8. Income Planning

Income Sources

Set up income sources so expected income and planning flows have a stable structure to work from.

Income Sources are recurring definitions for paychecks and other regular income. They are not transactions. Their job is to give Common Cents enough information to create expected income events for the months you want to plan.

Turn the feature on first #

Go to Settings > Features and turn on Enable Income Sources under the Planning heading. If you also turn on Enable Income Planning, the Budget page can use those sources to help you plan ahead.

Open the Income Sources page #

You can get there in either of these ways:

On the Budget page, open Add Income and choose Add Income Source.
On the Budget page, use the Income Sources button in the Income Events section.

The page header includes:

Back to Budget
Add Income Source

If you do not have any sources yet, the page shows a No Income Sources message with an Add Income Source button.

What the table shows #

Each source appears in a table with these columns:

Payor
Type
Amount
Frequency
First Pay Date
Active Range
Status
Actions

The Status chip shows whether the source is Active or Inactive. Only active sources are used when Common Cents generates expected income for a month.

Use the edit button in the Actions column to open Edit Income Source.

Add or edit an income source #

The form includes these fields:

Payor (pulls from the same source as Payees on Transactions)
Pay Type: Salary or Hourly
Salary sources use Net Pay per Check and optional Gross Salary
Hourly sources use Hourly Rate and Usual Hours
Pay Frequency: Weekly, Biweekly, Semi-monthly, or Monthly
Second Pay Day for semi-monthly sources
Monthly Schedule for monthly sources
Week and Day of Week when the monthly schedule uses a weekday rule
First Pay Date
Optional Start Date and Stop Date
Active
Optional Note

If you type a payor name that does not already exist, Common Cents asks Add New Payor? so you can create it without leaving the form.

When you are adding new sources, the footer can show Add and Continue and Add and Finish. When you edit an existing source, the save button changes to Save Changes.

Generate expected income from sources #

After you create sources, go back to the Budget page and open Add Income. If Income Sources are enabled, the menu includes Generate Income from Sources.

That action creates expected income events for the month you are viewing. Common Cents only offers the action when you have at least one active source.

If the current month has active sources but no expected income yet, Common Cents can also show a prompt called Generate Expected Income? (Enabled via Settings > Income Sources) You can choose:

Yes - Generate Expected Income
Not Now
Never for This Month

When generation finds a source/date combination that already exists for that month, it leaves the existing event alone instead of creating a duplicate.