Managing savings: Within only one account

There are several approaches to managing savings in PocketSmith, which you can find in the overview here: Managing savings in PocketSmith: Overview.

To track your earnings and savings within a single account, such as a Revolving credit account, this guide will walk you through the features and steps you need.

We recommend checking out two of our Beta features - Rollover and Safe Balance.

Using Rollover to 'allocate' funds

Rollover allows under-spent / under-earned or over-spent / over-earned amounts to be carried over from one budget period to the next. This would allow you to use repeating budgets to 'allocate' funds to a set goal, track money set aside for larger bills, or savings for future expenditures.

We recommend doing this only for categories you actually want to ‘set aside’ funds for, not for day-to-day expenses. You may like to align the budgets with your pay period so that you can ‘allocate’ the funds as you are paid them, similar to how you would transfer funds to a separate savings account.

With this, you can then use Safe Balance to view the balance of the accumulated funds, and see how much is left in your bank account, or ‘available to spend’ after any unspent budgets are taken into account.  

You can read more on Safe Balance here: Overview of Safe Balance.

Using Safe Balance to view accumulated funds and what is 'safe to spend'

Safe Balance applies unspent and unearned budget portions from selected current budgets to an account’s balance, giving you a balance that is safe to spend on the current day, once all outstanding spending and earnings are taken into account.

Your forecast will then take any in-progress budgets into account, as it is projected from your current safe-to-spend balance when Safe Balance is enabled.

You can read more about Safe Balance here: Overview of Safe balance.

In-depth example: Using Safe Balance and Rollover to manage savings and large bills within one account

Here's an example of how to use Safe Balance and Rollover to manage savings and large bills in one account.

Step 1: Set up day-to-day Budgets

If you haven't already done so, set up income budgets for any regular income paid into the account. Then, set up any regular expense budgets for any day-to-day expenses, those which you don't actively  ‘set aside’ money for.

For all the details on how to create budgets, see Creating budgets and Tips and tricks for creating budgets in PocketSmith.

Step 2: Set up rollover budgets for savings goals or larger quarterly or annual bills

For quarterly or annual bills and savings goals, calculate how much you would like to allocate to the specific budget each pay cycle, and create expense budgets for this amount, ensuring you enable rollover for the budget.

For example, I have quarterly bills for Local council rates. My next bill is due in 3 months and will be $1200.

As such, I need to set aside $400 per month, in line with my monthly pay cycle.

Rollover is enabled, and I’ve assigned the budget to the account I want to manage my savings, regular income and expenses from.

Expanding this example, I then set up several other budgets for categories I need to ensure I set money aside for:

• Regional Council Rates - an annual bill in October, setting aside $40 per month
• Firewood - purchased annually in March, setting aside $70 per month/paycheck
• Holiday savings - $500 a month, beginning in January

Step 3: Enable Safe Balance on your account and selected budgets

Enable safe balance for your selected account, and for each of your savings or large bill budgets:

Steps to activate Safe Balance

1. Head to User Preferences (Profile menu > User preferences)
2. In the side menu, select Safe balance
3. Select the accounts that you want to activate Safe Balance for
4. Then, select the categories that you want to include in the Safe Balance calculation
5. Click Save

Step 4: Viewing your Safe Balance breakdown/accumulation of funds

Once your Rollover and Safe Balance budgets are set up, throughout PocketSmith, the current balance for the account will default to your ‘Safe Balance’, which takes into account the accumulated unspent or unearned portions of your savings and/or large bill budgets.

You can also view a breakdown of your accumulated funds on today’s date by clicking on the tooltip anywhere that your Safe Balance is displayed.

In the screenshot below, you can see that the original balance is $14,000. Of this, $4,840 is budgeted for savings or large bills, leaving an ‘available’ or ‘Safe’ balance of $9,160.  

Hover over each segment of the breakdown to see the current amount allocated to each Safe Balance budget you have created:

Step 5: Looking ahead - viewing the forecast for your account

As your forecast is projected from your ‘Safe Balance’, you can also take a longer view of your account’s forecast, either via the Calendar, or using the Balance graph widget, as seen below:

The forecast shows how your account balance is predicted to change based on your current safe balance plus budgets over time, and helps you check whether you’ll have enough funds to cover your expenses, or whether your balance is trending in the right direction.  

To dig into the forecast balance, use the Calendar, where you can view budget events and any daily balances:

For more on viewing your forecast, see: Using the Calendar and Forecast

Adapting for general savings

You can also adapt this for general Savings.

In the example below, we have created a $75 weekly expense budget which started 1st January and has rollover enabled.

The Safe Balance breakdown chart shows that this has accrued to $1,950. The original current balance is 14,000. As such, the Safe Balance (that which hasn't been allocated to a budget) is showing as $12,050:

What to do when you have spent your accumulated savings

Once you have spent the money saved up for your bill or savings goal, you might wonder how to manage the expense transactions and budget in PocketSmith. This will vary depending on whether you are spending money earmarked for a bill or money for a savings goal.

Frequently asked questions

What should I do if my Safe Balance goes below zero or my loan’s credit limit?

If your Safe Balance is forecast to go below zero (or below your loan’s credit limit), then you may not have enough funds to cover your outstanding budgets if you needed to pay them today.

Use your forecast to get a longer view and see whether upcoming income will even it out. You can also check your accumulated category totals to see if you need to redistribute savings or reset your rollover amount.

You can also add a minimum balance alert, which will be based on Safe Balance if enabled for the account. Learn how to set one up here: Dashboards: Balance alert widget

Do I need another budget for the actual bill?

No. As the rollover budgets have been set up as expense budgets, you don't need another budget for the actual bill. When the bill is paid, assign the transaction(s) to the same category as your budget (e.g. Local Council Rates), and the amount spent will be deducted from the accumulated rollover surplus.

Can I edit or reset the ‘rollover’ or accumulated account for a budget?

Yes. If you want to edit or reset your rollover amount, you can do this.

For example, if you had been including a buffer in your rollover budget for an annual bill, and now want to use those funds for something else, you may want to edit or reset your rollover amount so it is no longer tied to that specific bill. See: Resetting or Editing rollover amounts

Can I redistribute the accumulated rollover amounts to another category?

Yes. If you wish to use your accumulated funds for a different category, you can redistribute the rollover surplus as detailed here: Distributing rollover surpluses

Can I set up Rollover and Safe Balance on other budgets?

Yes! You can use Rollover and Safe Balance on other budgets, but we recommend limiting them to progressive budgets, like Groceries, rather than bills, which are generally paid in a single transaction.

This way, you can keep unspent portions of your progressive budgets included in your Safe Balance, too.