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Available Cash & Savings

Updated May 1, 2026

Available Cash is how much money you have in the bank for savings and funds after your upcoming bills and day-to-day spending are accounted for.  It is the same number as the Cash Low Point on the Cash Forecast Report.

Setting Up Available Cash

Weekly calculates your Available Cash based on your bank account balances. To find your starting cash balance, Weekly will add your checking and savings account balances and subtract any credit card debt. Weekly then calculates your future daily balances by forecasting your income, bills, and daily Safe-to-Spend spending.

It’s important to connect all your checking, savings, and credit card accounts to make sure your Available Cash is accurate.

Next you want to make sure each recurring income and bill includes a next transaction date. Items without a date will not be included on the Cash Forecast report and won’t affect your Available Cash. If any items are missing a next transaction date you’ll see a warning under the Available Cash section on the Funds page.

Calculating Available Cash

To find how much available cash you have, Weekly forecasts all your income and spending over the next 35 days to find what day you’ll have the lowest balance. This number is your Available Cash.

You can see exactly how this is forecasted by looking at the Cash Forecast report on the Reports page under the Cash tab. Each day on that report will have:

  • Any recurring income or bills scheduled for that day
  • Your expected day-to-day spending
  • Fund contributions (one the first day of each week)

The recurring income and bills are the building blocks of your budget and can be found under the Income & Bills tab on the Reports page.

Weekly forecasts that you will spend your entire Safe-to-Spend each week. To find a daily spending amount we divide your Weekly Spending Limit by seven and use that for the daily expense on the Cash Forecast. For the current week, Weekly calculates the daily spending by taking your remaining Safe-to-Spend and dividing it by the number of days left in the week.

Fund contributions are also included in the Cash Forecast. On the first day of each week we include an expense for any fund contributions you have set up. When the week starts the fund contributions for that week are removed from the forecast and are added to your funds. This will increase both your fund balances and your Available Cash.

Handling Negative Available Cash

If your Available Cash is negative then you may be carrying credit card debt, or you may not have enough money to cover your coming bills and daily expenses. Let’s walk through each scenario and explain the options.

If you don’t have enough money to pay off your credit cards each month then your Available Cash may be negative. In this case the negative Available Cash is a good estimate of how much credit card debt you’re carrying. We have an entire article for walking through how to pay down credit card debt in Weekly.

If you don’t use credit cards and your Available Cash is negative, it means that your upcoming bills and daily spending are expected to exceed your cash in the bank and upcoming income. To fix this you will need to decrease your Weekly Spending Limit. You can do this by increasing your Savings amount. Go to the Budget tab and tap on the Savings row in the budget breakdown. This will open the Weekly Savings contribution page. You can set your savings amount which will decrease your Weekly Spending Limit and increase your Available Cash

Safe-to-Spend Rollover and Available Cash

The way you handle your ending Safe-to-Spend when starting a new week may affect your Available Cash. If you’ve overspent your Safe-to-Spend your Available Cash will have already been reduced. You can catch back up by rolling over the negative amount and reducing your spending the following week.

If your ending Safe-to-Spend is positive you can either roll it into the next week (which has no impact on the Available Cash) or you can turn off the rollover and the Available Cash will be increased by the remaining balance.

Available Cash and Fund Balances

Since your Available Cash is the money available to cover your fund balances, it should be higher than your fund balances. If it is then you can safely use the money in your funds. If the Available Cash is lower than your fund balances Weekly will give you a warning under the Available Cash and give you some options to fix it.

The simplest way to resolve this is to lower your fund balances. You can do that by tapping the slider icon above the list of funds and selecting “Adjust Fund Balances”. This will give you a list of your funds where you can adjust the balances. Funds are not directly tied to savings accounts or real dollars so their balances can be adjusted directly.

Another option is to increase the Available Cash by contributing to Savings. This will lower your Weekly Spending Limit by the contribution amount which increases your Available Cash over time.

Negative Funds

The total Fund Balances number only includes the balance from positive funds. This makes it easy to see how much is available in your funds and compare it to your Available Cash. If you’ve overspent a fund then your Available Cash has already been reduced and Weekly does not expect that you’re going to continue spending from this fund. If you do plan to continue spending from a fund with a negative balance, we recommend adjusting the fund balance to match what you expect to spend so that amount can be included in the total Fund Balances.

Spending and Available Cash

The way that transactions are categorized affects how they impact your Available Cash. Let’s go through each transaction destination.

Safe-to-Spend

If a spending transaction is categorized as Safe-to-Spend and you have enough money in your Safe-to-Spend to cover it, your Available Cash will not change. If the transaction exceeds the available Safe-to-Spend then your Available Cash will go down by the extra spending.

Income & Bills

When your recurring income and bills match what’s set up in your budget there is no change to your Available Cash.

If your income and/or bill does not match the expected date or amount, Weekly will make adjustments based on how you handle the transaction. If you update the recurring item amount, this will adjust your Weekly Spending Limit. There will likely be a small change to your Available Cash since the full transaction amount occurred today and the Weekly Spending Limit will average that over the coming weeks.

Funds

Since the Available Cash is the amount available for funds, your Available Cash will always be lower when you spend from Funds. Likewise if you have extra income you put into a fund, this will increase your Available Cash.

Ignore

Ignoring a transaction will directly impact your Available Cash since it will affect your bank account balance and it’s not part of the forecasted income or expenses.  If you ignore an income transaction your Available Cash will go up.  If you ignore an expense your Available Cash will go down.

Why is my Available Cash negative?

Your Available Cash is the lowest forecasted net cash over the next 35 days. Your net cash is your checking plus savings accounts minus any credit card debt. We forecast that number over 35 days using your expected daily spending, your income, and your bills.

If your Available Cash is negative it means that during the next 35 days your net cash is forecasted to go below zero. In this case you may not have enough to pay off your credit cards in full and also cover all your bills. There are a few things you can do to make sure this number is accurate and to help prevent going negative.

  1. Make sure you have all your checking and savings accounts linked
  2. Check for any recurring items missing a next transactions date (Weekly will provide a warning under the Cash Forecast report and the Savings card)
  3. If these numbers are accurate you may need to increase your savings to reduce the amount you spend each day.
  4. If you’re carrying credit card debt you may have a negative Available Cash even if you still have money in your checking account. Please see this article about paying off credit card debt using Weekly.

What is the difference between Funds and Savings?

Funds keep track of money you have saved for specific purposes. You might have funds for things like vacations, birthday spending or downpayment on a car.  In a Fund you can contribute automatically and those contributions reduce your Weekly Spending limit.  Funds allow you to track and spend from your balances.

Savings on the other hande does not track a balance, instead it allows you to set aside money to grow a cash cushion.  The savings amount reduces your Weekly Spending Limit so more money is left in your bank account. This is reflected in an increase to your Available Cash.

Funds

  • Money for specific purposes
  • Track balances
  • Contributions reduce your Weekly Spending Limit
  • Contributions increase Fund balances and Available Cash each time you start a week

Savings

  • Grows your cash cushion
  • Do not track balances
  • Contributions reduce your Weekly Spending Limit
  • Contributions increase your Available Cash

Why is my Available Cash low?

Your Available Cash is the amount of money in your bank available to cover your fund balances. If your Available Cash is less than your fund balances, you may not have enough cash in the bank to cover your funds and your upcoming expenses.

The simplest way to resolve this is to lower your fund balances. You can do that by tapping the slider icon above the list of funds and selecting “Adjust Fund Balances”. This will list all your funds where you can adjust balances. Funds are not directly tied to savings accounts or real dollars so their balances can be adjusted directly.

Another option is to increase the Available Cash by contributing more to Savings. This will lower your Weekly Spending Limit by the contribution amount which increases your Available Cash over time.

What is Savings?

Savings is simply your Cash Reserve minus your fund balances.

In other words, Savings is what would be left over if you spent all of the balances of your Funds out of your Cash Reserve.

A positive savings balance is an indicator that you have all the cash you need to cover your planned spending in Funds plus more.  In this way, Savings can be thought of as your accumulated wealth.  You can also think of Savings as a Cash Cushion beyond what is already saved in your funds.

What is Available Cash?

Available Cash is the amount of cash we forecast you have in the bank for spending in funds or just to have savings. It is the lowest forecasted cash point in the Cash Forecast report.

To find your Available Cash, Weekly starts with the “Net Cash” from the Cash History report. This number is your total checking and savings account balances minus any credit card debt. Weekly will then forecast your income and spending for the next 35 days to find the lowest cash point. You can tap on any day in the Cash Forecast report to see the expended income and expenses for that day.

How can I increase my Available Cash?

You can increase your available cash by creating or increasing your Savings contribution or by setting up a Fund contributions.

Creating a Savings contribution will lower your Weekly Spending Limit and keep more money in the bank. Creating a Fund contribution will also lower your Weekly Spending Limit but Fund contributions will increase your Fund balances and Available Cash each time you start a week.

How do negative Fund balances affect my Savings?

Negative Fund balances do not affect your Savings.  If you have overspent a Fund, that money is already gone out of your bank account and therefore is already factored into your Cash Reserve number.  Savings is how much money is left from your Cash Reserve assuming you spend down all your positive Funds balances.

How can I make my savings positive?

Here are a few ways to make a positive savings balance.

  1. If your savings is negative and your Cash Reserve is positive, then your fund balances are higher than your Cash Reserve – which means you have overallocated the amount of cash you have in the bank for specific Fund purposes.  You can increase your savings by reducing your fund balances and that will change the balance of your savings immediately.
  2. You can build up your savings over time by contributing more of your Safe-to-Spend money each week to your savings.  (To change the amount of money you are savings tap on the Savings number on the “Savings & Funds” page).
  3. A third way to increase your savings is to have a positive end of week Safe-to-Spend balance.  If you have a positive end of week Safe-to-Spend balance that you don’t rollover or contribute to a fund.  This will increase your Savings.