Ace Budget Targets: Due Dates and Cadences

A target is Ace Budget's way of turning a vague intention into a number you can fund this month. Ace Budget targets pair a category with an amount, a due date and a cadence, and then tell you what that commitment costs you per month right now — not in theory, but given how much you've already put in and how many months are left.

That last part is the piece people miss. A target isn't a sticky note. It recalculates.

What a target in Ace Budget actually does

Put a target on a category and you get three things.

First, a required amount for the current month, so the category stops being a guess. Second, a sense of whether you're on pace, because the required amount reflects what's already sitting in the category. Third, a way for Auto-assign to know what to fund, since it fills targets rather than spreading money evenly.

You set a target in the category's edit window on a computer, or on a phone in the editor on its Target card. You can also open a goal from the Targets page and work with it there.

Along with the amount and due date you choose a cadence, whether the target counts as a savings goal, and whether funding is sticky. Sticky funding keeps a category counted as funded once it is, which stops a category flickering between funded and unfunded as the month moves.

Choosing a due date and a cadence

The cadence is how often the commitment comes back around. Ace Budget offers weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual, yearly, and custom.

A few examples of how that maps onto real life:

• Monthly for things that arrive every month at a steady size — a streaming bundle, a gym, a phone bill.
• Quarterly for a water bill or a quarterly trash pickup.
• Semiannual or yearly for car insurance, a professional license, holiday spending, a yearly subscription.
• Weekly or biweekly for categories you refill on a rhythm rather than a bill date, like groceries or gas.
• Custom when the real-world schedule doesn't match any of those.

Say your car insurance is $720 every six months and the next bill lands in June. Set the amount to $720, the due date to June, and the cadence to semiannual. If you start in January, Ace Budget asks for $120 a month. You never have to do that division again, and you never have to redo it when the date rolls over.

For the due date, use the day the money actually leaves, not the day you'd like to be done. A target that's due a month early feels responsible for about two weeks and then just feels like noise.

How Ace Budget targets re-pace themselves

This is the behavior worth understanding before you set a dozen of them.

If a month falls short, the required monthly amount re-paces itself automatically. Stay with the insurance example: $720 due in June, $120 a month from January. February is thin and you only put in $40. Ace Budget doesn't keep asking for $120 and quietly accumulating a shortfall. It looks at what's in the category and how many months remain, and asks for what it now takes — in that case a little over $136 a month for the rest of the run.

Two things follow from that.

One, a lean month doesn't break the plan; it makes the later months slightly heavier, which is simply true. You see the cost of the shortfall immediately instead of discovering it in June.

Two, if the new number is one you can't actually pay, that's information. The honest fix is to change the target, not to ignore it. Lower the amount, push the due date, or decide the goal isn't for this season of your life.

Letting targets do the assigning

On next month's budget, Auto-assign fills that month's targets from the money you set aside for it, and stops there — that money already left Ready to Assign, so it isn't taken twice. Click it again to fill the rest from Ready to Assign. If nothing was set aside, the first click does that straight away. On next month it only adds money; it never pulls money back out of a category.

So a tidy end-of-month routine looks like this:

1. On this month's budget, use Set aside → to hold what's left of Ready to Assign for next month, or Push all to next month for all of it.
2. On the 1st, or whenever the next paycheck lands, open next month and click Auto-assign to fund the targets from what you set aside.
3. Click it again if there's more to assign and categories still short of target.
4. Fix anything that's wrong by hand. Auto-assign is a starting draft, not a verdict.

After any of those money moves an Undo button shows for 30 seconds, which is enough to recover from a mis-click.

When to change or remove a target

Targets go stale. Insurance renews at a different price, a goal gets met, a category turns out to need no plan at all.

On a category that has a target, Remove target takes the whole thing off after you confirm — the amount, the due date, the repeat, the cadence, and whether it counted as a savings goal. The category stays, the money in it stays, and any loan link stays. If you set a target on that category later, it starts fresh rather than remembering the old settings. The button lives in the category's edit window, in the editor on its Target card on a phone, and in the window or sheet you get by opening a goal on the Targets page.

Worth saying plainly: targets don't move money. They tell you what the month asks for and give Auto-assign something to aim at. The assigning is still a decision you make, which is the part of budgeting that actually sticks.

If you want to see how the pacing behaves before committing, the demo on the sign-in screen opens a sample budget with no account needed, and new customers get a 60-day free trial.