I would like to request a feature for recurring expenses with a cycle to be distributed in equal portion across months of the cycle.
E.g. mortgage is coming out every quarter, so when I do reconciliation there is peaks and throughs, but I put money away for this cost monthly. When i review a reconciliation table, I do not get an immediate view how much should i budget for it. Instead, it would be very helpful to have the expense being equally distributed per each month (in this case x/3). This way I will see if I am managing money well so that at the end of the day I will have sufficient fund to cover the cost.
@jmg Hi Jake. Thank you for using Cashculator. I have a feeling that what you want is already possible in Cashculator but since you ask for it, I want to make sure I understand your request.
You talk about Actuals and Budget. And that’s good because Cashculator indeed separates Actual transactions and, what we call, Plan transactions. So you can create a recurring monthly plan transaction of $2,000 and make sure “Automatically fill on actuals” is unchecked. Then enter $6000 in Actuals on the date of the actual payment.
Does this approach help you or does still break your workflow?
When I set a budget for e.g. Mortgage, it shows every 3rd month. But I would like to see how much I need to ‘put aside’ monthly in order to be able to fulfill the payment.
I imagine that when I set an expense in the Budget, I state that it has a specific cycle, in this case 3 months. Then I would like to have an option to ‘Distribute the expense across cycle months’. This way it will not appear in the budget only every 3rd month, but expense of x/3 will be visible monthly.
Additional functionality could be, to distribute forward from 1st expense date to the next, or backwards, from todays date to the first expense and on.
You can say, why don’t you just divide each expense, per amount of cycle months and put that value to budget, and here I have that functionality. I would say, reason I moved away from spreadsheet, is to be able to manage expense values in a smoother, and more automated way, so I do not have to follow formulas or calculations. For me budget is a living document to provide predictability, not to manage my actual expenses. So easier it is for me to adjust values and see my needs, the better.
Thank you for detailed reply. Sorry it took me a while to process it.
First of all, I’ve added a feature request ticket. This is a first request like this and so I’m not sure yet when I can work on this and also I have a feeling that it could become part of something more generic (something like goals). In your case it’s more of a recurring expense but the budgeting is at a different pace from the actuals but it’s somewhat similar to saving money for a goal. Am I right?
Regarding reconciliation, in your mind, how would like to see this in the reconciliation screen? I think that you meant that there you want to see as $2000 expenses every month since that’s how you actually allocate the money (so even if you don’t pay it, you want to see as if you paid?).
I’m afraid to complicate or break the mental model of how the app works with this, if I do it incorrectly or make it even more confusing.
Also, breaking a future transaction. In your case, you break it monthly. What if somebody gets salary each 2 weeks? This needs more configuration.
I see the power in this but not sure about how to design it correctly and clearly.