14. Savings goals

The Savings Goals module helps you separate money reserved for specific targets from day-to-day spending. Each goal is linked to a dedicated virtual account that sits beneath a savings account.

What it is for

• Track how much has been reserved for each target.
• Limit how much of monthly positive savings can be allocated to goals.
• Preview and approve month-close allocation.
• Optionally create real transfer transactions during approval.

Core concepts

Roles of accounts

Key relationships

• One savings account can be the parent of multiple goals with different allocation percents.
• In a workspace, the first savings goal lets you choose or create the parent savings account; after that, all new goals reuse the same parent account automatically.
• The virtual goal accounts are nested under their parent savings account and display as read-only balance holders.

Other concepts

• Goal: name, target amount, current reserved amount, allocation percent, status.
• Allocation percent: share each active goal receives from the allocatable pool.
• Profile cap percent: global ceiling for how much of monthly positive savings can be allocated.

Important rules

• The parent account must be a savings account — it must be non-primary and non-virtual.
• If no suitable savings account exists, create one in Accounts before creating a goal.
• Sum of allocation percentages across active goals under the same parent savings account cannot exceed 100.
• Allocation percent must be between 1 and 100.
• Suspended and completed goals are excluded from automatic month-close distribution.
• If monthly net savings is negative, allocatable amount is zero.

Create a goal

1. Open the Goals page.
2. Click New goal.
3. Step 1 — Parent savings account:
   • This step is shown only when the workspace has no goals yet.
   • Select an existing savings account from the list (only non-primary, non-virtual accounts appear).
   • If none exists, go to Accounts, create a new account, and make sure it is not marked as primary or virtual.
4. Step 2 — Goal details: enter goal name, target amount, and allocation percent.
5. Optionally set an initial reserved amount (cannot exceed the parent savings account's available balance).
6. Save; the linked virtual goal account is created automatically under the chosen savings account.

Tip: after the first goal exists, the chosen savings account is locked for the workspace and new goals will reuse it automatically.

Goal statuses

• Active: participates in monthly distribution.
• Suspended: temporarily excluded from distribution.
• Completed: target reached.

Manual actions

• Suspend / Resume: toggle participation in automatic distribution.
• Adjust: one-time increase or decrease with a reason.
• Change allocation percent: affects future month-close runs, not historical snapshots.

Month-close flow

1. Preview:

   • system computes monthly net savings;
   • applies allocation cap percent;
   • calculates estimated distribution per active goal.

2. Approve:

   • allocation is persisted;
   • goal balances are updated;
   • month snapshot is stored.

3. Approve with transfer:

   • same as approve;
   • plus transfer transactions are created from the parent savings account to each goal's virtual account.

4. Availability rule:

   • month-close actions are available only on the profile-configured validation day.
   • if automatic month-close is enabled in Profile, execution can run automatically on that day.

Typical validation errors

• allocation cap is outside 0..100 or allocation percent is outside 1..100;
• active goals allocation total under the same parent savings account would exceed 100;
• parent account is invalid (primary or virtual) — select or create a proper savings account instead;
• invalid month format in month-close request.

Related chapters

4. Accounts, 8. Budgets, 9. Dashboard & statistics, 13. FAQ