Family Budget Planning App

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1

I’m new to Glide and could use some guidance on a project.

PROJECT | Personal Budget Planning App
FOCUS | A zero-based, envelope-style budgeting planner (planning only, not expense tracking)
CORE FEATURES |

  • Plan a monthly budget based on expected income and expenses
  • Allocate funds to envelopes (monthly, quarterly, annual, one-time, etc.), with calculations based on due dates to determine each month’s needed amount
  • Distribute paychecks into envelopes (percentage-based, waterfall, and potentially more methods later)
  • Review archived monthly plans for comparison

CURRENT SETUP
I already have

  • envelope creation (with frequency, due dates, and amounts)
  • Income/paycheck sources (with frequency and amounts)
  • These act as defaults to speed up the planning process

WHAT I’M TRYING TO BUILD
I’m now working on the monthly planning screen.
My goal is to:

  • Pull in total income
  • Pull in calculated “monthly need” amounts from envelopes
  • Allow users to override those default values for that specific month

I’ve been experimenting with different approaches and feel close, but can’t quite get the structure right. I’d love any ideas, best practices, examples, or resources from anyone who’s built something similar in Glide.

TLDR

  • Building a zero-based budgeting app in Glide.
  • Stuck on the monthly planning screen
  • Trying to combine calculated defaults (from envelopes) with user-overridable values.
  • Looking for structure ideas or examples
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2

Can you explain in more details:

  • Envelopes table: What columns do you currently have (e.g. frequency, due date, amount, “monthly need”)? Is “monthly need” already a computed column in Glide, and how is it calculated?

  • Income/paychecks: How are you representing paychecks (one row per paycheck source, or one row per actual paycheck date)? Do you already have a way to calculate total income for a specific month?

  • Monthly planning: Do you already have a “Months” or “Plans” table (one row per month), or are you planning directly from the envelopes list? How are you currently linking a given month to the relevant envelopes and income?

  • Zero-based requirement: For a given month, do you want strict zero-based (Total Income – Sum of all envelope allocations must equal 0), and if so, how do you want Glide to behave when the user is over/under budget (just show a number, or block them from saving, etc.)?

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