Tier Availability
Essential & PremiumWhat Is Monthly Plan Check?
Monthly Plan Check is a small panel on the budget page that answers one question: does the plan you're about to fund actually fit the income you expect this month? It compares the monthly needed amount across your targeted categories against the paychecks you say you're expecting, and tells you up front whether you're balanced, tight, or overplanned — before you start moving money around.
Think of it as a pre-flight check for your month. You wouldn’t start a long drive without glancing at the fuel gauge. Monthly Plan Check is the same idea: a quick glance at whether your plan and your expected paychecks line up.
What You Need For It To Work
Monthly Plan Check is built on two inputs. Both have to be in place before the check is meaningful.
1. Category Targets
The “needed” side of the math comes entirely from Category Targets. For every visible spending category with a target, Purpose Budget computes a monthly needed amount (the same number that drives per-row guidance on the budget page) and sums them up.
Important: Categories without a target contribute $0 to the check. If you have expected paychecks added but no targets set, Monthly Plan Check will read balanced (because the total need is $0). With no paychecks and no targets, it stays in the setup needed hero state. Either way, the check is designed for the targeting workflow — add targets to the bills and savings goals you want it to plan around.
Categories that are excluded from the total even if they have targets:
- Credit Card Payment categories
- Income categories
- Ready to Assign
- Hidden categories and hidden groups
2. Expected Paychecks
The “expected income” side comes from a short list you maintain in the Expected income editor — one row per paycheck you expect that month, each with a date, an amount, and an optional owner label (handy for two-income households).
This list is the single source of truth for expected income. Monthly Plan Check does not look at your transaction history or your recurring templates when it runs — only at the rows you've confirmed in this list. Keep it accurate, and the check stays accurate.
The Four Statuses
Once both inputs are in place, Monthly Plan Check derives one of four states for the month.
The Math
delta = expectedIncome − totalNeeded
- Setup needed (gray): no expected paychecks added yet — the empty-state hero card shows on the budget page.
- Balanced (green): delta is more than 10% of expected income. You have comfortable headroom.
- Tight (amber): delta is between $0 and 10% of expected income (inclusive on both ends). The plan fits, but with very little cushion for the unexpected.
- Overplanned (red): delta is negative — your targets total more than your expected paychecks. The banner shows by how much so you can trim a target or accept the gap before you start assigning.
Why the exact-10% boundary lands in tight:
A $500 cushion on $5,000 of expected income is exactly 10% — and reads as tight (amber), not balanced. The rule of thumb: anything inside the 10% band counts as “not a lot of room.” This is intentional — if you want green, plan with a bit more buffer than 10%.
Setting Up Expected Paychecks
First-Time Setup
When you first open the budget page (with the feature on) and you haven’t added any expected paychecks yet, you’ll see a teaching hero card at the top with an Add expected income button. Clicking it opens the editor.
Suggested Paychecks (When the Month Is Empty)
Whenever you open the editor for a month that doesn’t have any expected paychecks yet, Purpose Budget may suggest a checklist of candidates pulled from two sources:
- Scheduled recurring transactions — if you’ve set up recurring inflow templates (paychecks, freelance retainers, etc.) for that month. Available on both Essential and Premium.
- Plaid-detected recurring streams — if you have bank accounts connected, Purpose Budget can additionally suggest recurring inflows detected from your bank activity. Premium only (requires bank sync).
Review the suggestions, adjust owner labels if you want, uncheck anything you don’t want to track, and confirm. The selected rows are saved as your expected paychecks for that month. Suggestions appear only when the month’s list is empty — once you have at least one row in there, the editor opens straight into edit mode.
Manual Entry
Outside the suggestions step, the editor shows an Add paycheck button so you can add rows by hand — pick the date, enter the amount, and (optionally) set an owner label. You can edit and delete any time.
A note on the flow: when suggestions appear, confirming a subset transitions you to the manual editor view (Cancel closes the dialog entirely, without saving anything). If no suggestions are found for the month, the editor opens straight into manual-entry mode. And once the month has any confirmed rows, suggestions don’t re-appear — you’re in manual-edit mode from then on.
Step-by-Step: Two-Income Household, Biweekly
Scenario: You and your partner both get paid every two weeks — you on Fridays, your partner on Wednesdays. That’s 4 paychecks most months, sometimes 5.
- 1. Open the editor: Click Add expected income on the hero card (or the Edit button on the banner if you already have rows).
- 2. Add your paychecks: Two rows for you (e.g. May 2 and May 16), labeled with your name. Two rows for your partner (e.g. May 7 and May 21), labeled with theirs.
- 3. Check the third paycheck: If the month has a fifth Friday or Wednesday, add that one too. Months drift in and out of having a third paycheck depending on the calendar.
- 4. Confirm: Save. The banner appears with a status (balanced / tight / overplanned) and a progress ring showing how much of expected income is already committed by your targets.
- 5. Next month: Repeat. (We’re considering a “copy last month’s paychecks” shortcut for V2 — let us know if you’d use it.)
Reading the Banner
Once you have expected paychecks, the empty hero is replaced with a status banner that sits between the filter chips and the budget table. The banner has three parts:
- A progress ring showing what fraction of expected income is committed by your targets (e.g. 90% means your targets add up to 90% of what you expect to earn).
- A status line (Balanced this month / Tight this month / Over by $X) with a one-line breakdown of needed vs. expected vs. cushion or overage.
- An Edit button to jump back into the paycheck list, plus a small × to hide the panel.
Hiding and Re-enabling
Not everyone wants this on their budget page. Both the hero card and the banner can be dismissed:
- Hero card (empty state): click the Don’t show this link at the bottom of the card.
- Banner (filled states): click the × button on the right. You’ll see a brief Undo toast in case you tapped it by accident.
The preference is saved per user (not per device), so if you hide it on the web it stays hidden on the web everywhere.
To bring it back, you have two options:
- On the budget page, open the options menu (the cog icon in the header) and toggle Show Monthly Plan Check back on.
- Or go to Settings → Preferences and toggle Show Monthly Plan Check there. Both toggles point at the same preference.
What Monthly Plan Check Does Not Do
Some intentional limits worth knowing so the check stays predictable:
- It doesn’t check week-by-week timing within the month. Monthly Plan Check compares totals for the month — it doesn’t check whether each paycheck arrives in time for the bills it’s funding. If rent is due on day 1 and your first paycheck doesn’t land until day 15, the banner can still read balanced even though you’d be short for the first half of the month. Matching paycheck dates against target due dates is on the roadmap; for now, MPC answers the does it add up? question, not the does it land in time? question.
- It doesn’t change Ready to Assign. Expected paychecks are a plan, not actual income. Ready to Assign still reflects what has actually landed in your accounts — nothing more.
- It doesn’t move money. Nothing gets auto-assigned. The check is read-only — you still drive the actual allocations from the budget rows.
- It doesn’t track actual spending. If you’re overspending categories, RTA and the per-row spending columns are where that shows up. Monthly Plan Check is a forecast check, not a reactive one.
- It doesn’t look at recurring transactions or transaction history when it computes status. Expected income comes only from the paycheck list you maintain. Recurring inflows are surfaced as suggestions when a month’s list is empty, but once you have at least one row in the month, the editor stops re-suggesting — you’re editing the list directly from then on.
- It’s not a forecast model. No projections, no “you’ll run out on the 17th.” Just: does the month’s plan add up to what you expect to earn?
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why does it always show balanced even though I have lots of bills?
Because none of your spending categories have targets set yet. Monthly Plan Check sums monthly needed across categories with targets — with no targets, the total need is $0, which is always less than any positive expected income, so the status reads balanced. Add targets to the bills and savings goals you want it to plan around.
Q: Why am I seeing “tight” when my plan technically fits?
Tight means your cushion is between $0 and 10% of expected income. A $500 cushion on $5,000 of expected income (= exactly 10%) is tight, not balanced — intentionally. The 10% band is the “not a lot of room” zone. To land in balanced (green), give yourself more than 10% headroom.
Q: Does it change my Ready to Assign?
No. Expected paychecks are a plan — Ready to Assign still reflects what has actually landed in your accounts. Monthly Plan Check is read-only.
Q: Why doesn’t it pick up my recurring paycheck automatically each month?
Suggestions only appear when a month’s expected-income list is empty — once you confirm any rows for that month, the editor stops re-suggesting and lets you edit the list directly. There’s no background process that updates confirmed rows when your recurring schedule changes. A “copy last month’s paychecks” shortcut and continuous auto-detection are on the V2 list — tell us which would help most.
Q: I have irregular income — should I use this?
You can, but with care. Set expected paychecks to a conservative estimate of what you’re reasonably sure will land that month — that way overplanned is a real signal, not noise. See the irregular income guide for the broader strategy.
Q: I hid it and now I want it back — where do I turn it on?
Two places, both equivalent: the budget page’s options menu (cog icon in the header) has a Show Monthly Plan Check toggle, and Settings → Preferences has a mirror of the same toggle.
Ready to Use Monthly Plan Check?
Set targets on the categories you want to fund this month, add the paychecks you expect, and let the budget page tell you up front whether your plan fits — or where it doesn’t.