Hey @sufyan98,
thanks for the suggestion!
We took a YNAB approach to make it super simple, cause we had problems picturing a clear UI to activate it for 1 or 2, but this is something we can work on.
In fact, the logic is already implemented, it just requires a change in the UI. 
By the way,
would you increase the total budget if a few categories are increasing?
It depends on what the categories are. If the expense is unexpected but necessary, yes. If not, I try to readjust some other categories to stay in. (Try being the key work 
)
Could potentially have a switch next to the categories
Yes,
we tried this, but looked a bit messy. ahhehe
We’ll defo work on this. We just want to figure out how it works with these defaults.
Annual budgets could be useful for holidays/property taxes/etc.
Still I budget monthly. And I wouldn’t want two separate budget screens.
What would work perfectly for me: being able to set up different budgets by months (or whatever your period is).
Say I set my budget for Bills as 2,000. This will set my Bills budget for every period as 2,000. Past and future.
Then I can swipe over to June (when I pay my property taxes) and I can increase that one budget to 6,000. And I’d do the same for the summer vacation. This would only impact that one period budget.
I would keep the existing Budget screen as a default for monthly budgets. If amount is changed in the Budget screen - it would override future periods but not the past. This means my total expenditures have increased. I have another baby. Or another wife. 
When I would swipe between months - I would display the same numbers: Spent, Budget, Left to spent. Sometimes it is useful to review how I did against my budget in the past. Maybe I was overspending… That would trigger budget increase (manual).
It would be very helpful to see Annual YTD budget view for each year. Maybe when swiping between months in Analytics… you can put it between December and January of eacy year. The same screen/the same numbers. Just YTD instead of by period. I like how @o99 was describing it.
I did something similar to what @dazinator was describing with his property project. I was building addition. I’ve decided I have 60,000 to spend. I have split it over 12 months. 5,000 every month. If I don’t spend 5,000 in the first months - it could roll over to the next months. The only problem was - I was planning on spending 20,000 in the first month. And then 10,000 in the second month. And then like 3,000 a months for 10 months.
Following my earlier suggestion, some opinions now coming in that it would be a bad idea to have different views for different budgeting periods/perspectives.
Personally I don’t really make use of forward budget on a by-category basis so not really bothered if a solution for forward budgeting for multiple use cases is embedded in a single view or multiple views.
But even though not a user of by-category forward budgeting I am interested in by-category analytics/tracking and I think one thing that’s missing from this perspective is an on-demand way to inspect spending across all categories over a year or YTD (year equivalent of month analytics).
Earlier suggestion to have switchable month and year views in analytics tab was a suggestion to kill two birds with one stone so to speak (both variable period forward budgeting and variable period spending analysis).
But I guess forward budgeting and analytics tools could be decoupled. I suspect potential for user confusion to have a single screen accommodating different budgeting scenarios for different categories but hard to know for sure without trying!
How often does everyone normally review their budgets in Emma?
Is it every month / six months/ yearly?
Not very periodically, but when the average spend is either above or below the set budget 
I don’t really use category budgets in Emma. I just set a total budget which I only really update when my income changes.
I do periodically update strategies for routing income for investing, saving and paying bills. No fixed schedule. I guess start of tax year, changes in income, and changes in regular bills are triggers for me to review and potentially update.
I handle and record this in Excel along with a few other personal finance tasks.
I’m similar to you - I normally review at the start of the year based on what I want to achieve that year and then update ad-hoc throughout the year if anything big changes
Before we added rolling budgets, what would everyone do if they had set a budget for the month but didn’t spend the full amount? Would that unspent money be transferred into savings/ investments etc? Or would you just keep it in your account?
FYI for anyone still not sure about Rolling Budgets we’ve written a quick blog post about it here 
Thank you for the explanations of how rolling budgets work! I understand how they function in the app now. However, it seems counter-intuitive to me, since they’re essentially the same as non-rolling budgets at the moment other than increasing spending limits if you go under budget in a given month… 
I get why the regular budgeting feature in Emma is a “hard limit”, which complains if you go over budget. But I was expecting rolling budgets to be more of a plan to allocate spending money each month in order to build up savings to be used as & when you need it. The current implementation seems to lend itself more toward spending extra money every month instead of gently guiding you toward saving.
For example, say you plan to spend about £100 a month, but you expect to spend more during some months than others.
Currently, if you overspend, you get complained at, but are then expected to spend the regular amount next month (thus potentially encouraging overspending).
If you underspend with the current rolling budgets, the limit increases next month (thus potentially encouraging overspending).
In the version I was imagining, if you go over or under budget in a particular month, that’s expected, not a problem - although you might want to plan to spend less until you’re back to at least £0.
And if you go under budget, that doesn’t mean you should spend all the extra immediately! That’s savings for the next time you actually need it.
There could be an upper & lower limit on how much the plan could be temporarily raised/lowered based on saving/overspending, but I think the allocated budget itself should remain fixed for clarity.
Hopefully the following example will help explain what I mean. 
So your monthly budget & spending in practice could be something like:
| Plan | Monthly Budget | Upper Limit | Lower Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| details | default if saved = 0 | max plan if >0 saved | min plan if <0 saved |
| amount | £100 | £100 | £50 |
| Month | Allocated | Saved | Plan | Spent | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | £100 | £0 | £100 | -£50 | £50 |
| Feb | £100 | £50 | £100 | -£50 | £100 |
| Mar | £100 | £100 | £100 | -£25 | £175 |
| Apr | £100 | £175 | £100 | -£75 | £200 |
| May | £100 | £200 | £100 | -£500 | -£200 |
| Jun | £100 | -£200 | £50 | £0 | -£100 |
| Jul | £100 | -£100 | £50 | -£25 | -£25 |
| Aug | £100 | -£25 | £75 | -£50 | £25 |
| Sep | £100 | £25 | £100 | -£200 | -£75 |
| Oct | £100 | -£75 | £50 | -£100 | -£75 |
| Nov | £100 | -£75 | £50 | £0 | £25 |
| Dec | £100 | £25 | £100 | -£50 | £75 |
| Total | £1,200 | £975 | -£1,125 |
…so the idea would be to ensure you have enough and trend toward saving money overall, even though you may go under or over the allocated amount/plan on a given month.
Also, letting us set the upper & lower plan amounts based on saving/overspending should ensure everyone can get what they need out of rolling budgets. =)
Hey @Abbi
Welcome to the Emma community and thanks so much for taking the time to explain your thoughts!
I totally get where you’re coming from - if your financial goal is to save money and build wealth then it doesn’t always make sense to spend more in one month just because you can.
That being said, everyone has different financial goals, and a lot of people like the freedom to spend more if they know they didn’t manage to spend it all the previous month.
The idea of adding some wiggle room into the budget is really nice though - I wonder how we could do this without making it too complicated?
Thanks!
How about something like this for the budget screen?
| Category | Rolling 
|
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget [____] | You will be alerted at this limit |
| Category | Rolling 
|
Allocate
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget [____] | Surplus Limit [____] | Deficit Limit [____] | Alert & adjust based on your spending to help your goal |
| Category | Rolling
|
Allocate
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget [____] | Surplus Plan [____] | Deficit Plan [____] | Plan & adjust based on your spending to help your goal |
Cool, thanks!
Would you set the limits as values, or percentages?
I was thinking values, but either would be great!
I’ll share the idea with the rest of the team and see what they think
Awesome, thanks! =)