Expenses

What Are Expenses

Expenses are how monetr keeps track of things you need to spend money on on a regular basis. Things like rent, car payments, or subscriptions. monetr keeps track of how much you need for each of these, and when you need it by. It will automatically put a portion of the expense aside each time you get paid via Funding Schedules. This way you are not covering an entire expense out of a single paycheck and your Free-To-Use should be pretty similar each time you get paid.

It is recommended to create a single expense for each thing you need to spend money on. For example creating an expense for rent that happens every month on the first of the month will make sure you always have enough funds to cover rent. Expenses are less ideal for things that do not happen consistently, such as eating out or putting money aside for large purchases.

Expenses are also unique per individual bank account. If you have regular expense that comes out of multiple accounts, it is recommended to create an expense in each of those accounts in monetr and set the amounts on them to be equal to how much each account contributes to that expense.

Create An Expense

To create an expense you can navigate to the expense view of your current account by clicking Expenses in the sidebar.

Then click New Expense in the top navigation to open the create modal.

How much do you need?

monetr needs to know how much you’ll need to spend, if your expense amount changes periodically you should set this amount to be the highest the expense could be (within reason). For example, a utility bill can fluctuate throughout the year. You can adjust the expense’s amount throughout the year if you want, or you can set the amount to be on the higher end of what you expect the bill to be. When you use the expense monetr will then have funds leftover, which will reduce how much needs to be put aside each time you are paid.

When do you need it next?

Similar to funding schedules, monetr needs to know when the expense is due next. This date will be the basis for how the spending will repeat going forward. The date can be changed afterwards if needed.

If your expense can fall on a few different days, its best to pick a date a few days before the expense is due. This way monetr will make sure the funds are available before the expense is due. Contributions to the expense will still be balanced each time funding schedules are processed.

When do you want to fund the expense?

If you haven’t already created a Funding Schedule, then you’ll be prompted too here. Otherwise you can select the funding schedule that matches how you want to contribute to this expense. If you’ve setup your funding schedule to match when you get paid, then you’ll contribute to your expense a little bit every payday.

How frequently do you need this expense?

Similar to funding schedules, you can select a frequency that you’ll need the expense. monetr will repeat the expense on that frequency going forward, making sure enough funds are put aside before the date it is due.

Supported frequencies are:

• Weekly
• Every other week
• Monthly
• Every other month
• Every third month (quarterly)
• Every six months
• Yearly

If the date you selected in When do you need it next? is the 1st, 15th, or last day of the month; then you will also have the following options available:

• 1st and 15th of every month
• 15th and last day of every month

How expenses help

Once you have created your expense(s), monetr will show you how much it will contribute to each expense the next time your funding schedule happens.

On the overall expense view; you’ll be able to see when an expense is due next. In the screenshot above it is December 30th. How frequently that expense is due (every month on the 30th). How much will be contributes towards that expense the next time you get paid. In the example we are paid twice a month, so the expense will have half of its amount put aside each check to balance out the contributions. As well as how much is currently put aside for that expense (currently $0.00).

Expense Details

When you click on an individual expense, you can see even more information about the expense.

All of the details shown on this page are also available on the list view, but the expense can be modified if things change. You can also Transfer to manually change how much is put aside for a single expense.

Expense Timeline

Similar to funding schedules, individual expenses will show you a timeline of what monetr predicts will happen. Showing you when funds are contributed towards an expense, as well as when an expense is expected to be used.