Your first fortnight

Most budgets run on calendar months. Most pay does not. Clementine counts from one pay day to the next, so the question it answers on Home is the one you actually have on a Tuesday: how much can I spend before I am paid again?

Tell it when you are paid

On Home, the card called Safe to spend until pay day starts with a button: Set pay cycle. It asks three things.

1. How often are you paid? Weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
2. A pay day. Any one will do; Clementine counts forward and back from it. For monthly pay it asks for the day of the month, and in a shorter month uses the last day.
3. Your usual take-home pay each week, fortnight or month.

Change it whenever your pay does, from the same card or under Account, Profile.

What “safe to spend” means

It is your pay, less what you have spent, the bills still to come and what you plan to save. In full:

• the pay you expect this cycle, plus any other income that has already arrived;
• less everything spent so far in the cycle, including payments still pending at your bank and ones not sorted yet;
• less planned payments that are due before your next pay day and not yet paid;
• less planned payments whose date passed in the last 30 days with no sign of them in your bank;
• less what you plan to add to your savings goals this cycle.

Tap How this is worked out on the card and it shows every line, and what is inside each one, so the number is never a mystery. It also spreads what is left over the days to go.

Four things it is careful about

• Transfers are never spending. Moving money between your own accounts does not count.
• Nothing is counted twice. A planned payment your bank already shows is counted once, as spending.
• Australian dollars only. Spending in another currency is left out of the total.
• Unsorted still counts. A payment waiting for a category is treated as spending until you say otherwise.

It is a guide worked out from your own figures. It is not your bank balance, and it does not know about money you have not told Clementine about.

Budgets on the same cycle

The pay cycle sheet has one more choice, Budgets follow: the calendar month, or your pay cycle. Choose your pay cycle and your limits and pace run from pay day to pay day, and you can enter a limit per week or per fortnight. Choose the calendar month and they run from the 1st, as they always have.

Either way, the limits are the same limits: a monthly limit is shown as its weekly or fortnightly share, to the cent. Reports, the calendar and upcoming payments stay on calendar months.

A routine for the first two weeks

1. Pay day. Open Home. Check the pay that arrived matches what you entered.
2. Every few days. Clear the review queue so nothing sits unsorted. How to review quickly
3. When a bill is paid. If your bank shows it, there is nothing to do. If it does not, mark it paid under Plan, Upcoming, or move its date.
4. The day before pay day. Look at what was left. If it is always more than you expected, your limits have room. If it is always less, one of the lines above is bigger than you thought, and the card will show you which.