Rollovers let you carry any leftover amount in an expense budget category into the next month. This can be helpful if you don't know the exact amount you plan to spend in a category such as restaurants, groceries, or entertainment. It can also help with seasonal categories - like clothing, holiday gifts, or summer camps - where you spend very little some months and larger amounts in others.
Starting balance on a rollover
Turning rollovers on or off
There are two places you can turn rollovers on or off: In your Budget page and in your Settings page.
Turn Rollovers on in Budget
On your Budget page, click the "gear" icon that appears when you hover over a category in the web app:
On mobile, the option is available from the 3 dots that show in the top right page when viewing a category:
Turn Rollovers on in Settings
You can turn on or off the rollover feature in the web app using the Categories Setting area:
How a rollover is calculated
The rollover amount is simply the remaining amount in a category. The remaining amounts are shown for all categories (with or without rollovers set). The difference when rollovers are turned on is that the remaining amount is included in the calculation for the budget in the next month.
Rollover (last month) + Planned (this month) - Actual (this month)
= Remaining Rollover (next month)
In this example, the rollover from last month was $-22 (meaning last month this category was over budget by $22), the planned was $1,430, and the actual amount spent was $629. Using the equation, you get:
-$22 (rollover from last month) + $1,430 (planned) - $629 (actual) = $779 rollover
Rollovers can continue on for many months, so each month will show the rollover amount from the month before it. The "cycle" icon in the green or red oval on the remaining amount indicates if a rollover amount was used in the calculation. Any months where rollovers aren't turned on (or categories that don't use rollovers at all) will not show this "cycle" icon.
Multiple rollovers
All expense categories are totaled and shown in a red bar with the actuals on the left and planned on the right.
When rollovers are turned on, the planned expenses on the right side of this red bar will include all the rollover amounts from the last month. You can see if the calculation includes rollovers when it has a "cycle" icon next to it similar to individual categories.
Starting balance on a rollover
If you want to start your rollover category with more than your current monthly budget, you can set a Starting Balance. This can be done on the web and mobile from the edit category screen.
Rollovers + Flex Budgeting
With flex budgeting, you can set any category to be treated as a rollover expense, regardless of whether the category is in the monthly, non-monthly, or flex bucket. Each bucket - and each category - will have a header showing the "budget," "actual," and "remaining" amounts. Rollovers will affect the "remaining" column and amount on both the category and the high-level bucket.
When rollovers are enabled, the remaining number is calculated from the actual amount spent during the month plus the total rolled over from the previous month.