Fixed, non-monthly, flexible and savings buckets

Budgets has five buckets in a fixed order: Income · Fixed · Non-monthly · Flexible · Savings & goals. The bucket a category sits in decides how it paces and how it counts in the verdict. Moving a category between buckets is a drag, or a tap in its ⋯ menu.

Income

The income line is paydays in the month times your net pay, plus any other income you add. It is editable per month. It is the denominator for everything on the rail: left to budget, the target percentage, the Scale buttons.

Fixed

Bills and anything else that is the same each month and has a date: rent or mortgage, car payment, insurance, phone, utilities, subscriptions. Fixed categories pace against their bills: a $200 electric budget is not "over" on the 20th because the bill has not posted yet; it is over when the bill posts above $200. Fixed spending is money the month must produce, so it is subtracted from income first.

A bill flagged as biweekly or paycheck-deducted (mortgage halves are the common case) is planned at halves times paydays in the month, tagged auto, and pinned. A month with three paydays shows three halves.

Non-monthly

Anything that recurs less often than monthly, or lands once a year: car registration, insurance paid every six months, holiday spending, a big annual subscription. Each has a target, a frequency and a due month. Ample accrues target ÷ months-to-due each month and shows "funded $X of $Y · due Dec." When the charge posts it draws from the funded balance instead of hitting that month. Rollover is always on here. See Non-monthly expenses and accrual.

Flexible

The part of the month that varies: groceries, gas, dining, shopping, fun. Flexible categories pool. The header shows "Flex $269 of $2,250 · $1,981 left" with a pace tick for the day of the month, and the verdict looks at the pool, not each category. Categories inside are guides. A hot dining month can be covered by a cool shopping month without an alarm, because what matters is the pool.

Flexible pacing is linear over the month: budget × day ÷ days in month. If you want a category held exactly, pin it; a pinned category is excluded from proportional scaling and reports its own overage.

Savings & goals

Planned transfers to savings and contributions to goals. Actuals come from real transfers into linked accounts, so this bucket reflects what moved, not what you meant to move. Contributions are editable rows; a goal's monthly figure is owned by the goal.

System categories

Transfers and Fees & interest are system categories. Transfers, including card payments, are not spending. Interest is a debt cost tracked under Debts, not spending. Neither counts in any bucket, pace or verdict.

Groups

Inside a bucket, categories sit in groups (Housing, Bills & utilities, Food & dining, Transport, and so on) that collapse and show subtotals of budget, actual and remaining. Groups are yours to rename, create and reorder; they are for reading, and do not change any math.