Your current account balance is a number about the past. It tells you what has already happened, which is the one thing you can no longer do anything about.
The number you actually want is different: what will this account hold on the 28th, after the rent, before the salary? Most people answer it with a rough subtraction in their head, which can be wrong.
Plutos now answers it properly.
Recurring transactions, described once
A recurring transaction is a cash flow you already know about: rent out on the first, salary in on the 25th, the streaming subscription, the quarterly water bill, the insurance premium every March.
You describe each one once — amount, direction, and a weekly, monthly or yearly schedule — and Plutos knows the calendar of your money from then on.
This is not a reminder system. Nothing nags you. The schedules exist so that the app can do arithmetic.
The projection is a step line, not a guess
From those schedules Plutos projects the balance forward: the opening balance, then one step for every date on which something lands, holding flat in between. That is the honest shape of a bank balance — money doesn’t drift, it jumps.
Two details keep the projection from lying to you:
Occurrences that already happened are not projected twice. A rent payment that has been posted as a real wallet operation is part of your opening balance; counting it again would double every month you look at.
Everything is projected in one currency. Conversion happens before the projection, not inside it, so the running line never silently mixes units.
Reserved amounts: the known one-offs
Recurring flows cover the rhythm. They do not cover the €1,800 you owe the tax office in November, or the deposit coming back in six weeks.
A reserved amount is a single dated cash flow — a name, an amount, a date, optionally a wallet and a category. It shapes the projection exactly like a recurring one would, but it never becomes a posted transaction, because it hasn’t happened.
That distinction is the whole point. The money is spoken for and your projection knows it, while your ledger stays a faithful record of what actually moved. You are not allowed to lie to your books in order to plan.
Wallets sorted by urgency
Once the app can see forward, the wallet list stops being alphabetical.
Projected wallets are ordered by which one runs out of money first. The account that goes negative on the 19th sits at the top, above the one that is fine until March, above the one that is simply full. It is the order you would put them in yourself, if you had done the arithmetic — which is precisely why the app should do it.
What this is for
Not budgeting, exactly. Budgeting is about intentions. This is about arithmetic you can already perform on facts you already have: the flows you know, the dates you know, and the balance those imply.
The point is to move the surprise forward. A shortfall you learn about on the 19th is an emergency. The same shortfall, seen on the 2nd, is a small decision.
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