Rollover budgeting

What is a rollover budget?

A rollover budget allows under-spent / under-earnt or over-spent / over-earnt amounts to be carried over from one budget period to the next. 

For example, if you overspend by $10 on a $50 rollover expense budget, this $10 is rolled over to the next budget period. The budget for this next period will be reduced by $10 and will be $40 instead of $50

This differs from non-rollover budgets, which keep the same amount for each budget period unless manually changed. 

For example, if you overspend by $10 on a $50 non-rollover expense budget, this isn't rolled over to the next budget period. The amount for the next budget period will still be $50.

For more details on when and why you can use rollover budgets, read our blog post about it: Rollover budgeting in PocketSmith, now in beta.

Rollover budget types

You can choose 3 different types of rollover budgets:

• Rollover when above and below - Any over/under-spending or over/under-earning is carried over to the next budget period
• Rollover when above - Only any over-spending or over-earning is carried over to the next budget period
• Rollover when below - Only any under-spending or under-earning is carried over to the next budget period

Creating a rollover budget

To create a rollover budget, you need to enable the rollover setting for the category that you want to create a rollover budget against. 

There are two ways to enable rollover budgeting for a category. 

• When creating a new budget or editing an existing budget
• By editing the settings for the category

Enabling rollover when creating or editing a budget

When creating a budget or editing an existing budget you need to use the ADVANCED OPTIONS in order to see the budget rollover option.

There are 3 types of rollover budgets to choose from, these are detailed in Rollover budget types. You can also choose a no rollover option to remove rollover from the budget.

The date that rollover is applied to the budgets in the category depends on where you added or edited the budget.

• If adding or editing budgets from the Calendar page, rollover will be applied to the category from the date you selected on the calendar.
• If adding or editing budgets from the Budget page, rollover will be applied to the category from the current budget period onwards.

Enabling rollover by editing the category settings

The rollover options for a category can be accessed with the following steps:

1. Head to Categories ( Manage > Categories)
2. Locate the category you want to change
3. Click the 3-dot menu to the right of the category and select  Edit
4. In the side-menu select  Rollover options

5. Select a rollover type

   

   
   
6. Click the Save button

When enabling rollover in the category settings, it will be applied only from the current budget period onwards. 

If you want to enable a rollover budget from an earlier time, you can edit the rollover periods or use the calendar to apply rollover to a budget event in the past.

Rollover budgets on the Budget page

Include rollover in Total Budget Summary:

If you are using our beta Rollover feature, you can choose whether you want rollover amounts to be included in the Total Budget Summary by ticking or unticking Including rollover

Viewing rollover detail for individual categories on the Budget page:

On the Budget page, if the 'Use total budget summary date range for budget amount analysis' option is unticked, the categories below will show their current budget period.  

To view rollover budget information, click on the budget bar of a rollover category. A pop-up will appear, showing how the budgeted amount was calculated.

• Original budget - This is the original amount set for this budget period, and this is the amount that would be for this budget period if rollover was not enabled.
• Rollover from previous - This is the amount from the previous budget period that is being rolled over into this budget period. 
• Budgeted - This is the Original budget amount plus or minus the Rollover from the previous amount. 

Rollover budgets on the Trends page

The Trends page (Reports > Trends) allows you to view the rollover budgets over time and is a good way to visually see how the rollover amounts have been calculated across budget periods.

When viewing a rollover category by budget period. You may see the following lines on the graph:

• Budget - This is the originally budgeted amount before rollover is carried over from the previous budget period
• Budget with rollover - This is the budgeted amount after adding or subtracting the rollover amount from the previous budget period to the original budget amount

Hovering over each budget period will show a pop-up with a breakdown of the amounts for this period.

• Original budget - This is budgeted amount before adding or subtracting the rollover from the previous budget period
• Rollover from previous - This is the amount that has been rolled over from the previous budget period
• Budgeted - This is the Original budget plus or minus the Rollover from the previous budget period
• Actual  - This is the total of the transactions in this category during this period
• Rollover to next - This is the Budgeted amount minus the Actual amount and what will be rolled over to the next budget period

Rollover budgets on the Calendar page

When viewing a budget event on the Calendar, you can hover over a rollover budget event to see a pop-up showing how the budget amount was calculated.

• Original budget - This is the original amount set for this budget period, and this is the amount that would be for this budget period if rollover was not enabled
• Rollover from previous - This is the amount from the previous budget period that is being rolled over into this budget period
• Budgeted - This is the Original budget amount plus or minus the Rollover from the previous amount
• Actual - The total of the transactions assigned to this category for the budget period
• Rollover to next - The amount from this budget period that has been rolled over to the next budget period

Rollover budgets and the forecast

Rollover budgets won't affect the forecast by default, as the forecast is calculated from the actual balance of the account, with a forecast correction (see guide: Forecast correction events on the calendar).

In order for the rollover amounts to be included in the forecast, safe balance will need to be enabled. The safe balance feature includes the unspent and unearned amounts for the current budgets to create a safe balance for the account. 

The forecast is then corrected to the safe balance of the account and not the actual balance. Therefore, the rollover budgets will be included in the forecast if Safe Balance is enabled. To learn more about safe balance, see the following guide: Safe Balance: what it does and how it works.

Enable safe balance for a rollover category

1. Head to Categories ( Manage > Categories)
2. Locate the category you want to enable safe balance for
3. Click the 3-dot menu to the right of the category and select  Edit
4. In the side-menu select  Rollover options

5. Tick the checkbox Include category in Safe Balance calculations

   

   
   
6. Click Save

Resetting the rollover amounts

You may want to reset the rollover amounts for a category so that the rollover amount starts again from zero. 

You might want to do this if this category has accrued a very large rollover amount that it isn't possible to use or regain and you want to start over again.

Reset rollover amount on the Trends page

1. Go to the Trends page ( Reports > Trends)
2. Select the category you want to reset in the sidebar
3. Change the toolbar to View by Budget Period
4. Hover the budget period that you would like to reset rollover from

5. Click the pencil beside the rollover amount and then choose RESET to $0

   

Viewing and editing rollover periods

You can view and edit the dates that rollover budgeting is applied to a particular category. When editing a category, select Rollover options from the side-menu.

To edit the dates that rollover is applied to, tick Adjust rollover periods.

You can now edit the start and end dates for the rollover periods for the category. To continue the rollover indefinitely, leave the Ends on date blank.

Deleting rollover budgeting data

If you no longer want to use rollover budgeting and want to remove all rollover date from your PocketSmith account, this can be done from your account's reset options.

Steps to delete rollover data

1. Go to User Preferences ( Profile menu > User preferences)
2. Click on Account reset options in the side-menu

3. Tick the checkbox for  Delete all rollover data

   

   
   
4. Click Reset the selected areas button
5. Type DELETE and click OK to confirm the deletion'

Removing rollover from a category

If you want to remove rollover from a category, including any past rollover periods, so that its budget behaves like a non-rollover budget you'll need to:

1. Head to Categories ( Manage > Categories)
2. Locate the category you want to change
3. Click the 3-dot menu to the right of the category and select Edit
4. In the side-menu select Rollover options

5. Tick ' No rollover'

   
   

   

   
   
6. Adjust any rollover periods so that they end before they begin - this will delete the rollover period
7. Click SAVE to confirm the changes

Distributing rollover surpluses

If you have accumulated rollover surpluses in some categories and want to lock-in this surplus or distribute this surplus to another categories budget, this is possible with the distribute rollover surpluses tool. 

The following guide explains where to find this tool and how it works: Distributing rollover surpluses.