Expected Income

See what each paycheck must cover, what is already funded, what still needs money, and your projected end-of-period balance.

Paycheck Setup

Define expected paycheck timing, amounts, and destination accounts used by paycheck-planning features. Accurate setup gives projections a better picture of when income is expected; it does not record income or change your budget automatically.

Paycheck Plan

Paycheck Plan uses configured paycheck timing, category needs, and existing planning settings to show what upcoming income needs to cover. It is planning guidance, not an automatic assignment.

What Expected Income answers

Expected Income is the paycheck-focused view used by Cash Flow and set up in Planning Hub. It answers four practical questions for each upcoming paycheck:

What must this paycheck cover? Bills, allowances, and other expenses falling within this paycheck's window.
What is already funded? Items that already have enough Available to be fully covered.
What still needs money? Items that are short and need funding from this paycheck.
How much cash is projected to remain? Your estimated ending cash after all planned outflows.

Pay schedule

Before Expected Income can show paycheck windows, you need to set up a pay schedule. Open Menu → Planning Hub → Income & Paychecks, choose Set Up Paycheck or Edit Paycheck, and set the frequency:

Weekly: One paycheck every week.
Every two weeks: A biweekly schedule anchored to a payday.
Monthly: One paycheck on the configured day each month.
Twice monthly (semi-monthly): Two paychecks per month, typically on the 1st and 15th (or similar dates).

You also set a default paycheck amount — the estimate used for future scheduled occurrences. You can override a specific payday without changing the estimate used for later paychecks.

Paycheck identity

You can tell InfinitelyZero which payee name and account to look for when your paycheck arrives. Once configured, InfinitelyZero automatically recognises received paychecks and stops showing those occurrences as future projected income — keeping your Expected Income view, Money Timeline, and Dashboard Next Paycheck accurate after a deposit has already posted.

Configuring paycheck identity

Open Edit Paycheck in Planning Hub → Income & Paychecks. You will find two optional fields under Paycheck identity:

Paycheck source: The payee name on the income transaction — for example "Acme Corp Payroll" or "Direct Deposit". Must match the payee exactly (case-insensitive).
Deposit account: The account the paycheck is deposited into. If set, InfinitelyZero also checks that the transaction is in this account before counting it as received.

Both fields are optional. If neither is set, InfinitelyZero treats all paycheck occurrences as projected and relies entirely on your schedule — the same behaviour as before these fields were added.

How received-paycheck recognition works

When you have configured at least a paycheck source, InfinitelyZero scans your income transactions for each scheduled payday. A transaction counts as a match when:

The transaction payee matches the configured Paycheck source exactly (case-insensitive, whitespace trimmed).
If a Deposit account is configured, the transaction is in that account.
The transaction is an income transaction (not a transfer, refund, or excluded item).
The transaction date falls from five days before the scheduled payday through two days after it, inclusive. This supports payroll that arrives early or posts shortly late.

When a match is found, the actual transaction amount replaces the estimate for that one scheduled occurrence. Later projected paychecks continue to use the configured default or their own date-specific override. The amount is not used to decide whether a transaction matches, so a paycheck that differs from its estimate can still be recognised correctly.

Note: One transaction can match at most one scheduled occurrence. If two paydays are close together, InfinitelyZero assigns each transaction to the earliest occurrence it could belong to, so a deposit is never double-counted.

Warning: Income received on payday is not automatically payroll. It must match the configured paycheck source, optional deposit account, and eligible-income rules above.

Manual expected income

Use a manual Expected Income entry for income that is not fully described by your recurring pay schedule, such as a one-time payment or a known change to an upcoming paycheck. A manual entry has its own date and amount and remains a forecast until qualifying income is recorded.

Linking an entry to a scheduled paycheck

When a manual entry represents a particular scheduled paycheck, link it to that payday. The link tells InfinitelyZero that the manual entry and schedule refer to the same occurrence, not two separate deposits. Unrelated income on the same date is not silently treated as payroll.

When the real deposit arrives

If an eligible payroll transaction matches the linked payday, the received transaction becomes the actual income for that occurrence. The linked manual projection is reconciled with it instead of being added again. Other scheduled paychecks keep their projected amounts, and unrelated manual income remains separate.

Paycheck windows

Each paycheck covers bills after that payday through the next payday, inclusive. This boundary gives a bill due on payday to the previous paycheck because the money for a same-day obligation needs to be ready before the new deposit is relied on.

Current paycheck

The current paycheck window covers the period you are in now. It shows what is due before the next paycheck arrives.

Coverage dates

Each paycheck shows its coverage start and end dates. An expense with a due date on the last day of the window still belongs to that paycheck.

Example: If paydays are May 10 and May 24, a bill due May 24 belongs to the May 10 paycheck. A bill due May 25 belongs to the May 24 paycheck.

Next paycheck

You can view future paycheck windows to plan ahead. Future windows show projected coverage based on your category plans and due dates.

Paying an expense from an earlier paycheck

If a bill is due before you receive the next paycheck, it belongs to the current window. If you want to pre-fund it from an earlier paycheck, you can move the item to a different paycheck window using the paycheck assignment option.

Views

The paycheck workspace groups items by funding need, already handled items, optional money, and excluded/manual items. These are sections to review, rather than separate sidebar pages. Forecast perspective offers Required Only, Expected Spending, and Full Plan; changing an assumption does not assign category money.

Needs From This Paycheck: Items that need money from this paycheck to be covered. The most important view — address these first.
Already Handled: Items that are already fully funded for this paycheck period. You do not need to do anything for these.
Optional Money Available: Categories with Available money that could be used for discretionary or flex spending.
Excluded / Manual: Items excluded from automatic paycheck planning, handled manually, or skipped for this paycheck only with Don’t include this period. A one-time skip does not mark the bill paid and does not change later paychecks. Funding Suggestions for that same occurrence stay quiet.

Summary values

The paycheck workspace separates forecast cash from budget readiness. Labels vary for current and future windows.

Income received / Expected income: The matched actual income for this occurrence, or its forecast estimate.
Total period plan: The obligations included for this paycheck window.
Needs already covered / Genuinely prefunded: Category needs already covered; this is different from cash held in an account.
Remaining targets / Needed from paycheck: Category funding still needed for the window.
Unassigned now / RTB available: Ready to Budget available now, not a future paycheck treated as received.
Projected cash: Estimated ending cash under the selected forecast perspective.

Funding from Expected Income

Fund this paycheck

Fund this paycheck opens a review of short categories. Select the rows and amounts to fund from current Ready to Budget, check the total and remaining Ready to Budget, then confirm. It does not automatically receive a future paycheck or bypass account-backing limits.

Funding individual rows

The Fund action on an individual row opens the shared Assign money path in the Dashboard workspace on desktop, using the relevant category and month. Review its source, account backing, and amount before confirming.

Target overrides

For "Every Paycheck" categories, you can adjust the target amount for a specific paycheck without changing the default — useful when you want to assign a different amount than usual for one pay period.

Note: Expected Income is a projection until actual income is recorded. Funding uses money currently available under the normal account and source rules. A future projected deposit is not permission to assign or spend money you do not yet have.