Budget Planning

Budget planning is the part of Income Planning that lets you use expected income to shape future category plans before the money is actually available to assign.

Unplanned is the planning pool #

When Income Planning is enabled, the Budget page shows an Unplanned summary card.

Use it as your planning pool:

• Unplanned represents expected income that has not been used in planned category amounts yet.
• Unassigned still represents money you already have available to assign now.

That difference is the main rule of this workflow: plan future dollars with Unplanned, but only treat real dollars as Unassigned.

Plan categories without assigning real money yet #

On the Budget page, planned amounts let you sketch out what future income should do. This is useful when you know paychecks are coming, but they have not landed yet.

Common Cents does not let planned entry run past the planning pool. If you try to increase planned amounts beyond what Unplanned can cover, you get this warning:

Planned amount exceeds Unplanned. Add more expected income before increasing planned dollars.

If Targets are enabled, the Unplanned card can also show Apply Target Needs to Planned so you can fill planned amounts from target calculations instead of entering them one row at a time.

Commit plans when you are ready #

Planned amounts do not become assigned dollars until you commit them.

The Commit Plans menu appears on months where commits are allowed.

In the current month, the menu includes:

• Commit Full Month
• Commit Through Today

In a future month, the menu includes:

• Open Month and Commit

Use commit actions when you want planned amounts to move into the assigned side of the budget.

Matching can trigger a commit decision #

If you match expected income to a real transaction in the current month, Common Cents checks whether that match would push Unplanned below zero.

If it would, you can see a prompt called Match Will Commit Plans. That prompt warns you that continuing will commit the current planned amounts to Assigned.

Settings that change planning behavior #

In Settings > Features, under the Income Planning feature settings, you can control how the planning layer behaves:

• Month Ahead Mode changes whether Unplanned includes the month you are viewing or stops at the previous month.
• Offer to match Fill to Target-type Targets to entered Planned Amounts can help keep future targets aligned with manual planned entry.
• Auto-Commit Plans automatically commits planned amounts after eligible transaction updates.

Keep the forecasting line clean #

Income Planning works best when you keep these roles separate:

• Income Sources define recurring paychecks.
• Income Events track expected, actual, and matched income for the month.
• Planned amounts tell your budget what future income should do.
• Commit actions move those plans into the real assigned side of the budget.

See also: Paycheck Planning, Budgeting Overview, and Targets Overview