Bill and scheduled income categories
Set up bill or scheduled income categories, where the full budgeted amount is paid or received in one transaction, to more accurately reflect your bills or scheduled income in your budget.
You can also enable bill reminder emails to help keep track of overdue, paid and upcoming bills 📆 ✅ 📩
In this user guide
Bill and scheduled income categories overview
⚡️Utility bills, such as electricity, gas, internet, etc
💰Regular income from your job
The difference between bill and scheduled income categories and regular categories:
- Budgets for each category type are treated and displayed differently on the Budget page, the Trends page and the Income & Expense Statement.
- You can choose to schedule bill reminder emails for bill categories, helping you to keep on top of any upcoming or overdue bills.
Bill and scheduled income categories
- PocketSmith will treat bill and scheduled income category budgets as whole amounts that occur on the day the budget starts (or repeats)
- Repeating bill and scheduled income budgets are not evenly distributed over the budget period from the budget start date to the next repeat date
- On the Trends page, the Income & Expense Statement, and when the option Use total budget summary date range for budget amount analysis is selected on the Budget page, repeating bill and scheduled income budgets are only included in calculations if the start or repeat date occurs within the date range being viewed
Example
Sally has a budget of $90 for one of her bill categories called ⚙ Insurance. She started this budget on November 1 and it is set to repeat every three months. Sally sets the budget summary date range to show from November 1 - November 14 and has ticked Use total budget summary date range for budget amount analysis.
PocketSmith will not distribute this budget amount of $90 across that three month period, and instead, only considers the bill to take place on November 1st (and then again on the date three months later). So once Sally has decided to apply the date range of November 1 - November 14 to the entire Budget page, the budgeted amount showing beside the ⚙ Insurance category will be the full $90.
Similarly, if Sally is viewing the date range November 1 - November 14 on the Income & Expense Statement, the full $90 will appear in the budgeted column for the ⚙ Insurance category.
Regular (non-bill) categories
- PocketSmith will evenly distribute the budget for regular categories on the Trends page
- PocketSmith will evenly distribute the budget for regular categories when the option Use total budget summary date range for budget amount analysis is selected on the Budget page
- What this means is, if a budget period only partially fits into the date range being displayed, the budgeted amount calculated will include just the portion of the budget period that is within this range
- PocketSmith will evenly distribute the budget for regular categories on the Income & Expense Statement according to the date range being viewed.
Example
John has a $90 expense budget for his 🍬 Treats category that runs from November 1 - November 30. However, John has set his Budget Summary date range to show from November 1 - November 14 and has ticked Use total budget summary date range for budget amount analysis.
Because PocketSmith will evenly distribute this $90 budget across November 1 - November 30, once John has decided to apply the date range of November 1 - November 14 to the entire Budget page, the budgeted amount showing beside his 🍬 Treats category will only be for $42.
Similarly, if John has the date range November 1 - November 14 selected when viewing the Income & Expense Statement, the budgeted amount for his 🍬Treats category will show as $42.
Setting up bill and scheduled income categories
- Head to the Categories page ( Manage > Categories)
Navigate to the category you'd like to change to a bill category, click on the three-dot menu and select Edit
In the sidebar, select Category options
Tick the check-box This is a bill or scheduled income category and click Save
Scheduling bill reminder emails
Bill reminder emails allow you to schedule emails to remind you of upcoming and overdue bills.
Any category that is set up as a bill category, and that has a current budget, is included in the reminder emails. Set up your bill categories and then schedule the time and days you'd like to receive the reminder emails. Once set up, PocketSmith will send weekly emails on your chosen day(s), letting you know if you have outstanding or upcoming bills to pay 💸
Steps to schedule bill reminder emails
To schedule the bill reminder emails, head to Profile menu > User preferences
- Select Email notifications in the left menu
In the Bill reminders section, choose a time and the day(s) of the week that you want the bill reminder emails sent and click Save
You will now receive bill reminder emails in your inbox based on your selected time and chosen days 📩