Heads-up alerts

Left-to-spend tells you what’s free today. A heads-up looks ahead: if bills due before your next paycheck will take more than you have, Copper tells you now, while there’s still time to adjust.

Heads up: $140 short before payday. Rent and Car Insurance land before Friday's paycheck. You'll be$140 short.

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How the forecast works

Copper starts with your current left-to-spend and walks forward to your next payday, one bill at a time in due-date order:

1. It takes each bill and card payment due between today and payday.
2. For each one, it counts only what the bucket doesn’t already hold. A fully funded bill costs nothing extra.
3. If left-to-spend drops below zero along the way, that’s a heads-up. The shortfall is the lowest point it reaches.

A bill due on payday itself isn’t counted, since the paycheck can cover it.

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What counts as payday

If a funding schedule follows your paycheck, that’s payday. Otherwise it’s your next funding run. Without any funding schedule, there’s nothing to look toward, so there are no heads-up alerts.

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When there’s no heads-up

• Every bill due before payday is funded, or left-to-spend covers what’s missing.
• Left-to-spend is already negative. That’s shown on the Left-to-Spend card as Over-allocated, not as something coming.

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Where you see it

• On the Dashboard, a heads-up card sits under Left-to-Spend with the bills and the shortfall. Tap it to open the first bill that’s short.
• As a notification, sent to everyone on the budget. Copper checks once a day and notifies you once for each payday and set of bills. If a new bill joins the list, you hear about it again.

The heads-up clears on its own once the numbers work again.

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What to do about it

• Fund the short bills first. Open a bill and tap Fill bucket, or use Fund all › Just bills on the Buckets tab.
• Move money out of a spending or goal bucket by lowering its balance; it goes back to left-to-spend.
• Hold off on spending until payday.

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Shared budgets

Everyone on a shared budget gets the same heads-up, because left-to-spend is budget-wide. A bill someone keeps private still counts, but it’s named “a private bill” to everyone else.