Hello all, this may be one of those things where I am trying to think too complicated 😉
I have a base for my finances -I just need to list my recurring bills, my paydates, and have an output showing a running total of how much $$ needs to be in my account to cover those things.
So Table 1 has the Expense
![Shannon_Bradley_0-1716179709207.png Shannon_Bradley_0-1716179709207.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/34489iE51E6B4526F3C48B/image-size/medium?v=v2&px=400)
Table 2 has Income dates
![Shannon_Bradley_1-1716179811488.png Shannon_Bradley_1-1716179811488.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/34490i6CB4DE022B272C35/image-size/medium?v=v2&px=400)
Table 3 Budget then has a record for every payment, linking to the Expense and the PayDate. I manually create each record and link the PayDate to the one most appropriate (so the date of the next PayDate). I then Group based on that next paydate. Once the payment clears my account I check it off as complete.
![Shannon_Bradley_2-1716179915079.png Shannon_Bradley_2-1716179915079.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/34491i94DC2CE7372AB7C1/image-size/medium?v=v2&px=400)
So the goal is that here for the "current" bill cycle May 17th I still need to keep $295.14 in the relevant bank account. For the next bill cycle I will need $2783.67; but since that IS the paydate and I know the $$ coming in will cover that, I don't need to worry about it yet.
So I'm not budgeting in the traditional sense, just tracking how much $$ needs to be in the correct account at any given time. I don't need reminders, I don't need breakdowns and reporting. Just the current needed total.
I would LIKE to be able to have these records auto-create based on their frequency, and link to the correct "bill cycle paydate" though that part is easy enough.
I've been through Universe and there isn't anything this simple - yet complex apparently lol. Am I overthinking it? Do I need to continue every few months to spend hours creating ands linking records?