Introduction
Whether you pay by direct debit or PAYG household bills are a common payment to contend with. Bills fluctuate throughout the year and managing your money so you have enough to make your payments is important. It is also important to know if you are on the right tariff, or if you are being overcharged.
It all starts with categorisation?
Important to note about Scheduled Payments
Topic Area
Scenario Guide
Relevant to users on:
Money Dashboard Neon
Not sure which App you are on?
If you are unsure if you are on Money Dashboard Classic or Money Dashboard Neon? You can find that information here
Disclaimer
All content is for informational purposes only and is the opinion of the author. Nothing on this website should be interpreted as "advice". Money Dashboard Ltd make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, suitability or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors or omissions or any damages arising from its display or use.
What tools will I need?
The main tools you will need are as follows:
- Categorisation
- Budgets
- Scheduled payments (Only if your payments are identical every month)
What are household bills?
As you can probably imagine, there is no set definition for household bills. Some people include only heating, water and council tax whereas others consider Netflix to be a core part of their household bills.
It all starts with categorisation?
As with most of our scenario guides, it all starts with categorisation. You need to get all your transactions categorised how you want them to allow you to group them together and get an idea of overall spend. You might decide to give all your household transactions the category "Bills" and then you can draw your insight from Spend Analysis (eg the category level insight for your current pay cycle). Alternatively you may consider a large variety of transactions as household bills, the best place for you to deal with this is Budgets.
Important to Note About Scheduled Transactions
Let's quickly take a couple of scenarios
- Scenario 1: You categorise all your household bills with the category Bills
- Scenario 2: Your household bills come from a number of different categories
Scenario 1
The best place for you to gain insight is Spend Analysis to see how much you have spent on the Bills Category. Scheduled transactions do not effect you at this point.
On your Overview page, you can now exclude all other categories and only set to view 'Bills' to gain an insight into how much you spend. For more information about how to exclude categories, please refer here.
Scenario 2
Monitoring multiple categories usually means Budgets. There is something very important to note:
Any transactions that you have set up as scheduled transactions will
NOT appear in your budgets as they have already been deducted from
your Spending Plan (and we don't want to double count). More information about this can be found here.
Create a budget that tracks the spending from the relevant categories you have for household bills, set the expected amount and you an easily see how you are doing in your Spending Plan.
Conclusion
If you are unsure on how to create a Budget, what categorisation is and Pay cycle are please refer below:
You can find more information about getting the best deal on your Household bills and making sure you aren't being overcharged at the Money Dashboard Blog