New Feature: Categories and Budgets Come to Your Cash Flow Projection

Recurring transactions in Projected Cash Flow have always shown you the payee and the amount. What they haven't shown you is what kind of expense it is — until now. We've connected your Lunch Money categories and budgets into the dashboard, so your projections carry the same organization you've already set up in Lunch Money.

Why This Matters

A list of upcoming payments is useful. Knowing that $4,500 of what's coming up is mortgage, $600 is credit cards, and $150 is subscriptions is a lot more useful. And once you can see spend by category, the natural next question is: how does that compare to what you've actually budgeted? Now you can answer both, without leaving your dashboard.

How It Works

Categories on every recurring item

Each recurring transaction card now shows a small category badge — pulled directly from the category you've assigned it in Lunch Money. If Lunch Money doesn't have a category on a given item, it just won't show a badge; nothing changes about how that item is projected.

Projected Spend by Category

A new widget on your dashboard totals up projected expenses across your selected accounts, broken down by category, for whatever time range you've selected. It's sorted from largest to smallest, so you can see at a glance where the bulk of your upcoming spend is concentrated.

This Month's Budget vs. Projected

If you've set up budgets in Lunch Money, a second widget shows how each category is tracking against its budget for the current month. It combines what you've already spent this month (from Lunch Money) with what's still projected to come due before the month ends, and flags any category on pace to go over — before it happens, not after.

A Few Things Worth Knowing

• This is entirely read-only. Projected Cash Flow only reads your categories and budgets from Lunch Money — it never creates, changes, or deletes anything there. Manage your categories and budget amounts the same way you always have, in Lunch Money itself.
• Budgets are always monthly. The budget widget always reflects the current calendar month, regardless of what time range you've selected for your chart, since that's how Lunch Money tracks budgets.
• Multi-currency accounts are handled correctly. If your selected accounts span multiple currencies, both widgets convert everything to your primary currency before totaling, so the numbers stay accurate no matter what mix of accounts you're viewing.

Getting Started

There's nothing to configure. If you already use categories and budgets in Lunch Money, open your dashboard and you'll see category badges on your recurring items right away, along with the two new widgets further down the page. If you haven't set up budgets in Lunch Money yet, the budget widget will simply let you know there's nothing to show — set one up in Lunch Money and it'll appear here automatically.

Questions or Feedback?

We'd love to hear how you're using categories and budgets in your projection, and what would make this even more useful. Get in touch with your thoughts.