Is there a budget planner for fluctuating income?

BlondeHeadOn

I've had a search but can only find budget planners that assume you earn the same amount each month/week/year - and I am self-employed and it can vary wildly! I've tried Martin's budget planner but it doesn't really work at this level of uncertainty. (:o)

I'd like something like a cash-flow spreadsheet which allows me to put in actual earnings and be able to identify months when I can overpay or months when I might have a shortfall and so need to plan for. At the moment by budgeting is very hit and miss, but something like this would really help.

Any other self-employed people know of useful tools to help planning thier budgets?

pania

Hiya hon, I have a massively fluctuating income due to being paid commission, it can vary by a grand a month! what I have done with martins budget planner is to do a budget for december and save it, then another budget for January with a predicted income figure which i shall alter to accurate once i know how much i'm likely to get. (not ve much this month boo!)
Alternatively if you can wear a small outlay then quicken is supposed to be amazingly good.
Hope this helps
P
xx

BlondeHeadOn

Hi Pania, thank you for that. My income can be nil one month and £4k the next, so I have to try and spread it out accordingly. I also never know when the payment is going to come in, as some organisations are late payers (yes, really :rotfl: ) so budgeting is a bit of a nightmare.

What I want to be able to do is to enter income when it arrives, and then see how long it will last given all the outgoings - so I can then identify when it's safe to pay things off (or not!)

I will have another go with the budget planner but haven't found it very useful so far - anyone else know of any (free) solutions?

pania

find a friend who has quicken and get them to burn it to disk for you? that'd be free!! :-)

BlondeHeadOn

I will have to ask around - I don't know anyone who is likely to have it off-hand.

Gemmzie

My dad's self employed and this is where Microsoft Money is a big help as it can plan way ahead when you have it set up.
Not sure how much it is, but it can be tax deducted as a business cost

tyllwyd

As an alternative to Microsoft Money, I use Personal Accountz - you can set up your DDs etc and it will forecast up to a month ahead. I keep it updated every day or two by checking my online banks and entering the most recent entries.
http://www.accountz.com/household.html