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Budgeting & Cash Flow

Finly implements an envelope budgeting system that monitors monthly burn rates across spending categories while isolating consumable expenses from savings deposits.

Envelope Budgeting System

Each expense category can be assigned a target monthly spending limit (envelope). Finly continuously computes:

\[\text{Remaining Budget} = \text{Monthly Limit} - \sum \text{Eligible Expenses}\]
\[\text{Consumption Rate} = \frac{\sum \text{Eligible Expenses}}{\text{Monthly Limit}} \times 100\%\]

Visual Progress Indicators

Envelopes provide immediate visual feedback based on consumption rate:

  • Green (< 80%): Normal spending pace.
  • Amber (80% - 100%): Nearing threshold warning.
  • Rose / Red (> 100%): Budget exceeded with amount over limit highlighted.

Deposit Account Filtering

A frequent flaw in multi-bank budget software is the accidental contamination of spending metrics by savings accounts (e.g., transfers from Checking to Livret A showing up as expenses, or savings balance drawdowns showing up as revenue).

Finly strictly enforces deposit account filtering:

  1. Only Checking & Demand Deposit accounts (Compte Courant, checking, deposit) are included in monthly budget calculations.
  2. Savings accounts (Livret A, LDDS, LEP), investment portfolios (PEA, Assurance Vie), and crypto wallets are strictly excluded from budget totals.
  3. Users can switch from all checking accounts across banks to a single specific checking account using the account selector dropdown.

Sankey Cash Flow Diagrams

Finly renders interactive Sankey diagrams to illustrate how monthly income distributes across expenses, taxes, and savings allocations:

graph LR
    Income["Monthly Net Income (3,850 EUR)"] --> Housing["Housing & Utilities (1,042 EUR)"]
    Income --> Food["Groceries & Food (420 EUR)"]
    Income --> Transport["Transport (159 EUR)"]
    Income --> Subs["Subscriptions (89 EUR)"]
    Income --> Leisure["Leisure & Culture (171 EUR)"]
    Income --> Health["Healthcare (28 EUR)"]
    Income --> Savings["Net Allocated Savings (1,941 EUR)"]
    Savings --> Emergency["Emergency Fund (300 EUR)"]
    Savings --> PEA["PEA Equities (250 EUR)"]
    Savings --> Unallocated["Cash Reserve (1,391 EUR)"]

Month-by-Month Historical Navigation

Finly supports continuous calendar navigation:

  • Calendar Month Selector: Select and analyze any specific month (e.g., 2026-10, 2026-05, 2025-11).
  • Trailing 30-Day View: Toggle to dynamic real-time rolling 30-day analytics.
  • Previous / Next Month Controls: Quickly page backward or forward in history to review seasonal expense patterns.

PDF Budget Reports

Users can generate client-side PDF budget summaries using the Export PDF action:

  • Formatted for print or offline archiving using jsPDF.
  • Summarizes category limits, actual consumption, percentage ratios, and cash flow balance.
  • Completely generated within the browser without uploading financial data to an external PDF generation server.