Why you shouldn't have multiple budgets per category
We don't recommend creating multiple concurrent budgets for a single category.
PocketSmith budgeting works because the budget period is calculated as the time between budget events. So for each category, the budget events must be sequential and not overlap in order to have the correct budget period.
Example of what we do not recommend and why
Suppose your Disney+ subscription repeats each year on March 2nd, and your Netflix, Spotify and YouTube subscriptions repeat monthly. In that case, you may be tempted to add all of these budgets to one category called Subscriptions.
However, you will now have multiple concurrent budgets, causing overlap and incorrect budget periods:
Some of our reports and forecasts cannot interpret the overlapping budgets correctly, as they cannot determine which budget period to display for the category, producing incorrect results.
This makes it challenging to track your budgets as your budgeted figures for the category are not shown consistently around PocketSmith and may also change throughout the month.
Pickle warning for adding multiple budgets
If you attempt to add a budget to a category that already has one, a Pickle warning will show to let you know the details of the existing budget.
For more information as to why we do not recommend multiple budgets on a category, please see: Why we don't recommend having multiple concurrent budgets per category.
If you would like to continue despite this warning, then choose Create anyway.
Turning off this Pickle warning
If you do not want to view a particular warning again, tick the option shown before clicking Create anyway.
What to do instead of adding multiple budgets per category
Rather than having multiple active budgets per category, we recommend using Sub-categories and nesting so that you can set up one budget per category.
Example of what we recommend instead
Rather than having multiple budgets assigned to one Subscriptions category, we recommend creating a parent category called Subscriptions, and then having each individual subscription nested under this parent category.
Each sub-category just has one recurring budget set up against it, which makes it easier to view and track each subscription.
You can then use roll-up to analyze at the parent category level. We have more details here: Parent and subcategories: budgets and roll-up budgets.
Exceptions for specific use cases
There are a couple of cases where multiple budgets are required. These are budgets that repeat twice monthly and one-off budgets.
Twice monthly budgets
Often, some salaries are paid twice a month. The best way to budget when two monthly payments are expected is to create two separate monthly scheduled income budgets for the same category. For example, one to repeat on the 1st, and another for the 15th. PocketSmith will then combine these for you on the Budget page.
When setting up each budget, you'll just need to tick the option This is scheduled income, as seen below.
For more details on creating budgets, check out the guide: Creating a new budget.
One-off budgets
You can also create multiple budgets if you are creating a one-off budget event.
For example, if you edit one instance of your Groceries fortnightly budget to be $400 for Sep 25, 2023, as you will be hosting a Birthday party 🎉, this will show as another entry on your Budget page.
For more details, check out the guide: When to use one-off budgets.
