See where your money is going — and where it will be. BudgetViz uses your real transactions to forecast the near future and project your long-term financial trajectory.
BudgetViz draws a distinction between two complementary ways of looking ahead. Understanding the difference helps you get the most out of each feature.
Short-to-medium term. Forecasting answers the question "what is expected to happen in the coming days, weeks, and months?" It is driven by concrete, scheduled events — unpaid bills, upcoming recurring transactions, and planned transfers. Forecasts are precise because they are based on real transaction data you have already entered.
Medium-to-long term. Projection answers the question "where will I end up if things continue as they are?" It extends your financial trajectory over months and years by compounding growth rates, recurring patterns, and investment returns. Projections are estimates that help you see the bigger picture and plan accordingly.
In practice, forecasting and projection work together seamlessly. Your short-term forecasts (upcoming bills and recurring transactions) feed into long-term projections (investment growth over years), giving you a single, unified picture from tomorrow through the next decade.
Everything is based on your data. BudgetViz never guesses. Forecasts are built from transactions you have entered and marked as upcoming or recurring. Projections use the return rates and contribution patterns you configure. No external data or assumptions are involved.
The foundation of all forecasting in BudgetViz is the unpaid transaction. By entering transactions ahead of time and marking them as unpaid, you tell BudgetViz what to expect in the future.
Any transaction with a future date and an "unpaid" payment status is treated as an upcoming transaction. These appear in your accounts and budgets alongside your settled transactions, but are visually distinguished so you can tell them apart at a glance.
Create a transaction with a future date — for example, an upcoming tax payment. Set the payment status to "unpaid" to indicate it hasn't been settled yet. The transaction will appear in your timeline and budget but won't count toward paid totals until you mark it as paid.
For regular payments — subscriptions, salary, loan repayments, rent etc. — attach a recurring period to the transaction. BudgetViz will automatically generate projected future occurrences based on the recurring pattern. When you pay or skip the current occurrence, the next one is created automatically.
BudgetViz generates projected future occurrences of recurring transactions automatically. These projected transactions have a distinctive appearance — displayed with reduced opacity and a special chip indicator — so you can always tell what is confirmed vs. what is projected. Projected transactions cannot be edited directly; tap "View source" to modify the anchor transaction.
Budgets are where forecasting is most immediately useful. By combining settled transactions with upcoming and recurring ones, BudgetViz shows you not just where you've been, but where you're headed within the current budget period.
When you open a budget's detail view, the summary card at the top shows your current spending or income alongside the budget target. But it also includes the impact of upcoming unpaid transactions — giving you the full picture of expected activity for the period.
Cash flow budgets combine income and expenses into a single view, making forecasting especially powerful. You can see your expected net position for the period: how much income is confirmed, how much is still pending, and what your expected expenses will be. This is the clearest way to answer the question "how much headroom do I really have for discretionary spending?"
BudgetViz distinguishes between settled and forecasted amounts in its charts, so you always know what is confirmed and what is expected.
In the daily progress view, two lines tell the story. A solid line shows the cumulative total of settled (paid) transactions. A dashed line shows the combined total of settled and unpaid transactions. If there are no unpaid transactions at all, the dashed line is not shown. When unpaid transactions are present — whether upcoming future ones or overdue past ones — the gap between the solid and dashed lines makes it easy to see exactly how much is confirmed vs. expected, and where the total is headed by the end of the period.
In bar chart views (daily spending, category breakdown, etc.), forecasted amounts appear as a stacked grey portion on top of the settled bar. This overlay makes it easy to see how much of each bar is confirmed vs. projected, especially useful for category-level breakdowns where some categories may have more recurring transactions than others.
Each account has its own detail view that works like a budget scoped to a single account. This gives you a focused forecast for that specific account.
The account detail view defaults to a daily balance chart — a line chart showing your running balance over the period. Unlike a budget's spending chart, this includes the rollover balance from before the period, giving you the true account balance at every point in time.
Upcoming and recurring transactions extend the balance line into the future, so you can see where the account balance is headed. For credit card accounts, you can also switch to a "used credit" view that shows how much of your credit limit is projected to be in use.
The history chart shows your balance at the end of each past period (week, month, etc.) alongside the current projected balance. This puts your forecast in the context of long-term account trends — is the account growing, shrinking, or stable? The projection helps you see if the current trajectory breaks the pattern.
Chart switching. Use the chart configuration button to switch between different views: daily balance, daily progress, daily spending, category breakdown, subcategory breakdown, account spending, used credit (for credit cards), and balance history. Each view incorporates forecasted data where applicable.
For accounts where your money is expected to grow — savings accounts, investment portfolios, retirement funds — BudgetViz can project the long-term development of your balance based on an expected annual return rate.
Projected returns are available for account types where growth is a realistic expectation:
On the account detail screen, use the rate slider to set your expected annual return rate. The slider uses a non-linear scale for precision where it matters most: 0.5% steps from 0–10%, 1% steps from 10–20%, 5% steps from 20–50%, and 10% steps above that. Your chosen rate is saved to the account and persisted.
Use the years slider to set how far into the future to project — from 1 to 30 years. The projection chart updates in real time as you adjust, with a debounce to keep the interface responsive during slider interaction.
A bar chart appears showing your projected balance at the end of each year. Each bar incorporates the current balance, expected recurring contributions (from your recurring transactions), and compounding returns — all interacting together realistically.
Unlike simple compound interest calculators, BudgetViz's projections are grounded in your actual financial data. The projection engine works month by month through the projected time range:
The projection begins with the account's balance as of today — including all settled and upcoming transactions up to the period start.
Any recurring transactions on the account (such as monthly savings transfers or regular investment contributions) are projected forward through the entire time range. These are the same projected recurring transactions used in short-term forecasting.
At the end of each month, the engine calculates a return on the running balance using the annual rate divided by 12. This return is added to the balance before moving to the next month — creating true monthly compounding. Negative balances produce negative returns naturally.
Each month builds on the last. Contributions increase the balance before the next month's return is calculated, so regular contributions compound alongside the existing balance. The result is a realistic projection that accounts for the interplay between contributions and growth.
Portfolios group multiple accounts together and provide a unified view of your net worth or a subset of your finances. The projection features available on individual accounts extend to portfolios, but with important differences.
When a portfolio contains accounts with projected return rates, BudgetViz generates a combined projection chart. Each eligible account contributes its own return rate, recurring contributions, and balance independently — the portfolio projection is not a single blended rate, but the sum of realistic per-account projections.
The projection years slider applies to the entire portfolio. Unlike individual accounts (where each account stores its own rate and years), the portfolio projection years are stored on the portfolio itself and persist across sessions.
Each account in the portfolio uses its own annual return rate (set on the account level). This means a portfolio with a 2% savings account and an 8% equity account will project each realistically, rather than applying a single blended rate.
If the portfolio contains accounts in different currencies, all values are converted to the portfolio's reporting currency for the projection chart. This gives you a meaningful aggregated view even when your investments span multiple currencies.
Sometimes you want to explore a question like "what if I contributed an extra $500 per month?" without changing any real data. BudgetViz's what-if feature lets you overlay a hypothetical monthly contribution on top of your existing projection to see the impact.
On the projected return card (in either account or portfolio detail), toggle the what-if switch. The contribution input and (for portfolios) a separate rate slider will appear. The chart updates immediately with the new scenario layered on top.
Tap the contribution field to enter the hypothetical monthly amount. This opens a dedicated amount entry dialog. The contribution is applied as a recurring monthly transaction in the projection engine — it compounds alongside your real recurring transactions and the return rate.
For portfolios, the what-if scenario includes its own rate slider (0–20%). This lets you model a different return rate for the hypothetical contribution separately from the individual account rates already in the portfolio.
The what-if scenario creates a temporary, virtual account that exists only in memory — it is never saved to your database. A recurring monthly contribution is generated on this virtual account from the start of the projection period, and the projection engine applies the specified return rate month by month, compounding the contribution exactly as it would for a real account. The result is combined with the existing projection from your real accounts.
Transient by design. What-if scenarios are intentionally not persisted. They reset when you leave the screen. This encourages exploration without cluttering your data — adjust the contribution, try different rates, and see the impact instantly. When you toggle the what-if switch off, the previous contribution value is remembered for the session, so you can quickly toggle it back on.
Uses the account's own annual return rate. You set the monthly contribution amount. The what-if contribution is projected alongside the account's existing recurring transactions and compounding returns.
Includes its own rate slider (independent of individual account rates). The hypothetical contribution is treated as a separate investment stream with its own rate, added to the portfolio's combined projection from all real accounts.
Beyond charts and projections, BudgetViz provides analytical tools for understanding your recurring financial commitments. These reports help you answer questions like "how much do I spend on subscriptions per year?" or "what are my total fixed monthly costs?"
On each recurring transaction's detail screen, BudgetViz shows the average amount per month and per year. This is calculated from the transaction's actual recurring period — a weekly expense is annualized differently than a monthly one. This helps you understand the true annual cost of each commitment.
Generate custom reports that filter and group recurring transactions by category, subcategory, account, or transaction type. For example, create a report showing all recurring expenses grouped by category to see your monthly fixed costs broken down by area of life — housing, transportation, entertainment, etc.
Budget detail views include a "history" chart option that shows the budget's spending or income across past periods (up to 12 months, 12 weeks, or 5 years depending on the budget period). Forecasted amounts for the current period are shown alongside historical actuals, helping you see how your expected activity compares to past trends.
When setting budget targets for categories, BudgetViz shows the historical average for that category as a hint. This is calculated from past periods and helps you set realistic targets informed by your actual spending patterns — bridging the gap between backward-looking analysis and forward-looking budgeting.
Combining insights. Use recurring transaction reports to identify your fixed costs, then use budget forecasting to see how those fixed costs interact with variable spending. For example, if recurring expenses account for 70% of your budget, you know that only 30% is available for discretionary spending — and the budget forecast shows you exactly how that plays out day by day.