Recurring Income & Expenses
How to set up recurring items, understand intervals and due dates, the automatic monthly conversion with a worked example, and the buffer recommendation.
Setting up recurring items
The Recurring costs area is where you record all repeating income, expenses, and savings contributions — from salary to rent to car insurance. For each item you define:
- Name (e.g., "Car Insurance")
- Amount
- Category (e.g., Mobility, Insurance, Housing)
- Interval: monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually
- Due month and day (for non-monthly intervals)
- Account the payment is drawn from
Intervals and due dates
Not every expense occurs monthly. Evensum supports:
| Interval | Example |
|---|---|
| Monthly | Rent, streaming subscription |
| Quarterly | Some insurance premiums |
| Semi-annually | Vehicle tax for some vehicles |
| Annually | Contents insurance, broadcasting fee (if billed yearly) |
For non-monthly intervals, you also specify the month and day the payment is due — for example, "annually, due in March, on the 15th."
Automatic monthly conversion
To give you a clear monthly overview despite different intervals, Evensum automatically converts every item into its monthly equivalent.
Worked example: Your car insurance costs €480 per year.
€480 ÷ 12 months = €40 per month
This monthly share of €40 flows into your overview of monthly recurring costs, even though the actual €480 charge only happens once a year.
Another example: a quarterly premium of €90 corresponds to a monthly equivalent of €30 (€90 ÷ 3 months).
On your phone, simply swipe a list item to the left — the Edit and Delete actions appear behind it (managed energy items can only be edited).
Search & filter by account
Above the list you can search your items (title and category) and filter them via account chips. Tapping an account shows exactly the items that run through it: for checking and salary accounts the items debited there, for buffer accounts the non-monthly items that are saved up there — together they make up the monthly transfer to that account. The group subtotals then refer to the filtered selection, so you can read off its composition directly. The dashboard links here too: tapping an account in the "Monthly transfers per account" card opens the matching filtered view.
Per-person view & virtual transfers
Below the cost lists, the "Per person" section shows one table per member: every item with that member's personal monthly share according to the split rules (fully personal items appear only for that person, shared ones proportionally for both), plus a personal total. Below that are the virtual transfers: what this person should transfer to which account each month — the items' source accounts plus the buffer recommendation (tagged "Reserve"). That makes each person's standing-order plan complete at a glance. In the household book, the month card additionally shows the shares per person for the displayed month. Use the arrows next to the heading to page the per-person view through the months: other months are calculated with the items and salary history that apply then (like the dashboard's month navigation); the list and subtotals above keep showing today's state.
Scheduling items for the future
Every item can optionally get an "Effective from" date. Until then it stays visible in the list (with a "from …" hint) but is excluded from every calculation — monthly totals, buffer, and settlement alike. From the effective date on, it activates by itself. Typical case: the vehicle-tax notice for your EV already arrived, but it only applies from 2033 — enter it once and never think about it again. This also works automatically: loans only count from their first installment, and vehicle fixed costs with a due date more than 12 months ahead take effect only then. Household-book entries can be recorded with any future date anyway — they simply appear in their month.
Automatic items from the energy, loan, and vehicle modules
If you record advance payments in the Energy area, Evensum automatically creates one recurring-cost item per meter (e.g. "Electricity – advance", "Gas – advance"). These items carry an energy badge. Their title, amount, and interval are managed by the energy module — the amount always follows the meter's currently effective advance, including after tariff changes. Split, account, and category, however, are configured right here like for any other item; through them, the advances also flow into settlements and the monthly transfers per account. These items cannot be deleted directly — they disappear automatically once the meter is deleted or no advance is recorded anymore.
In the same way, Evensum creates one managed item per running loan for its monthly installment (e.g. "Mortgage – installment"). The amount follows the installment; the item disappears automatically once the loan is paid off, paused, or deleted. Here too you configure split, account, and category yourself — which is how loan installments flow into settlements and the per-account transfers.
Finally, every vehicle fixed-cost entry (tax, insurance … from the Vehicles area) is kept as its own managed item as well (e.g. "Golf – insurance"), with its real interval and due date — so yearly vehicle costs also flow into the buffer recommendation and its account routing.
The buffer recommendation
The challenge with annual or quarterly costs is that a large amount becomes due all at once in a given month, which can strain that month's budget if you haven't planned for it.
Evensum solves this by summing up the monthly equivalents of all your non-monthly recurring items and recommending that you transfer exactly that amount each month to a separate buffer account. When your car insurance, broadcasting fee, or contents insurance eventually falls due, the money is already sitting there.
Worked example for a household:
| Item | Interval | Amount | Monthly equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car insurance | annually | €480 | €40 |
| Contents insurance | annually | €96 | €8 |
| Vehicle tax | semi-annually | €60 | €10 |
| Total | €58 |
In this case, Evensum recommends transferring €58 per month to the buffer account. The amount and its progress over time are visualized in the Recurring costs area, so you can always see how much should already be sitting there.
Routing to concrete buffer accounts: Once you've created buffer accounts, Evensum distributes this recommendation automatically: items carried 100 % by one person are routed to that person's own buffer account, while all shared items go to your joint buffer account. How the assignment works exactly (including an example and what happens without a joint account) is explained on the Accounts page.
The one-time initial funding: The monthly rate only works if there is enough time to save up. If a large payment falls due within the first few months (say, your car insurance the month after next), the buffer account would dip below zero. For this case Evensum recommends a one-time initial funding: exactly the amount by which the account would be in the red at its lowest point without a starting cushion. The dashboard card explains the figure behind "How is this calculated?" as a small account statement: for each due month, what has been saved by then, which payments go out, and the running balance — the lowest balance is exactly the recommended initial funding. Once you use buffer accounts, the recommendation is calculated and shown per account (accounts cannot cover for each other); the headline then shows the sum of the per-account cushions. Once you have transferred the amount, mark it as "Done" — the recommendation disappears and only comes back if the required amount grows.
Split per member: In households with several members, the dashboard card also shows who should contribute how much of the recommended one-time initial funding. The breakdown follows each item's split rules (50/50, by income, or custom percentages) — if your car insurance is split by income, it enters the breakdown with exactly that weighting. Who carries how much of the monthly transfer is shown in the "Monthly transfers per account" card on the dashboard; the reserve projection in the statistics area additionally stacks the balance per member.
Savings contributions
In addition to income and expenses, you can also set up regular savings contributions as a recurring item, such as "€200 monthly to savings account." These are included in your overview but are tracked separately from the buffer recommendation, since they represent voluntary saving rather than provisioning for already-committed recurring costs.
Saving individually
Want each person in the household to save for themselves rather than towards a shared goal? Set the item's type to Savings, its split to "Payer only" (no split across the others), and its account to that person's own individual account — this keeps the amount clearly attributed to one person. In the Recurring costs area, below the savings group, you'll see a breakdown of how much each member sets aside per month and — if an income is on file — what share that is of their personal savings rate. You'll find the same breakdown on the dashboard (savings tile) and in Statistics ("Savings per member").
Practical tip
Review your recurring costs at least once a year, for example when insurance premiums change. An outdated annual premium will otherwise lead to a slightly inaccurate buffer recommendation.