Three reports answer "am I living within my means, and did I stick to the plan?"
Income vs. Expense
Total income against total spending, per period, with the difference.
The most important single number in reporting. If expenses exceed income over any sustained stretch, nothing else in the budget can fix it — the gap is being filled by savings or by debt.
A single negative month is normal. Annual insurance, a car repair, a holiday. What matters is several months in a row, or a negative total across the whole range.
Only income landing in on-budget cash accounts counts. Money arriving on a credit card or a loan account isn't income — it's borrowing, and counting it would flatter the picture. This matches how Ready to Assign is derived.
Cash Flow
Inflow and outflow per period, as two series.
Similar to Income vs. Expense but focused on timing rather than the total. Use it to see the shape of your month — when money arrives against when it leaves.
A recurring pattern of outflows landing before inflows is a cash-timing problem, not an overspending one. The fix is usually a buffer, not a smaller budget.
Budget vs. Actual
What you assigned against what you actually spent, per category.
This measures your estimates, not your discipline. Three patterns and what each means:
| Pattern | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Consistently over | Under-budgeted | Raise the assigned amount |
| Consistently under | Over-budgeted, or the money is going elsewhere | Lower it and reassign the difference |
| Wildly variable | Irregular by nature | Give it a goal and fund it monthly |
Being over in a category isn't a failure — moving money to cover it is exactly what the budget is for. What this report is good at is telling you which estimate to change, so you stop having the same conversation with yourself every month.
Reading them together
The three answer different questions and are most useful in sequence:
- Income vs. Expense — is the total sustainable?
- Cash Flow — if it is, does the timing still work?
- Budget vs. Actual — which specific categories need a different number?
Only the third is worth acting on category by category. The first two tell you whether the problem is structural, in which case adjusting individual categories won't help.
What's excluded
Transfers between two on-budget accounts are excluded from both sides — they would otherwise appear as income and expense, cancelling out while inflating both totals.
A payment to an off-budget loan counts as an outflow, because the money really left your budget.