How the balance forecast is calculated

The line starts from the balance on your accounts. Each month the same number is added to it — the sum of two parts.

• The known part is your recurring payments and income. You set the amounts and dates yourself, so nothing here is guessed.
• The estimated part is ordinary spending and income, averaged over your last three months.
• History is divided by the months you have actually tracked, not always by three: a week of tracking is not understated fourfold.

A scheduled payment leaves an ordinary transaction behind. If the forecast counted both that transaction and the schedule, the same money would enter the calculation twice.

• Transactions created by a recurring rule are marked at that moment and stay out of the ordinary-spending estimate.
• This is not a guess from the title or amount: a one-off purchase is never mistaken for a recurring one.
• The mark stays on the transaction even if the rule itself is deleted. Deleting a payment and creating it again does not double the forecast.

A recurring payment that is switched off or deleted stops counting forward: the subscription ended, and there is nothing left to plan for.

• Its past charges are not projected forward either — otherwise the forecast would show spending that no longer exists.
• If you switched the rule off but keep paying by hand, the new transactions join the ordinary-spending estimate on their own.
• That takes about a month: while there is little data, the forecast will look more optimistic than reality.

It is arithmetic over your data, not a prediction. It knows nothing about a future bonus, a large purchase or a job change until you enter them.

• The fuller your history, the closer the estimate. Incomplete tracking paints too kind a picture.
• A month where the line dips below zero is a reason to check payment dates, not a finished conclusion.
• For exact dates within two months, look at the forecast above recurring payments: it counts by day, not by month.