What is a budget rollover?
- John Hewitt
A rollover is an optional feature that allows a budget category to carry forward its balance from month to month, but it must be explicitly enabled for each category. If a category has rollovers enabled, any remaining balance—whether positive or negative—is carried over to the next month, unless the setting is configured to ignore negative balances. This means that if you underspend in one month, you will have a larger balance the next month. Conversely, if you overspend, the next month’s balance will be lower. Rollovers are useful for categories with irregular spending, such as clothing or entertainment, where expenses vary from month to month but should be tracked cumulatively.
Example: Spending less than budgeted
Suppose your goal is to spend no more than $1,200 per year on entertainment. You set a budget of $100 per month ($100 x 12 = $1,200) and enable rollovers for the Entertainment category.
In January, you spend $75, leaving a $25 rollover.
In February, your available budget increases to $125 ($25 rollover + $100 February budget).
In February, you spend $0, leaving a $125 rollover.
In March, your available budget becomes $225 ($125 rollover + $100 March budget).
Example: Spending more than budgeted
Using the same scenario:
In January, you spend $150, exceeding the budget by $50. This results in a negative rollover of -$50.
In February, your available budget decreases to $50 (-$50 rollover + $100 February budget).
If you spend $0 in February, your available budget in March will be $150 ($50 rollover + $100 March budget).
Creating rollover categories
By default, budget categories do not have rollovers enabled. You must manually enable rollovers for specific categories.
Click the Planning tab.
Click Budgets.
Select a category in your budget.
Click the Rollover Options
icon on the selected category between Budget Status and Allocated Budget, and choose one of the following:
Rollover balances at the end of each month: The cumulative rollover amount is added to (or subtracted from) the balance displayed for the category.
Rollover only positive balances at the end of each month: Only positive rollovers carry forward. Negative rollovers are ignored and do not reduce the next month's budget.
Note: If a subcategory has a rollover and its parent category also has rollovers enabled, the subcategory’s rollover will be added to the parent. If the parent category does not have rollovers enabled, the subcategory’s rollover is ignored.
Changing or resetting rollover amounts
If you underspend in one rollover category and overspend in another, you can manually adjust rollover amounts.
Click the Planning tab.
Click Budgets.
Click the balance amount of the rollover category you want to change.
In the Rollover pop-up, click Edit, adjust the rollover amount as needed, then click Save.
To remove a rollover amount completely, enter 0.00. This change only applies moving forward and does not affect past months.
If you need to revert changes to rollover amounts:
Click the Rollover Options
Select Undo all rollover edits for [Year]. This resets all rollover values for the year, including both positive and negative balances, to their default calculations.