Personal finance is not only about the past
Recording what has already happened is the foundation of financial awareness. But knowing what is coming — recurring rent, expected salary, planned grocery spending — is what turns awareness into control. YAFFA bridges the two with scheduled transactions and budgets: two forward-looking modes built directly into the transaction model, not bolted on as a separate tool.
Both are about the future. The distinction is in how certain that future is.
Scheduled transactions — for events you know will happen
A scheduled transaction answers the question: what real financial event do I expect to happen again, and when?
Use a schedule when the event itself is known — monthly rent, a regular salary payment, a loan instalment, a recurring investment purchase. You define the amount, the account, the payee, and the recurrence pattern. YAFFA does the rest.
See upcoming events before they happen. Scheduled transactions appear in the dashboard calendar so you can see what is coming in the days and weeks ahead — salary, bills, subscriptions — without having to remember them manually.
Speed up transaction entry for recurring events. When a scheduled event becomes reality, entering it takes a single action. YAFFA creates the actual transaction from the schedule template, pre-filled with all the details you have already defined.
Let YAFFA record routine events automatically. For transactions you simply want captured without manual confirmation — a fixed direct debit, for example — you can enable automatic recording. YAFFA will create the historical transaction when it falls due.
Project future balances with confidence. Scheduled transactions feed the forecasting features in YAFFA's reports, giving you a projected view of account balances and cash flow before the actual dates arrive.
Control the recurrence exactly. Set the frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly), interval, start date, and an optional end date or occurrence count. When a schedule is no longer needed, replacing it closes the old version and starts a fresh one — preserving the history of what was planned.
Budgets — for spending targets you want to track
A budget answers a different question: how much do I expect or allow myself to spend in a given area over time?
Use a budget when the spending expectation is known, but the exact real-world transaction is not fully defined yet. Your monthly grocery spending has no fixed date, no fixed payee, and no fixed amount — but you still want a target to measure yourself against. A budget captures that intention at the category level so YAFFA can compare what you planned with what you actually spent.
Set category-level spending or income targets. Define a monthly grocery budget, a weekly eating-out allowance, or an expected income figure for a category. YAFFA holds those targets alongside your actual recorded transactions.
Compare plan against reality in reports. Budget values feed directly into the budget and schedules report, where you can see your intended spending next to what actually happened — by category, by month, or across a longer period.
Inform your cash flow forecasts. Even when individual transactions are uncertain, budget entries give YAFFA enough information to project category-level expectations forward in time — building a fuller picture of likely future cash flow.
When to use a schedule, a budget, or both
Most of the time, a schedule is also a budget — your monthly rent is both a recurring known event and a fixed spending expectation. In that case, you can mark the transaction as both, and it will feed into upcoming-event views and budget comparison reports simultaneously.
Not every scheduled transaction needs to be a budget, though. A known one-off reimbursement, a short-term promotional income, or a fixed contractual charge is worth scheduling so it appears in your calendar — but adding it as a budget would create a planning target where there is nothing to manage against. The practical rule: schedule the event, add a budget only if comparing against a target is useful to you.