Bill and scheduled income categories overview
Setting up bill and scheduled income categories ensures that budgets for your bill payments (such as a phone or electricity bill) or scheduled income (such as Salary or Wages) are treated as transactions paid or received in full in a single transaction. Planned spending for bill categories won't be distributed over the category's entire budget period, unlike regular (non-bill) budgets.
Examples of what will work as a bill or scheduled income category:
📱Mobile phone bill
⚡️Utility bills, such as electricity, gas, internet, etc
💰Regular income from your job
The difference between bill and scheduled income categories and regular categories
There are two main types of categories in PocketSmith - bill and scheduled income categories, and regular categories.
There are two main differences between the two category types:
- 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. They will also appear in the Bill reminder widget on your Dashboard.
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 This is a scheduled income category, then SAVE
- If you'd like, you can add a '*grace period' before a bill shows as overdue in your Bill reminder widget or Bill reminder emails. Just enter the desired number of days, as shown in the below screenshot. This is useful if the actual bill payment date can fluctuate, due to weekends or transactions taking a few days to appear in your bank account. During this period, the bill will show as upcoming*
Scheduling bill reminder emails
Bill reminder emails allow you to schedule reminders for upcoming and overdue bills.
The reminder emails include any category set up as a bill category with a current budget.
Set up your bill categories, then schedule the days and times you'd like to receive 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 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 📩