Beta
Rollover budgeting is only currently available to those who have opted into the beta program. If you aren't currently in the beta program, this guide shows how you can join: Becoming a beta tester in PocketSmith
If the feature is useful to you, please give rollover budgeting a try! We encourage you to engage with us as we continue to refine via email. We’d love to hear your feedback 😊
What is a rollover budget?
A rollover budget allows under-spent / under-earned or over-spent / over-earned 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 three 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
Note
Rollover budgets for a category can only work when the budget events are all within the same account.
This is due to the way budgets are used to forecast account balances.
So, your budget events for a category must all be associated with the same account to be included in the amount rolled over between budget periods.
Rollover budgets
To create a rollover budget, enable the rollover setting for the category that you want to create a rollover budget against.
Enabling rollover
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
More on each of these below!
Rollover budget types
There are three 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.
When is rollover applied from?
The date that rollover begins to be 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 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.
Enabling rollover by editing the category settings
The rollover options for a category can be accessed with the following steps:
- Head to Categories (Manage > Categories)
- Locate the category you want to change
- Click the 3-dot menu to the right of the category and select Edit
- In the side-menu select Rollover options
- Select a rollover type
- Click the Save button
Note
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 the Total Budget Summary
You can choose whether you want rollover amounts to be included in the Total Budget Summary by ticking or unticking Including rollover.
Click on either the income or expense budget summary to view the budget analysis panel:
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. The budget analysis panel will appear, showing how the budgeted amount was calculated:
Rollover on the Budget analysis panel
Budget section
Budget - This is the original amount set for this budget period, and the amount that would be for this budget period if rollover was not enabled.
Surplus or Overspend adjustment - This is the amount from the previous budget period that is being rolled over into this budget period.
Effective Budget - This is the original budget amount plus or minus the adjustment amount.
Actual section
Within budget - This is how much of your actual earnings or spending for the budget period was within your Effective Budget.
Saved or Overspent - This is how much of your actual earnings or spending for the budget period was under or over your Effective Budget .
Rollover section
Surplus used - the amount of the total earnings or spending that has been taken from the rollover amount.
Surplus carried over - the amount that will be rolled over into the next budget period.
Rollover balance - the remaining total rollover for the category budget
Rollover budgets on the Trends page
The Trends page (Reports > Trends) allows you to view rollover budgets over time and is a good way to visually see how rollover amounts are calculated.
The Budget line:
- Shows the originally budgeted amount before rollover is carried over from the previous budget period.
Reduction from overspending and Surplus used:
- Any rollover surplus or deficit will be reflected in the trends graph for each analysis period by red or green shaded sections, respectively.
- For example in the screenshot below the first budget period below shows ‘surplus used’ while the following three budget periods show the effective budget being reduced by overspending.
Highlight rollover option unselected
In its default mode, Rollover trend information is presented as a smoothed-out purple area chart that appears behind the main trends chart.
This tracks the movement of your rollover surplus or deficit over time, on a daily basis, and smooths it for an overview. As you spend money each day, the amount of rollover surplus or deficit in the selected categories is calculated and represented by this area.
Highlight rollover option selected
You can also turn on highlight rollover using the toggle in the sidebar. This brings the rollover data to the front of the trends bars, makes the colours much darker, and features daily granularity for the data it shows.
You can then pinpoint exactly when, over an analysis period, that your rollover surplus or deficit changed significantly. Once identified, you can click the chart to lock the budget analysis panel on the right, so you can see the exact transactions that caused the change in your rollover amount:
Rollover budgets with roll-up on the Trends page
If you roll up your budgets to view a combined Trends chart for a parent category or view the main trends page, and have a rollover surplus in some categories but a deficit in others, you’ll see two distinct rollover area charts - one above the line and one below the line.
Rollover budgets on the Calendar page
When viewing a budget event on the Calendar, you can hover over a rollover budget event to see the budget analysis panel showing how the budget amount was calculated.
Rollover budgets and the forecast
Rollover budgets won't affect the forecast by default, as the forecast is calculated from the account's actual balance, using a forecast correction (see: Forecast correction events on the calendar).
For rollover amounts to be included in the forecast, the safe balance option will need to be enabled (beta feature). The safe balance feature includes the unspent and unearned amounts for any current budgets to create a safe balance for the account.
The forecast is then corrected to the account's safe balance, not its 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: Overview.
Enable safe balance for a rollover category
- Head to Categories (Manage > Categories)
- Locate the category you want to enable safe balance for
- Click the 3-dot menu to the right of the category and select Edit
- In the side-menu select Rollover options
- Tick the checkbox Include category in Safe Balance calculations
- Click Save
Note
Even though you may have enabled safe balance for the category, you also need to make sure that you have turned on safe balance for the account that contains this budget. This can be done from the safe balance settings as shown in this guide: How to configure Safe Balance.
Resetting or editing rollover amounts
You may want to reset or edit the rollover amounts for a category so that the rollover amount starts again from zero, or your chosen amount.
You might want to do this if this category has accrued a very large rollover amount that cannot be used or regained, and you want to start over.
- Go to the Trends page (Reports > Trends)
- Select the category you want to reset in the sidebar
- Change the toolbar to View by Budget Period
- Hover on a past budget period that you would like to reset rollover from
- Click the pencil beside the rollover amount and then choose RESET to $0, or EDIT ROLLOVER AMOUNT
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 a rollover period
To delete a rollover period, change the end date to be before the start date and click Save. That rollover period will then be deleted.
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 all rollover data
- Go to User Preferences ( Profile menu > User preferences)
- Click on Account reset options in the side-menu
- Tick the checkbox for Delete all rollover data
- Click Reset the selected areas button
- 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:
- Head to Categories ( Manage > Categories)
- Locate the category you want to change
- Click the 3-dot menu to the right of the category and select Edit
- In the side-menu select Rollover options
- Tick 'No rollover'
- Adjust any rollover periods so that they end before they begin - this will delete the rollover period
- 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 it to another category's budget, the distribute rollover surpluses tool makes this possible.
The following guide explains where to find this tool and how it works: Distributing rollover surpluses.