Hello,
I have a Gardener that visits twice a month, I pay him via bank transfer. What is the best way for this to show up in bills? When I select the payment as a bill it gives me options weekly, monthly, no schedule etc, how do I approach it for bi-monthly?
Probably the best way to manage this will be to set a budget and monitor spend against it pay day to pay day, but I don’t currently have ‘plus’ wondering how you best get it to show bi-monthly services? Thanks
Hi @Foxinthecity - currently we support the following bill frequencies:
The last one (Irregular) will match together any transaction to that merchant regardless of when it happens or how much the bill is for. So that is likely to be the best option here, albeit you will need to manually edit the ‘next payment date’ after each payment.
Sorry that we don’t support fortnightly bills.
Hi Paul - Thank you. I suppose the ‘pay day to pay day‘ feature once everything is categorised and monitored as a ‘budget’ will be more useful for me to track where I’m at during any month and anything that seems higher or lower than usual.
The value in the bills feature is useful to see what is left remaining for the set period. But I guess there is more control and not much difference if I set a budget that includes the bills too right? I’ll be able to see how much is spent and what is remaining, assuming my budget is set accurately, is that all correct?
I do like that the bills feature can spot something that may be annual which I may not be thinking about month to month. From your perspective can you explain to me what are the benefits of the bills feature verses the budget approach i have described? Thanks
Hi @Foxinthecity - let me explain each aspect and how they fit together?
Pay Day Tracking - by default our app works on calendar months. However, many people prefer to think of their money based on their pay day cycle. If you get paid today, you want to consider all the bills and spending in the next month before you are next paid as a single cycle. This helps you understand more accurately how your spending matches your income. Therefore many people find tracking their bills, budgets and spending analysis based on their pay day.
Your Bills - we will track all bills that are paid or due in the current period. The period will either be calendar month or the Paycycle, if you’ve set that up as per above. Bills are basically any regular payments that we can spot - whether they be DDs, standing orders, other transfers or regular card payments. We track patterns based on the frequencies above and you can always add bills manually in the app if our AI hasn’t spotted the pattern yet. You can also update the bill dates or amounts to keep the data accurate based on what you know is coming-up. For example if you know you are not paying council tax this month, you can skip this particular month’s payment. You can also see ‘all bills’ which includes those that are due outside of this period - for example annual bills due later in the year.
Budgets this is where we bring everything together. So we help you setup a total budget and/or individual category budgets based on your usual spending. This can again be with calendar based or based on our paycycle if you’ve set that up. Once setup we will track all the spending you’ve made in that period, plus we will forecast any bills we think that are still due in the month. You can tap on the links in the screen for ‘upcoming bills’ to see a list of these upcoming commitments and make changes. We will warn you if you exceed your budget for any category or against your overall spend.
Does that help explain how the three things fit together?
Paul
Thanks you this is very helpful.
I have upgraded to plus 
So, another conundrum… I’ve set my pay cycle to be 24-23rd of each month as that’s when my employer pays me. I’ve set it to recognise payment is on the previous working day when 24th falls on a weekend. All good so far.
The issue is that in December my employer pays me early on the 19th of the month! December is a particular important month to track… as a result Snoop is reporting double income for the period ‘24 Nov- 23rd Dec’ an and ‘no income’ for period ‘23rd Dec - 23rd Jan’.
I can see no way to amend this to make a special exception so that one of these salary payments falls in November and the other falls in December.
Any ideas what to do, or can you make an amendment behind the scenes to perhaps change the date of one transaction so it reports accurately? Many Thanks
I totally understand the challenge here, but I’m afraid that’s not something we can currently support. Our historic paycycle dates are calculated in realtime each time you use the app using your latest settings (so it’s not a setting I can adjust behind the scenes).
I will certainly share the feedback with our team as we think about enhancements for the future.
Paul
+1 for the flexible December payday as many companies I’ve worked for do this too. 