The model

Three numbers per budget category:

• Budgeted — your monthly cap for that category (the plan).
• Committed — known recurring charges that will hit the category whether you act or not (mortgage repayment, car loan, insurance premium, streaming subscriptions).
• Actuals — transactions that have actually cleared your bank this month.

The relationship between them:

Effective monthly load = max(budgeted, committed)

Committed costs are absorbed into the budget unless they overflow it. Example:

• Housing budget = $5,000 / mo, mortgage repayment = $3,500 / mo. Effective load = $5,000 (budget already covers the committed). The $1,500 of headroom is yours to spend on rates, repairs, etc.
• Transport budget = $1,000 / mo, car loan repayment = $2,250 / mo. Effective load = $2,250 — the committed overflows the budget by $1,250. Frank flags the row red and the $1,250 overflow rolls into your monthly load.

This avoids the old trap where committed and budgeted were summed against your income, double-counting every dollar that goes to a recurring charge.

What committed costs roll into which category?

Loan repayments (liabilities.monthly_payment) auto-map by loan type:

| Loan type | Budget category | |---|---| | Mortgage | Housing | | Personal Loan, Credit Card | Debt Repayments | | Car Loan, Novated Lease | Transport | | HECS/HELP, SFSS | Education | | Investment Loan, Margin Loan | Investments | | Business Loan, Other | Other |

Subscriptions roll into the category you set on the subscription row (defaulting to Subscriptions).

You don't need to create a separate budget line for "loans" or "subscriptions" — they live inside the categories above.

The three-bar visualisation

Each budget row in the Budget tab shows three stacked bars:

1. Budgeted (grey) — backdrop showing the plan.
2. Committed (amber, or red if it overflows) — the locked-in spend for the period.
3. Actuals (green, or red if you've blown the budget) — what's actually transacted so far.

Reading the bars together tells you the story at a glance: are committed costs eating most of the budget? Are actuals on pace? Is committed already over the budget for this category?

The aggregate over-allocation alert

The most dangerous form of overspending isn't a single category — it's an aggregate plan that the income can't support. When Σ max(budgeted, committed) per category > net monthly income, Frank flags it:

• In the Budget tab header — "Plan total $X / Net income $Y / Deficit −$Z" in red.
• On the dashboard — the Monthly Surplus card flips to a red "Monthly deficit" banner with a hint to click into the budget.
• As a Frank observation — high-severity flag in the proactive feed.

If the plan is over-allocated, every category can stay inside its line and you'll still burn the gap from savings every month. The fix is one of: trim a category, refinance committed costs, increase income, or accept the burn — Frank won't pick.

What about transactions that match committed costs?

When a mortgage debit lands in your bank feed, Frank tries to auto-match it to the committed cost so it doesn't double-count under "actuals" too. If the description and amount line up within 20%, the match is automatic. You can also manually match transactions to committed costs from the transaction detail view.

Information only

The over-allocation alert is information only. Frank never recommends a specific action — choosing what to cut, what to refinance, or whether to accept the burn from savings is your call (or your accountant's / planner's).