How Compares Works

With your budget set up with Forecast Events, you can view how you have tracked against your budget with Compares using your actual transactions.

With the matches you have made between your Transactions and your Forecast Events, compares examines the amount you have actually spent in a period (Transactions) versus what you thought you’d spend (Forecast Event).

An Example – James’ Groceries

For example, James want to spend $80 a week on Groceries. He sets up his Groceries event to come out every Monday. The below image shows two weeks of this in his Forecast Calendar.

James' Groceries Event for mid-September

James has matched his local supermarkets found in his uploaded bank statement to the Groceries event (Compares > Match Transactions – https://my.pocketsmith.com/compares/match_transactions), so that PocketSmith knows that these transactions belong to this Forecast Event.

James' Matched Transactions

So James wanted to spend just $80 on Groceries between the 14th and 20th of September. How did he perform? Lets have a look at the Event Period Compares page.

James' Compares Event Period for Groceries

Not too bad, only $2 behind budget.

Notice the last period, with the dates 21st September to 22nd of September? That is the current period, and we can track how much money James has budgeted for Groceries until Monday next week, just by navigating to Compares > Current Budget – https://my.pocketsmith.com/compares/current_budget.

James' Current Budget for his Groceries

We can see that James has used up 43% of his budget for this week, and he now knows that he only has $45 left in his Grocery budget this week.