12 month view for budgeting
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Casey G
I'd love to be able to plan & enter my budgets over a whole year, instead of going one month at a time. See attached for an example of a common spreadsheet format.
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Michael Corbett
This is what I was hoping to see under https://feedback.lunchmoney.app/budget/p/set-a-budget-for-a-year but unfortunately it seem to be missing. It should be possible to view long-term budget vs actual data regardless of what budget period you are using. I imagine being available under Budget or Analyze. Looking at one period at a time makes it hard to see the bigger picture.
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Martin Rushworth
For me, this is what is most missing from the current beta. I have my budget period set to calendar month with rollover so I can track the year monthly as i go, but my expected income and expenses vary quite a bit month by month. My main goal is to fit within a yearly budget. Right now i have to manually add up each months budget to get my annual budget. It would be great to have a view over the whole year, or I guess over multiple periods to suit everyone
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Shane
Martin Rushworth Same
I'm very new to LM but this is the main thing I am trying to figure out how I want to handle. Things like Travel or Home Improvements are going to be very sporadic spending. I want money allocated to them for the year and to know that I will still be within budget, but I have no idea which months the actual spend will come in.
When I go to Home > Overview and set it to This Year, this is basically the view that I want to see. However currently even when setting this to view against the budget, its still not quite there. For example the summary at the top ONLY includes the recurring items and not the sum totals of my budgets.
And then like OP points out, I want to be able to enter all of this at the beginning of the year (now) rather than do it as each month begins.
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Max
I just started using LM, moving from Mint+Excel. I do like many others do, use Mint as aggregator, and spreadsheet for yearly budget. It would be so nice to dump my old spreadsheet and be able to setup my yearly budget in sort of a 12-month view, all at once based on my categories.
The Finance > Analyze tab is very close to what I am looking for. Its great to see spending at a glance. All I would add is the ability to see budget against spendings, and also the ability to set budgets from there)
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Clarence Tso
Max this Finance > Analyze --> Budget is exactly what I came to look for as well! Have a great, helpful YoY report in Analyze and the next step is to convert that into an annual budget from the YoY report.
It's just a lot of extra work to do things month-by-month if you're not looking to spend every week in the budgeting app.
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Pat
I'd like to poke my head in and add context to why this is such an important feature... For a freelancer who's spouse does seasonal work, our incomes are sporadic to say the least. Monthly budgeting is basically useless unless I can look at the whole year exactly like the attached image. Until this feature is available I'll basically have to keep using LM only as an account-aggregator and a auto-categorizer, to export into my own spreadsheet that does this.
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Jovana Puric
Pat
Dear Pat,
Thank you for your thoughtful insight. At the moment we are focusing on implementing this feature so in the future our users will be able to see a whole year budget as suggested. This will allow sporadic income visibility on a yearly budget as well.
We hope this version of LM will match your expectations and allow you to plan and budget your expenses seamlessly.
Best,
Jovana
Lunch Money
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Benjamin Myers
I also need this. Any updates? I'd like to be able to see the Budget for a year or a set period (e.g., May 2023 - Dec 2023), month by month and total. And I'd like to see actuals vs. budgets for that period, month by month AND total / total to date.
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Deirdre Horgan
Benjamin Myers: i totally agree. i can not believe i can't see my expenditures vs. my budget. that is so basic. i spent 20 hours sorting and cleaning my data only to discover this fault.
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Deirdre Horgan
Benjamin Myers: and holy crap people have been asking for this for 2 years. since april 2021. if they can't do this basic thing there's a problem.
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Benjamin Myers
Maybe Jen from Lunch Money can give an update
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Jovana Puric
Deirdre Horgan
Dear Deirdre,
Thank you for the heads up about the improvements we need to make. We are aware of the adjustments we need to make and have been working hard to make this feature available as soon as possible. As you have suggested, expenditures versus budget visibility is exactly what we are aiming for.
We are hoping this will meet your expectations and improve your LM experience.
In the meantime, thank you for your patience and support.
Best,
Jovana
Lunch Money
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Benjamin Myers
Checking back on this. Need to be able to export periods in Analysis or Budget like YTD or last quarter or custom periods, and see real/actual spend (by category) vs budgeted spend, and the difference. come on, LM, this is basic budgeting / planning stuff!
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Past User 18664
I need this too! Any update on this?
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J
Yes! This is crucial for us. I have a number of budgets (like travel) that I set for the year, with clusters of expenses against that budget and months of zeroes in between. The monthly budget view doesn't help much for this.
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W Other
And the possibility to set a year-budget, which is automatically divided over the next year.
Jen from Lunch Money
Very cool, thanks for sharing!