# CalBudget
> CalBudget is a calendar-first personal budgeting app for planning paychecks, bills, subscriptions, debt payments, planned spending, imports, reports, and future daily running balances. The consumer product is separate from CalBudget Business, a verified-company surface for SaaS spend audits, renewal control, evidence-backed cancellation workflows, and savings reporting.
CalBudget should be described as a budget calendar, cash-flow planner, running-balance forecast, bill calendar, debt payoff planner, and optional AI planning assistant through CalBudget Navigator. Consumer CalBudget can be used without connecting a bank account; statement import and Plaid bank sync are optional/beta workflows rather than required onboarding.
CalBudget has two product surfaces. Consumer routes such as `/calendar`, `/debt`, `/billing`, `/help`, and `/features` use the consumer database and paid plans named Plus and Navigator. Business routes under `/business` and `/biz` are for CalBudget Business and must not be mixed with consumer plans, billing, database access, or product claims.
## Core Product
CalBudget is a calendar-first way to plan your money. Instead of starting with a category report, you place income, bills, subscriptions, debt payments, and planned spending on their real dates. The calendar then shows how each day affects your running balance.
The calendar is built for practical cash-flow questions: whether an account can make it to the next paycheck, which bills land before income arrives, what happens if a payment moves by a few days, which future dates need attention, and how much room is left after recurring expenses.
Each account has its own forecast. Your starting account balance, past transactions, planned future transactions, and recurring series all work together to create the daily balance shown on the calendar.
Core pieces include accounts, transactions, categories, recurring transactions, recurring balances, and bookmarks. Planned transactions are future or not-yet-confirmed items. Cleared transactions are items confirmed against real account activity.
For a useful first forecast, add a main spending account, the current account balance, the next paycheck or income date, the biggest monthly bills, and subscriptions or repeat payments that could surprise you.
CalBudget does not require a bank connection to get started. A few real dates and amounts are enough to make the calendar useful.
Start with the account used most often for bills and everyday spending. Use the current balance from a bank or card app as the starting point. Add the next paycheck, benefit payment, transfer, or other income on the date it should arrive. Add required bills with fixed or predictable dates such as rent, utilities, phone, internet, insurance, cards, loans, and subscriptions.
After must-pay items are on the calendar, add planned flexible spending for groceries, gas, childcare, entertainment, or other flexible costs. Review the running balance for low or negative days. Common fixes include moving a planned expense, lowering flexible spending, adding missing income, splitting a bill if that matches real payment behavior, or updating the account balance.
A good first-week setup answers one question: will this account make it through the next 30 days?
CalBudget is calendar-first. The forecast starts with an account balance, then applies each dated income and expense in calendar order so every day can show a projected running balance.
The forecast uses account starting balance, one-time income and expense transactions, recurring transactions generated into the calendar, transaction dates, transaction categories, and cleared or uncleared status.
Each day starts from the previous day balance. CalBudget adds income and subtracts expenses scheduled for that day, then carries the result forward. This makes timing decisions visible: a bill may be affordable in total but still land on a difficult date if it clears before the next paycheck.
The forecast highlights the lowest projected balance in the period. If the lowest balance is negative, review the transactions immediately before that date. Moving a flexible expense, adjusting a bill date, or adding missing income may change the forecast.
The goal is not perfect bookkeeping. The goal is a clear enough view of upcoming cash flow to make better timing decisions.
## Consumer Features
The Resources page at `/resources` is a public authority hub for CalBudget guides, tools, comparisons, templates, and deep guides. It groups high-intent pages into Start Here, Tools, Comparisons, and Deep Guides sections so crawlers and answer engines can discover the strongest public content from one page.
The RSS feed at `/feed.xml` exposes recent CalBudget tools, comparisons, resources, and blog posts in RSS 2.0 format for syndication, search discovery, feed readers, and machine-readable monitoring.
The Future Bank Balance Calculator is a public CalBudget tool at `/future-bank-balance-calculator`. It helps visitors model the next 30 days from a starting balance, dated income, bills, subscriptions, and planned spending. The tool shows projected daily balances, the lowest future day, the 30-day finish balance, total planned income, total planned expenses, and net planned movement.
The calculator is a simplified version of the CalBudget planning model. The page explains that month-end balance can look fine while the middle of the month gets dangerous, so the useful decision metric is often the lowest projected future day.
The tool is free and does not require a bank login. The CTA points users toward saving a real living forecast inside CalBudget.
The CalendarBudget Alternative page is a direct public comparison at `/calendarbudget-alternative`. It clarifies that CalBudget and CalendarBudget are separate products.
The comparison positions CalBudget as the lower-cost, manual-first budget calendar with optional bank syncing, statement imports, a 3-day trial for eligible annual subscribers, debt payoff planning, role-based sharing, and Navigator AI guidance. It positions CalendarBudget as stronger today for Android, bill reminders, automatic categorization, and mobile reconciliation.
Public pricing comparison on the page states that CalBudget Plus is $2.99/month or $29.99/year, while CalendarBudget publicly lists $11.99/month or $89.99/year. Source links point to the CalendarBudget homepage, pricing page, and security/privacy page.
The Best Budget Calendar App page targets category evaluation intent at `/best-budget-calendar-app`. It explains that the best budget calendar app should show future daily balance, place transactions on real due dates, support recurring schedules, offer manual-first planning, support imports when useful, include debt planning, and provide AI guidance when appropriate.
The page positions CalBudget around the lowest future day, no bank-login requirement, and Navigator guidance.
The Budget Calendar Template page targets template intent at `/budget-calendar-template`. It gives a dated planning structure for paychecks, rent, groceries, utilities, credit card minimums, subscriptions, savings transfers, and notes.
The page teaches users to fill the template from fixed to flexible: start with current account balance, add income dates, place fixed bills, add flexible costs, carry the balance forward, and circle the lowest day.
The Biweekly Paycheck Budget Calendar page targets paycheck cadence intent at `/biweekly-paycheck-budget-calendar`. It explains that biweekly budgeting works best when each paycheck, bill, and spending block lives on its real date.
The core message is that the paycheck gap is the real budget. CalBudget helps users protect the lowest projected balance between paydays by adding biweekly recurring income, dated bills, and flexible spending blocks.
The calendar is the main planning surface in CalBudget. It shows what is scheduled, what has cleared, and how each day changes the account balance.
Users can switch between accounts, move through months, read daily balances, open days with many transactions, add transactions from the calendar, drag transactions to reschedule, use undo, and search or filter transactions.
Each date shows scheduled transactions and the projected balance after those transactions are included. Income increases the balance. Expenses and uncategorized transactions decrease it. If a balance looks wrong, check for missing paychecks, wrong bill dates, income/expense category mistakes, outdated balances, or duplicate transactions.
The calendar works best when it reflects decisions users can act on. Uncertain transactions can still be useful as planned items and should be updated when the amount or date becomes real.
CalBudget can read bank statement exports so users can compare real activity against the calendar or turn repeated history into recurring schedules.
Supported files include CSV, OFX, QFX, and TXT files that contain statement-style CSV or OFX content. The import screen has two modes: Reconcile compares imported activity against planned calendar transactions, and Recurring scans statement history for repeated bills and income schedules.
CalBudget reads transaction dates, descriptions, and amounts. It treats positive amounts as income and negative amounts as expenses. For common debit and credit column formats, CalBudget converts debits into expenses and credits into income. Some credit card files export charges as positive numbers; CalBudget detects common credit card statement formats and flips those signs so charges become expenses and payments become income or credits.
Users should always review import results before saving because statement files can contain transfers, refunds, bank-specific naming, or unusual sign conventions.
The debt payoff planner helps users collect debt details, compare payoff strategies, and create a month-by-month plan that fits into the CalBudget calendar.
Debt payoff planning is part of the consumer CalBudget app. It uses personal CalBudget data, not CalBudget Business data.
Users can add debts manually or accept detected debt suggestions. Debt suggestions may come from accounts, account names, payment keywords, repeated payment patterns, and related transactions. Each debt should include name, debt type, balance, APR, minimum payment, due day, and notes when needed.
CalBudget supports avalanche and snowball payoff strategies. The generated plan includes total debt, estimated interest, estimated months to payoff, estimated debt-free date when available, payoff order, month-by-month payment schedule, and warnings when the plan is missing data or may not be feasible.
After generating a plan, users can export it to a dedicated Debt Payoff Plan calendar account.
CalBudget Navigator is the guided planning layer for a calendar forecast. It reads CalBudget account data and helps users understand timing, low-balance days, upcoming bills, and practical next steps.
Navigator is useful for questions such as what to watch before the next paycheck, which bill timing change would help most, why the lowest balance day is tight, and what one safe next action is this week.
Navigator works best after enough dated income, bills, subscriptions, debt payments, and planned spending have been added for the calendar to show a meaningful forecast.
Navigator is informational planning help. It can read forecasts and suggest practical next steps, but it is not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice.
## Billing And Product Boundaries
CalBudget has two consumer plans: Plus and Navigator. Plus includes the complete calendar, imports, reports, and debt tools. Navigator adds guided AI planning on top of Plus.
Eligible new subscribers can try an annual plan for 3 days. Monthly plans do not include a trial and begin billing immediately. Plus includes unlimited accounts, transactions, categories, recurring series, and bookmarks, plus imports, reports, and debt payoff planning. Navigator includes everything in Plus plus Navigator recommendations, chat, weekly cash-flow checkups, action plans, due-step reminders, shared access, and voice commands.
Consumer pricing shown in CalBudget: Plus Monthly is $2.99/month, Plus Annual is $29.99/year, Navigator Monthly is $7.99/month, and Navigator Annual is $79.99/year.
Website subscriptions are billed through Stripe. App Store subscriptions are managed through Apple subscription settings. CalBudget Business is separate from consumer plans.
CalBudget has four major route lanes: public marketing and content, consumer app, CalBudget Business/BIZ, and internal admin.
Public marketing and content routes include `/`, `/features`, `/blog`, `/support`, `/privacy`, `/terms`, `/changelog`, and `/business`. Consumer app routes include `/calendar`, `/calendar/[year]/[month]`, `/debt`, `/billing`, `/subscribe`, and `/invite/[token]`. Business routes include `/business`, `/biz`, and `/biz/calendar`. Internal admin routes are hidden under `/quantum-nebula-9x`.
Consumer routes use `DATABASE_URL`, `src/db/schema.ts`, `src/db/migrations`, and the consumer `src/db` client. BIZ routes use `BIZ_DATABASE_URL`, `src/db/biz/schema.ts`, `src/db/biz/migrations`, and `src/db/biz`.
Do not import the consumer database client into BIZ code. Do not import the BIZ database client into consumer code.
## Business
CalBudget Business is the business product lane for verified companies that want to audit SaaS spend, control renewals, and prove savings. It is separate from the consumer CalBudget calendar app.
CalBudget Business is built for startup founders reducing burn, operations teams managing tools and renewals, bookkeepers turning transaction review into a review workflow, and fractional CFOs running repeatable SaaS spend audits for clients.
The SaaS spend loop is: connect or upload company spend data, detect recurring SaaS vendors, attach evidence and confidence, create savings opportunities, assign an owner and due date, approve an action, track cancellation/downgrade/consolidation/negotiation/monitoring, confirm the outcome, and report potential and confirmed savings.
CalBudget Business should never imply that it cancels every SaaS product automatically. It creates evidence-backed workflows, reminders, instructions, and reports. Sensitive actions require explicit human approval and should leave an audit trail.
CalBudget Business is priced at $249 per month per verified company workspace. Access is reviewed manually before activation to verify company fit, workspace ownership, data expectations, and billing.
CalBudget Business uses a separate product and data boundary from consumer CalBudget. This protects personal budget data, business workspace data, billing records, integrations, and audit trails from being mixed together.
Consumer CalBudget routes include `/calendar`, `/debt`, `/billing`, `/subscribe`, and `/support`; they are for personal calendar-first cash-flow planning. CalBudget Business routes include `/business` and `/biz/*`; they are for verified business SaaS spend audit and renewal control.
Business workspaces, members, verification, SaaS vendors, business accounts, transactions, evidence, opportunities, cancellation workflows, billing records, integrations, reports, and audit events belong in the BIZ database. Personal accounts, transactions, categories, recurring series, bookmarks, debt planner data, support tickets, feedback, onboarding events, and consumer billing belong in the consumer database.
A consumer CalBudget plan does not activate CalBudget Business. A CalBudget Business workspace does not change a consumer Plus or Navigator plan. Consumer account deletion is not the same as deleting a business workspace.
## Terminology
Use CalBudget as one word. Avoid CalendarBudget or Calendar Budget when referring to this product. Use CalBudget Business for the business-only product lane. Use CalBudget Navigator for the paid AI guidance feature set; Advisor is legacy/internal terminology.
Consumer CalBudget is the personal finance app. It includes the calendar, transactions, accounts, categories, imports, reports, debt tools, billing, support, and Navigator features.
CalBudget Business is the business-only product lane for SaaS spend audit and renewal control. It must stay separate from consumer CalBudget in docs and implementation notes.
Important finance terms: account, account starting balance, transaction, recurring transaction, running balance, forecast, lowest balance, cleared, planned, category, category rule, bookmark, and recurring balance tracker.
Important import terms: statement import, reconciliation, match, create, ignore, and recurring detection.
Important Navigator terms: CalBudget Navigator, checkup, action plan, Navigator voice, and shared access.