Month-ahead budget view in Analytics

Feedback & Ideas
1

I’m fairly new to Emma, so it’s possible I’ve missed a setting somewhere that will allow this… but I really have looked!

I’ve set monthly budgets for 8 different spending categories, but because it’s early in the month 5 of those categories (correctly) have no transactions assigned them yet.

Those 5 categories (and their associated budgets) are not currently visible in Analytics for this month. And - as far as I can tell - there is no way to make them visible.

I can see why the default behaviour is to hide categories which have no assigned transactions - it avoids unnecessarily cluttering up the interface.

But I find it slightly odd that there’s apparently no option to expand the default view to show all spending categories (and/or all spending categories with an allocated budget) for the current month.

This is certainly something I would find useful in terms of planning my spending.

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2

I came here to suggest exactly this!

Right now I’m “blind” until I spend in a category

Of course I have a big total at the top, but that gives me a false sense of how much money I have to spend in my budget, as in reality, it’s been preallocated.

So in the same way that “subscriptions” are “committed”, you would have a “budgeted”. And then any extra budget I’ve left in allocated would really be my “flexible money”

I think this could be a really good feature, and takes Emma from being a reactive tool, to a pro-active tool

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Also on the topic of making it proactive, and combined with the above.

Right now at the top of the analytics page of the current month / pay period everything is about spending budgets, and it’s very easy to see the budget as a target to spend.

I think you can easily shift this back and emphasize that budgets are meant to be about saving

Right now I only see how much I’ve saved (or not) at the end of every month and I look back and see a bar graph, which is great! It’s reminding me of why I’m here and makes me feel good when I do save, and guilty when I don’t.

But when looking at current month, I don’t have that bar graph, I have no idea how much I’m saving, I don’t get that “feel good” factor at seeing what I’m working towards. At a glance all I can see is a large figure left in my budget, and think “ooh, maybe I can splurge” even if it’s already “budgeted” … I can’t see that.

Solution:

You can also have the circle view have segments showing the “budgeted” amounts from each category too.

This way, every time I go to this page, I get a forward look at how much I’m saving and motivation to stick to my budget!

SEE BELOW FOR MOCKUP

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MOCKUP2
MOCKUP21242×2688 508 KB

Please excuse my very poor paint mockup.

So in summary.

  1. Always show “budgeted” categories for the upcoming month, even if current spending is zero

  2. Put these “budgeted spending” in the circular pie graph, like committed spend.

  3. Anything left over as free budget, can be put in the middle like now. i.e. “play” money

  4. Tell me what my predicted + or - is for the month (summary). I.e. how much i’m saving, or not, so I know if I need to adjust my budget

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All of these can be a toggle if you want, so “show current spend” / “show budgeted spend”

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