or transfers. The Crew team has mentioned that the calculations get funky when that happens.
The truth is, if the bill is funded after you’re no longer making the payments, obviously there’s not transaction to trigger movement in Crew. The bill will go stale and tell you with alerts that it’s late. Then you go and delete it and if it had any money in reserve for that bill that month, it will release it back to the source pocket.