Glossary
Frequency
Section titled “Frequency”How often a bill repeats: weekly, biweekly (every 2 weeks), semimonthly (the 10th & 25th of each month), monthly, annually, or a custom number of days between occurrences. This is a property of the bill itself, independent of your pay period.
Pay period
Section titled “Pay period”The stretch between paydays that a forecast is broken into — weekly, biweekly, monthly, or semimonthly. Distinct from a bill’s own frequency: a monthly bill can still fall inside a biweekly pay period, possibly landing in more than one.
Semimonthly (10th & 25th)
Section titled “Semimonthly (10th & 25th)”A pay period or bill that recurs twice a month, anchored to fixed calendar boundaries — the 1st–9th, 10th–24th, and 25th–end-of-month. Unlike other pay period lengths, semimonthly boundaries don’t shift based on when you started forecasting.
Transaction
Section titled “Transaction”A one-off entry in a pay period that isn’t a recurring bill — a bonus, tax refund, or unplanned purchase, entered once rather than on a repeating schedule. Marked as a credit (adds to your balance) or a debit (subtracts from it), checkbook-ledger style, instead of typing a minus sign.
Starting balance
Section titled “Starting balance”The bank balance you expect to have on a forecast’s start date — the baseline every later pay period’s running balance is calculated forward from.
Income source
Section titled “Income source”A recurring deposit — a paycheck, pension, Social Security payment, or gig income — that adds to a pay period’s balance on its own schedule. An account can have several income sources with different amounts and cadences, unlike a transaction, which is a one-off entry.
Primary income source
Section titled “Primary income source”The income source whose schedule pre-fills this account’s forecast settings (pay period length and start date) the first time you run a forecast. Purely a convenience default — it doesn’t limit which income sources are included, and you can still change the settings afterward.
Marking items paid
Section titled “Marking items paid”Checking off a bill or transaction for a specific pay period, and optionally recording its actual amount if it differs from the usual one (e.g. a seasonal utility bill). This never changes the bill’s or transaction’s normal amount — only that one pay period’s record.
Bill history
Section titled “Bill history”A pay-period-by-pay-period log of a single bill’s expected vs. actual amounts, completion, and notes over time — useful for spotting bills that consistently run over their usual amount.
Needs reconciliation
Section titled “Needs reconciliation”Bills from past pay periods that still need to be reconciled — marked paid, and their amount adjusted if it came in different than expected, the same as you would for a bill due this pay period. Most often this means a biller hasn’t actually charged yet, even past its usual due date. Unlike a bill’s own pay period, which stops being editable once it closes, this list keeps showing it for as long as it takes to reconcile, even across a gap of several pay periods — resolving one always updates the pay period it was actually due in, not the current one.
One-time bill
Section titled “One-time bill”A bill whose start date and end date are the same day only ever occurs once — functionally identical to a one-off transaction, but modeled as a recurring bill. Consider deleting it and recording the expense as a transaction instead, since bills are meant for things that repeat.
Ended bill
Section titled “Ended bill”A bill whose end date has passed — it no longer applies to any pay period. Tally automatically pauses it so it’s easy to review and delete during cleanup, rather than leaving it active but functionally dead.