Bill Tracker — Methodology Handbook

The Bill Tracker is the list of every bill a person or a household has to pay by a date — rent or the mortgage, electricity, gas, water, internet, the phone, insurance, a car loan, a credit-card payment, property tax, childcare — with what each costs, when it is due, whether it has been paid, and what is late. This handbook explains what the tracker stores, how every figure on the page is computed, what the reminders do, and what the tracker deliberately does not do.

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The one idea everything follows from

A bill stays unpaid until you mark it paid. A subscription charges you whether you notice or not, so a subscription tracker can simply move its date forward. A bill does not pay itself, and the bill nobody paid is exactly the one you need to see. So the tracker never quietly rolls a due date forward: a date that passes with no payment recorded stays on the list, in red, as overdue, until it is paid.

The one exception is a bill you have set to autopay — a direct debit or an automatic card payment. Its money leaves on its own, so on the due date the tracker records the payment by itself, at the amount it expects (see Amounts that change). You can correct that amount afterwards.

What a bill is here

One bill is one thing you pay repeatedly (or once). It carries:

Bill — who you pay: the landlord, the power company, the card. A well-known biller shows its own logo; a payment-page address pins the logo too; a glyph from the icon grid is always available instead.
Amount and currency — what one bill costs, in the currency it is billed in. A bill can be marked "amount varies" (electricity, water, a credit-card statement): the figure you type is then a first guess.
How often — weekly, every two weeks, monthly, every two months, quarterly, twice a year, yearly, one-time, or every N days.
Next due date — the date the next bill has to be paid by. Every later due date follows the schedule from it. A monthly bill due on the 31st is due on the 28th in February and on the 31st again in March — dates are always counted from the original day, so they never drift.
Autopay — on or off (see above). It is a statement about how you pay; the tracker does not move any money.
Category — rent & mortgage, utilities, internet & TV, phone, insurance, loans, credit cards, taxes, childcare, education, health, transport, other — or one of your own. "+ Own category" in the form (or Setup → Categories) adds a name and an icon; it then appears in the form, the filter and every chart. In Setup you can hide the built-in categories you never use (they come back with one click), rename your own (the bills follow the new name) or delete one (its bills keep the name as a plain label).
Status — active, paused or ended. A paused bill asks for nothing until you resume it; an ended one is kept for its history.
Details — what you pay with, the biller's payment page (one tap from the bill when it is due), a late fee, a reminder lead time, a last due date for a loan that ends, notes.

Nothing is read from a bank. What is in the list is what you put there — by hand or from a spreadsheet.

Paid, overdue, due — how a period gets its state

Every due date on a bill's schedule is a period. Paying is recording a payment against a period: the amount actually paid and the day it left. From those two lists, every period has one of five states:

Paid — a payment is recorded for it. Paid after the due date counts as paid late.
Skipped — you marked that nothing is owed this time (a waived bill, a free month, a bill folded into the next one). It costs nothing, is never overdue and never counts as late.
Overdue — its date has passed and it is not fully paid.
Due today.
Upcoming.

Part payments. Paying only part of a bill is recorded as a part payment: the period stays open for what is left, the row shows how much is paid so far, and an overdue period stays overdue until the rest is paid. Each part is listed in the pay sheet and can be removed.

Nothing before a bill's first due date can be overdue, so adding a bill never invents a backlog. A payment you un-pay (because it was marked by mistake) puts its period straight back to due or overdue. If a bill's schedule changes — you move its due date — earlier payments are kept and still counted.

Amounts that change

For a bill marked "amount varies", the tracker expects the average of its last three payments once there are any; until then it expects the figure you typed. Expected amounts are shown with "≈" until the bill is paid, and the pay sheet is prefilled with that figure for you to replace with the real one from the bill.

This month

The Overview opens on the current calendar month:

Left to pay — the month's unpaid bills plus everything still overdue from earlier months. Overdue money is money you still owe, so it is never dropped at the end of a month.
Paid — what has been paid against this month's bills, out of the month's total, with how many of the month's bills are done.
The checklist, in the order you act on it: overdue first (with the late fee at stake), due this week, later this month, what is coming up next, and what was paid.
Monthly bill load — what the active bills cost per month on average: each bill's expected amount × periods per year ÷ 12 (weekly 52, every two weeks 26, monthly 12, every two months 6, quarterly 4, twice a year 2, yearly 1, every N days 365 ÷ N). A one-time bill adds nothing to the load.
Paid on time — the share of the last twelve months' payments made on or before the due date.

Bills by paycheck

Tell the tracker how often you are paid — weekly, every two weeks, twice a month (the 15th and the last day), or monthly — and one recent payday. Every unpaid bill is then placed under the paycheck that has to cover it: the bills due from one payday up to the day before the next. Overdue bills are placed under the current paycheck, because they are owed out of the money you have now. If you also give the paycheck's amount, each period shows what is left after its bills — or how much is short.

Analytics

Paid by month — every payment recorded, summed by the month it was paid, over twelve months.
Where the money goes — the monthly load split by category.
Plan vs actual — for the last 12 months, what each bill was planned at (its amount on the day it was paid, so a rent increase does not rewrite last year) against what you actually paid, with the difference; bills paid exactly as planned are counted in one line. A paid bill whose payment differs from its plan also says so in the monthly checklist ("$12 over plan").
Bills that change — each "amount varies" bill month by month, so a creeping electricity bill is visible.
Biggest bills — ranked by what each costs per month.
Late fees at risk — for payments made after their due date, the late fee you set on that bill. It is what lateness could have cost, not a fee anyone confirmed.

The calendar and reminders

The month grid shows every period on its due day — green for paid, red for overdue, blue for still to come. The panel beside it lists the picked day, or everything owed in the next thirty days, overdue first. Due dates also appear on your workspace calendar, where the daily summary reminds you a few days before each one at the hour you choose. The lead time is one setting for the whole list (three days by default) and can be set per bill. An autopay bill needs no reminder to be paid, so it is only flagged if its due date passes with nothing recorded.

Importing and exporting

Import — any CSV with at least a bill name and an amount; the columns are matched from their headers and can be corrected before importing. A due date in the past is moved forward to the next one on the schedule, so an import never arrives with invented overdue bills. Names already on the list are skipped.
Export — every bill with every field the form collects, and every payment, as one CSV — free on every plan.

Handing a payment to the Expenses Tracker

A paid bill can be sent to the Expenses ledger in one tap from its payment: the add form opens there with the amount actually paid, its currency, the biller, a matching category and the day it was paid, for you to confirm. Only paid bills can be sent: the ledger holds money that moved.

Connections with calculators and other trackers

Nothing arrives in the list by itself: every connection opens a form, a checklist or a suggestion with the values filled in, and nothing is saved until you press a button.

Loan calculators → a bill. The Mortgage, Car Loan, Auto Lease and Personal Loan calculators have an "Add … as a bill" button under the result. It opens the add-bill form with the monthly payment, the calculator's currency, a monthly schedule, the first payment a month from today and — where the calculator has a term — the last payment as the end date. Category: housing for a mortgage, transport for a lease, loan otherwise. On the Personal Loan calculator the button is shared with the Debt Payoff Tracker: one half records the loan as a debt to pay off, the other records its monthly payment as a bill.
Paycheck calculator → bills by paycheck. "Plan my bills by this paycheck" opens Setup with the take-home pay of one paycheck and how often it comes (weekly, every two weeks, twice a month or monthly). You pick the next payday and save. Annual pay has no paycheck rhythm, so the button is hidden for it.
Import from your trackers (Setup). Lists the repeating expenses of your Expenses tracker (one line per series, at its latest amount) and the open debts of your Debt Payoff Tracker that have a minimum payment. Bill-like expenses (housing, utilities, taxes, insurance-type fees, transport, health, education) and every debt are ticked in advance; anything else can be ticked by hand. Each becomes a bill dated at its next due day; a credit card's minimum is marked as a variable amount. Names already on the list are skipped, and the free-plan limit applies as in a CSV import. It reads only your personal trackers and is offered only in your personal book, never in a shared one.
A bill that pays a debt. A bill imported from the Debt Payoff Tracker is linked to its debt, and any bill can be linked by hand in the bill form ("Connections" → the debt this bill pays). From then on, marking the bill paid also records the payment on the debt and lowers its balance — the pay sheet shows it as a ticked box you can untick, and autopay bills do the same on their due date. Periods due before the link was made are never sent to the debt (its balance already includes them). Marking such a payment unpaid takes it back off the debt. It works only when the debt and the bill use the same currency, and only in your personal book.
A payment logged in the Debt tracker. If you record the payment in the Debt Payoff Tracker instead, the bill offers to be marked paid with that same payment ("Mark paid" in "Changes in your other trackers", or the first option in the pay sheet), so the money is never counted twice. A smaller payment is recorded as a part payment.
When the other tracker changes. "Changes in your other trackers" (at the top of This month and the Bills list) offers, with two buttons each: the new minimum payment of a linked debt, ending the bill when the debt is paid off, and the new amount a linked Expenses series charged (fixed-amount bills only). "Keep as is" remembers your answer until the source changes again. Nothing changes unless you press a button.
Back to the calculator. A bill made from a loan calculator remembers the numbers it was worked out with; the bill form has "Open in the … calculator with these numbers", for example to try an extra payment on the mortgage.
The same charge in Subscriptions. If a bill's name matches an active subscription in your Subscription Tracker, the form says so — a charge that renews by itself belongs there — and the workspace calendar and morning summary show that charge once, as the subscription. A debt and the bill that pays it are likewise shown once on the day they share, as the bill.
Bills into the Budget. The Budget Tracker has "Bills" (on a phone: ⋯ → From Bill Tracker): every bill due in the month you are looking at becomes a plan line — its planned amount for that month (the price at the time of paying for a paid one), loans and cards under "Savings & debt", everything else under "Needs". Lines already in the month are left unticked. A quarterly or yearly bill appears only in the months it is due, so each month is imported on its own. Personal budget only.
A paid bill can still be sent to the Expenses ledger (see above).

Multi-currency

Each bill and each payment keeps its own currency. Every total, chart and plan converts into the currency selected in the site header at the day's rates, and says so when the list mixes currencies. The list and the forms show each bill in its own currency, so a converted figure is never saved as if it were the original.

Shared household bills

A list of bills can be kept by more than one person — a couple, flatmates, a family. A shared book is a separate list: everybody in it sees the same bills and who paid what; editors add bills and mark them paid; an administrator sets the book's currency, reminders and pay schedule; a viewer sees everything and changes nothing. Your personal bills stay private and are never mixed into a shared book. Writing into a shared book needs your own Pro; looking and exporting never do. Export of a whole book is free for every member.

The assistant

The site assistant reads the same figures the page shows — what is left to pay this month, what is overdue and since when, what is due in the next two weeks, the on-time record and the paycheck plan — and answers questions like "what do I still owe this month?" or "which paycheck covers the rent?" with them. On the tracker's page it can also fill the forms for you — "add my electricity bill, about 120 on the 15th", "I paid the water bill, 66.10", "the internet is on autopay now" — by opening the add form, the edit form or the pay sheet already filled in; from any other page it offers an "Add bill" card that opens the form. You always confirm: it never saves, pays or marks anything on its own.

Free and Pro

The free plan keeps up to five active or paused bills with everything above: the monthly checklist, the paycheck plan, the calendar, reminders, analytics, CSV import and export. Pro removes the limit and adds shared household bills. Existing bills never disappear when a plan ends; the limit applies to new ones.

What the tracker does not do

It does not connect to a bank or read statements. A bill is paid in the tracker when you mark it paid, or on its due date if you set it to autopay.
It does not pay bills. The payment-page link opens the biller's own site.
It does not negotiate or lower bills, and it does not find bills you never told it about.
It does not read a bill from a photo (yet).
Late fees are the figure you entered; the tracker does not know a biller's terms or grace periods.