How budget rollover works

Rollover lets unspent budget from prior months carry forward into the current month, so under-spending in one month gives you more to spend the next.

Turning rollover on for a category

Rollover is a per-category setting on the Budgets page.

1. Open Budgets.
2. Click the budgeted amount for the category you want to roll forward.
3. In the popover, toggle Rollover on.
4. Save the change.

Once rollover is on, the carry-forward calculation runs automatically every month. You do not need to re-enable it each month.

How the carry-forward is calculated

For each month with rollover enabled, MoneyVue calculates:

remaining = budgeted_amount + rollover_in - spent
rollover_out = max(0, remaining)

Two important rules apply:

• Negative balances do not carry. If you overspend a category, the next month starts at zero rollover, not a negative number. You are not "in the hole" against future months.
• Rollover accumulates iteratively. The current month's rollover is computed by walking forward through up to the prior 12 months of rollover-enabled budgets, applying the formula above to each in turn.

Reading the rollover indicator

When a category has rollover carried in from prior months, you see a small green icon next to its budget on the Budgets page. Hover the icon to open a popover showing:

• From prior months — the rollover amount carried into this month.
• This month budget — the amount you budgeted for the current month.
• Available — the sum of the two above (what you can actually spend).
• Spent this month — actuals so far this month.
• Remaining — Available minus Spent. Green if positive, red if negative.

Group-level rollover

If a category group is set to Budget by group instead of by individual category, rollover applies to the group as a whole rather than to each category inside it. Toggle Monthly rollover on the group's settings to enable it.

When group rollover is on, the same formula runs against the group's combined budget and combined spending across its child categories.

FAQ

Does rollover work on income categories? No — rollover applies to expense categories only. Income carry-forward is not currently supported.

What happens when I turn rollover on for a category that already has spending history? MoneyVue looks back up to 12 months of rollover-enabled budget history when computing the current rollover. Months before you enabled rollover contribute zero, so turning it on today does not retroactively fund the current month from past under-spending.

Can rollover be negative? No. Overspending a category does not subtract from next month's budget. The carry-forward is capped at zero.

Does rollover affect my sinking funds? Sinking fund categories use the same iterative carry-forward calculation, but the UI surfaces them differently. See Sinking funds for non-monthly expenses for details.