Cashflow projection report

The Cashflow projection report extrapolates your accounts forward. It starts from today's balances, adds every pending recurring entry, and accounts for goal funding requirements. The output is a per-month forecast of where each account will sit.

What's projected

For every on-budget account and every tracking account, for every month in the projection window:

projected balance(account, month) =
  current balance
  + sum of inflow recurring through month
  - sum of outflow recurring through month
  + transfers in
  - transfers out

Goal funding is layered separately:

• Monthly fixed goals contribute their target as an outflow from Ready to Assign each month.
• Reach a target by a date goals contribute their per-month need.
• Monthly top-up and Refill up to a balance goals contribute the average top-up / refill of the last 3 months.

Windows

• 3 months — short horizon; default. Useful for the next-paycheck question.
• 6 months — medium horizon. Catches semi-annual bills like insurance.
• 12 months — annual horizon. Catches every regular event of a normal year.

The output

Two views, switchable via toolbar tabs:

Per-account lines

One line per account across the projection window. Useful for "will my checking dip below the safety floor in March?" questions. Shaded zones mark months where any on-budget account is projected to go negative.

Total cashflow bars

Two bars per month: total expected inflows (green) and total expected outflows (red). A line on top shows projected on-budget cash at month-end. Useful for "do my monthly inflows actually cover my monthly outflows on average?"

Confidence

The projection is only as good as your recurring templates and goals. If you have no recurring set up, the line is flat — Project Budget assumes nothing happens. If your recurring covers 80% of regular outflows, the line is 80%-confident.

Two ways to improve confidence:

• Add templates for every regular bill. Subscriptions, utilities, the gym, payday. Every reliable monthly event.
• Add reach-a-target goals for known annual bills. Property tax, insurance premiums, holidays. The goal's per-month need feeds the projection.

What's not projected

• Discretionary spending that isn't a recurring template. The projection won't predict what you'll spend on groceries unless Groceries is a recurring template (which is unusual). For variable-spending categories, the implicit assumption is the goal's monthly target.
• Market gains or losses on tracking-asset accounts. The projection assumes flat.
• Mortgage / loan amortization on tracking-liability accounts. If you want the projected balance to drop monthly, add a recurring template for the principal portion of each payment.

Calibrating against reality

A practical exercise: at the start of each month, take a screenshot of the next-month projection. At month-end, compare projected end-of-month balance to actual. Within 5% is a tightly-calibrated recurring list. Within 20% is normal. Off by more than 20% means either a recurring template is missing or a goal target is wildly off.

Worst-case overlay

The toolbar has a Show worst-case overlay toggle. When on, every variable goal-driven outflow is scaled to its 90th-percentile last-12-month spend instead of its target — a "what if every month is a bad month" line. The original projection stays visible; the worst-case appears as a dashed line below.

Useful for stress-testing: if even the worst-case line stays positive in every account, you have a real cushion.

Caveats

The projection is a model. It will be wrong. The point is not perfect prediction; the point is direction and order of magnitude. A projection that shows checking dipping below $200 in February is telling you to move money before February, not predicting exactly $200.