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Balance

Not sure about a term? See the Glossary.

What the “Balance” page is for

The Balance page shows your current state (starting point) and a forecast of your future balances.

It combines:

  • starting balances (your bank accounts)
  • plan items (future income/expenses)
  • payments (actuals), where available

Important: the forecast is only as good as your data.

  • Missing, late, or unreconciled payments will cause deviations.
  • Regular reconciliation (see Payments) helps keep results realistic.

Sections on the page

Current balance

This is the current state of your recorded accounts and the baseline for all projections.

  • Prerequisite: an account, at least one bank account and a starting balance
  • You can open/edit bank accounts by clicking a row.

Details:

Forecast

The Forecast section projects your balance month by month based on your current balance and all planned inflows/outflows.

Note: The balance forecast is nominal and intentionally does not include inflation.

Why: Over longer periods, income typically rises roughly in line with inflation (or more). For planning purposes, this simplification is usually sufficiently accurate and keeps the forecast easier to interpret. In contrast, the Retirement view includes inflation because it also mixes in asset projections and aims to compare needs and assets in the same purchasing power at retirement start.

Note: The Balance view is time-limited when using Valutra for free. See Usage & limits. The public demo is not time-limited (but it is read-only).

Special behavior:

  • Current month: shows only open amounts; recorded payments are automatically subtracted.
  • Future months: shows the planned amounts for the given month.

View & interaction

  • Show categorized: groups entries (e.g. by categories) to understand what drives the month.
  • Expand/collapse months: each month is a card; expanding reveals its plan items.
  • Infinite scroll: scrolling down automatically loads more months.

The most important rule: no double counting

If a payment exists for a planned instance, the payment wins.

This prevents counting the same thing twice.

Retirement: select plan items

You can mark plan items as retirement-relevant directly from the forecast.

How it works:

  1. Expand a month to see its plan items.
  2. Use the Retirement column (circle ○ / check ✓).
  3. Click ○ to store an amount in retirement (in today’s money, without inflation).
  4. Click ✓ to open the dialog again (adjust or remove).

The retirement view uses these values and scales them to retirement age using your inflation assumption.

A good workflow

  1. Set correct starting balances.
  2. Add plan items for everything predictable.
  3. As time passes, record payments and connect them to the right instance.
  4. Iterate when reality changes.

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