Everything you need to go from a blank slate to a full 12-month forecast — and understand every number on the way.
Cashflow Compass is a personal budgeting and forecasting tool that answers one question: given what you earn and spend today, what does your financial picture look like over the next 36 months?
Unlike a spreadsheet you maintain manually, the app models every recurring transaction — your bi-weekly paycheck, monthly rent, annual insurance renewal — and projects them forward automatically. You set things up once and the forecast, charts, and insights update in real time.
Follow these five steps and you'll have a working forecast in under 10 minutes.
Go to the Accounts section and add a checking account with its current balance and today's date as the "as of" date. This is the starting point every projection builds from. Add savings, credit cards, or investments if you want the full net worth picture.
In Transactions, add your paycheck as an Income transaction. If you're paid bi-weekly, select Bi-weekly — the app will automatically model the two "3-paycheck months" per year. Enter the amount as your net take-home pay after taxes, since everything else is post-tax too.
Rent/mortgage, car payment, phone bill, internet, insurance — these are the same every month (or year). Add them as Expense transactions under the appropriate category. For rent with a known renewal, set an Annual Escalation % to model the increase automatically.
Groceries, gas, dining out, entertainment — use your real average monthly spend, not a wishful number. You can always adjust later. These fill in the Variable and Discretionary categories in the forecast grid.
Use the dropdown at the top right to pick End of Year, 12, 18, 24, or 36 months. Scroll down to the forecast grid — red cells flag months where the balance goes negative. Check the Insight cards for your savings rate, biggest spending category, and projected end balance.
Accounts serve one purpose: they set the starting balance that the forecast builds from. Every month, the projected net cash flow is added to the running balance, and you can see exactly when and why you might dip into (or out of) savings.
| Account type | How the balance is treated |
|---|---|
| Checking | Starting balance added to net worth — the primary account for most forecasts |
| Savings | Added to net worth — good for modeling an emergency fund or sinking fund |
| Credit Card | Subtracted from net worth (it's a liability) — enter the balance as a positive number |
| Investment | Added to net worth — useful for seeing total picture including a brokerage account |
| Cash | Added to net worth — for cash on hand you want to include |
This tells the app when that balance was accurate. Use today's date if you just checked your account. The forecast counts forward from your transaction start dates, so the as-of date anchors the starting point correctly even if you set things up mid-month.
Transactions are the heart of the app. Each one represents a real recurring (or one-time) cash flow — a paycheck, a subscription, a car insurance renewal. The app supports nine frequency types so you can model virtually any real-world payment schedule.
Most salaried workers paid bi-weekly notice that two months a year have three pay deposits instead of two. With 26 paychecks spread over 12 months, two months end up with an "extra" paycheck — a significant windfall if you plan for it. Cashflow Compass detects these months automatically and flags them in the Insights panel so you can decide in advance what to do with the extra cash.
For transactions that grow over time — rent renewals, cost-of-living raises, utility creep — set an escalation percentage. The amount automatically increases by that % each year from the start date. A 5% escalation on a $900 rent makes it $945 in year 2, $992 in year 3, and so on.
Use the pause toggle on any transaction to temporarily suspend it without deleting it. This is useful for gym memberships you've cancelled (but plan to restart), freelance income that stopped, or seasonal expenses that are off right now.
Tags let you group transactions that cut across categories — for example, work-reimbursable, kid, or shared. Notes are free-text reminders attached to a transaction ("Lease renews in August", "Cancel before trial ends").
Set an end date on any transaction to stop it from appearing in the forecast after a certain point. Perfect for a fixed-term loan payoff, a sublease, or a promotional subscription price that expires.
The forecast grid is a month-by-month projection table. Rows are your transactions grouped by category kind; columns are the months in your chosen horizon.
| Row group | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Income | All income transactions — paychecks, side income, rental income |
| Fixed | Predictable, recurring expenses. Monthly subscriptions appear first (largest first), then annual ones, then everything else |
| Variable | Expenses that recur but fluctuate — groceries, gas, utilities |
| Discretionary | Lifestyle spending — dining out, entertainment, travel |
| Savings | Savings contributions and sinking funds — vacation fund, emergency fund top-up |
| Debt | Loan and credit card payments |
| Tax | Estimated tax payments and tax-related expenses |
Below all the transactions, four summary rows appear for every month:
The global horizon dropdown in the top-right changes the forecast length for the grid and all charts simultaneously. Options are End of Year (remaining months in the current calendar year), 12, 18, 24, and 36 months. Each chart can also be set to its own independent horizon — see the Charts section.
Six charts visualize your forecast from different angles. Every chart has its own horizon dropdown — you can keep most on the global setting and override one or two for a deeper look without affecting the rest of the page.
Side-by-side bars for each month's total income and total expenses, with a net cash-flow line overlay. The quickest way to spot months where spending overtakes income.
Area chart of your projected account balance month by month. Shows the trajectory of your financial position — are you building a cushion or drawing one down?
Doughnut chart breaking down total expenses by category over the horizon. Instantly answers "where is my money going?" in percentage terms.
Stacked area chart showing how each category's spend evolves over time. Useful for seeing the effect of annual escalations and seasonal expenses building up.
Horizontal bar chart of the 10 largest individual line items annualized over the horizon. Hover any bar for the exact dollar amount. Good for identifying the highest-leverage cuts.
Doughnut breakdown of income by category — useful if you have multiple income streams (salary, freelance, rental, dividends) and want to see your income diversification at a glance.
The Insights panel auto-generates eight cards from your forecast data. They update instantly when you change transactions or the horizon.
The percentage of your total income that isn't consumed by expenses over the horizon. A rate of 20%+ is considered healthy. Below 10% means most income is committed to expenses before it arrives. If this number is negative, expenses exceed income on average.
The single expense category that consumes the largest share of your total spending over the horizon, shown as a percentage. Housing dominating at 40%+ is normal in high-cost areas; if Dining Out is your biggest category, that's a cue worth noticing.
The annualized total of everything in the Subscriptions category — streaming services, software, memberships. The monthly-equivalent is shown beneath. Subscription creep is real; this card makes the full annual number visible in one place.
How many months of expenses your starting balance would cover at the current average burn rate. The conventional target is 3–6 months. Green = 6+ months, blue = 3–6, yellow = 1–3, red = less than 1.
A count of forecast days where the projected balance goes negative, plus the lowest point reached. Zero is the target. If any days appear, find the month in the grid where the balance turns red and look for the spike — usually a large annual expense landing without a buffer.
For bi-weekly income streams, shows which calendar months will have three pay deposits instead of two. This happens twice a year and represents a meaningful windfall — equal to one full extra paycheck. The card flags the specific months so you can plan ahead: extra savings, debt paydown, or a budgeted splurge.
A quick what-if simulation: if you reduced spending in your largest expense category by 20%, how much would you save over the full horizon? This puts a dollar figure on the potential impact of the most high-leverage change you could make.
Where your running balance lands at the final month of the chosen horizon, plus the delta from your starting balance. Green means you finish ahead; yellow means you end below where you started. This is the single number that summarizes whether your current trajectory is sustainable.
Your data lives in your browser's LocalStorage — it persists between visits on the same browser and device. But LocalStorage can be cleared. Export regularly to keep a portable backup.
The Excel workbook contains five sheets:
| Sheet | Contents |
|---|---|
Accounts | All account records — name, type, balance, as-of date |
Categories | All categories — name, kind, color |
Transactions | Every transaction with all fields — frequency, escalation, tags, notes, paused state |
Settings | App settings — currency, horizon, theme, schema version |
Forecast | The rendered projection grid (read-only export reference) |
To edit amounts in Excel and re-import: export → open the Transactions sheet → change any amount, frequency, or date → save → import the file back. Every change ripples through the forecast and charts immediately.
A lighter alternative to Excel — a single .json file containing all your state. Useful for quickly transferring data between browsers or devices, or sharing a budget template with someone else. Same replace-all import semantics apply.
When the Insights panel flags a 3-paycheck month, add a one-time transaction in that month — an extra savings deposit, a debt payment, or a planned purchase — so the windfall has a destination before it arrives.
Add an annual escalation % to your rent (5–10% is typical in many markets) and to your paycheck (2–4% COL raise). Over 24–36 months the compounding effect on your forecast becomes very visible.
Use the duplicate button on any transaction to quickly create a copy. Useful for modeling a second job, a spouse's income, or a what-if scenario — add it, check the forecast, then delete or pause it.
If a subscription is on hold, a project income ended, or a seasonal expense is off, pause the transaction rather than deleting it. It disappears from the forecast but is there to resume with one click when circumstances change.
Use tags like kid, work, or shared on transactions that don't fit neatly into one category. Tags are searchable in the transaction list, making it easy to filter to just the items that matter for a given conversation.
Loan payoffs, introductory subscription prices, a sublease — give them an end date so the forecast automatically stops counting them after that point. The impact on your future balance appears immediately.
Set the Running Balance chart to 36 months even if your main horizon is 12. The long-arc view reveals whether your savings are genuinely growing or just holding steady, which the short view can obscure.
If you prefer editing in a spreadsheet, export to Excel, make bulk changes to amounts, dates, or frequencies in the Transactions sheet, and re-import. All changes ripple through the app instantly. It's the fastest way to do a full budget overhaul.
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