Rolling over unspent budget

Rollover carries what's left into the next month

By default each month starts fresh: a category's budget is the amount you set, and whatever you didn't spend last month is gone. Turn on Roll over unspent budget for a category and the difference carries forward instead, so the amount available grows until you use it.

This suits categories that are lumpy rather than steady — car repairs, gifts, annual renewals — where a single month's amount doesn't mean much on its own. Choosing a cadence longer than a month (every three months, six months, or a year) turns rollover on for you, since the budget has to accumulate between occurrences.

Turning it on

1. On the budget page, hover the category and click the gear (Edit category)
2. Turn on Roll over unspent budget
3. Choose Rolling over since — the month the balance starts accumulating from. Any month from the current one back to two years ago can be chosen
4. Optionally enter a Starting balance — anything you'd already set aside for this category before that month, so a mid-cycle setup begins partially funded
5. Click Save

The row's subtitle now reads Rolls over, and a rollover chip appears beside the amount box.

Flex categories don't have individual balances. Their rollover is set on the Shared flex budget instead — see Flex spending.

How the balance is calculated

The balance is worked out fresh every time the page loads, from the Rolling over since month up to the month before the one you're viewing: the starting balance, plus each month's budget, minus each month's spending. Nothing is saved as a running total, so it always reflects your transactions as they stand today — recategorizing an old transaction, or excluding one from the budget, changes this month's balance too.

Overspending carries as well. Spend more than the budget and the balance goes negative, reducing what's available next month until you make it up. Refunds add back.

Months before you first gave the category an amount count as a $0 budget, so a since-month set earlier than that counts the spending in those months against nothing. Use the Starting balance to seed what you'd saved before you started budgeting instead.

Reading the rollover figures

• The rollover chip beside the amount box is green when the balance carried into the month is positive and red when it's negative. Hover it for the month's equation: the balance From [last month] (or the Starting balance in the first month), plus the month's budget, minus what's spent and anything Reserved for upcoming bills, equals what's Remaining.
• The amount box still shows the amount you set for the month; the balance is added on top. When both the month's amount and the balance are positive, the row's bar draws the balance as its own segment after the month's amount; otherwise the bar is a single track, and a negative balance shrinks its budget.
• The category's detail panel shows the same equation in full: rollover + [month] − reserve = total budget.
• The summary card's equation shows the total rollover across all your spending categories and the Flex shared budget, including starting balances.
• A group's Budgeted total includes the balances carried into the month, so it can differ from the sum of the amounts in its rows.

Pace with a rollover balance

A carried balance isn't treated as spendable on day one. For pace purposes it's spread across the month with the rest of the budget: a category carrying $300 into a month with a $400 amount is on pace at $350 spent on the 15th of a 30-day month, not on the 1st.

Turning rollover off starts over

Turning Roll over unspent budget off clears the since-month and starting balance, and the balance the category had carried is gone from the figures. Turning it on again later starts from the current month with an empty starting balance — it doesn't resume where it left off.

Structural changes reshape the balance

Because the balance is recalculated from history, changes to a category's shape apply to every month at once, past ones included. Archiving a category removes it from every month's totals. Turning Flex budget on moves the category's whole spending history into the Flex shared budget, whose own balance is refolded, while the category's rollover settings are kept inactive for when it leaves Flex. Excluding a category from the budget removes it from every month the same way, and takes a Flex category out of the shared budget. Each dialog says so before you confirm. After a change like this, check the balances involved and adjust a starting balance if needed.

Common questions

Why did the balance in a past month change? The balance is derived from your transactions and settings rather than saved, so anything that changes those months — a recategorized transaction, an exclusion, an amount changed from an earlier month forward — changes every balance that builds on them.

Why does the panel say "only $X was available this month"? That hint appears on a category budgeted every three months, six months, or a year that doesn't roll over and has spent more than the month's share. Without rollover, each month only has its monthly equivalent — turn on rollover to save up between months.

Can the starting balance be negative? No. If you were behind when you set up rollover, set Rolling over since back to cover the months you overspent and the balance will reflect them.