Know what your bank balance will be on every day ahead.

The first thing the Cashflow screen tells you is the number most people want: how much you can spend between now and your next paycheque without your balance going below $0. When your balance would go below $0, it turns red and says how much you would be short: how far below $0 it goes. Your Alarm and Warning amounts colour the card and the chart, but every figure is counted from $0.

Beside it are three more figures: the lowest your balance will get in the period you are looking at, and on which day; the first day it would drop below your Alarm amount, and the bill that causes it; and your balance today. For the Reyes household’s chequing account, the family the guides follow, that reads $661.15 safe to spend before October 30, a lowest balance of $2,904.86 on November 12, and below Alarm on November 12 because of the ENMAX power bill.

You can look at one account, or at All cash, which adds up every cash account. You choose how far to look: back anywhere from 7 days to 12 months, or not at all, and ahead anywhere from 2 weeks to 12 months. Safe to spend always stops at your next income, because that is the money you have until then.

The forecast always starts from what is scheduled: your bills and your paycheques. That is the Bills only view. It is the right one if you keep an eye on everyday spending yourself and only want to know whether your fixed costs fit.

With spending also counts what you usually spend on things like groceries and gas, from the envelopes you choose. For each envelope you decide how its spending is counted: what it spent last month, its average over three months, its monthly target, or not at all. That amount is spread evenly over the days of the month, so the chart lowers your balance a little each day rather than guessing which day you will shop. The chart draws your balance with spending in colour, keeps the bills-only balance as a faint line above it, and shades the gap between the two, so you can see how much everyday spending takes. Every figure on the screen follows the view you pick.

A bill is never counted twice. If an envelope already has a scheduled bill, such as Netflix in Streaming, counting that envelope’s spending does not add Netflix a second time.

Move your pointer along the chart and a card shows any day’s balance and what changed it that day: the bill, the paycheque, and the expected spending. When you have a current plan, the card shows the balance with the plan and without it, and what the plan saves that day.

Every account, and All cash, gets two amounts that you set. The Alarm amount is the balance you do not want to go below. The Warning amount is a little higher, so you see trouble coming before it is serious. The chart turns yellow on the days your balance is at or below Warning, and red at or below Alarm. The Reyes household keeps chequing’s Alarm amount at $3,000, because the Visa is paid from it, and its Warning amount at $3,500.

Check each account as well as the total. All of the Reyes household’s cash adds up to $26,834.98 and never comes close to trouble, but chequing on its own drops below its Alarm amount on November 12, because the money is sitting in savings and the bills are paid from chequing.

You don’t have to keep checking the chart. An alert watches the forecast for you and tells you, in one sentence, which account will drop too low, on which day, and why. You choose which balance it watches (each cash account, All cash, or one account), how far ahead it looks (2 weeks, 1 month, or 3 months), how low is too low (below $0, below your Warning or Alarm amount, or below an amount you type), and whether it counts your usual spending.

You pick where you hear about it: in the app, where the alert sits at the top of Budget, Accounts and Cashflow; through your agent, which is told about the alert and when it clears; and by email, which leaves out amounts unless you ask for them. Mintro emails you once when a low balance first shows up, again only if the low day moves three or more days earlier, and once more when it is two days away. You never get more than one email a day for the same alert, and Mute until the balance recovers stops it when you already know.

Two more alerts are about things that just happened: Payday missed tells you when a scheduled paycheque is two business days late, and Bill bigger than usual tells you when a bill comes out at least 20% and $10 above its usual amount. If you would rather read it all once a week, the weekly digest emails you a summary on the day you pick, from 7am your time: the lowest your balance gets in the month ahead, whether it goes below Alarm, how much is safe to spend, any active alerts, and how many bills are due that week.

An alert only tells you. Mintro checks again whenever something changes the forecast, such as new transactions from your bank or a bill you edit, and never moves money because of an alert. Whether to move money, pay a bill later, or spend less is your decision.

Each payday ahead is a small tick along the bottom of the chart, and the lowest balance before it is marked. In Details, under the chart, Your lowest balance before each payday lists them in words. For chequing: $3,661.15 before the October 30 paycheque, $2,904.86 before November 13, shown in red because it is below Alarm, and $3,911.81 before November 27. A tight stretch is easy to spot weeks before it arrives.

Mintro also checks itself. Every day it saves its forecast for the month ahead, and later draws that forecast as a dotted line next to what actually happened. How close the forecast was says how many days came within $25 of the forecast and names the biggest miss. On chequing that was 25 of 29 days, and the biggest miss was a transfer to savings nobody had scheduled. A miss tells you what to set up next.

When your balance is going to drop below your Alarm amount before your next paycheque, Mintro doesn’t just warn you. Under the chart, Ways to fix it lists what would keep it above, in one list: bills that could be paid on the day your next paycheque arrives, each tried on the chart first so it says whether it is enough on its own, and how much less everyday spending would do it. For the Reyes household’s chequing account, with their current plan Tighter November, paying the $142 ENMAX bill on November 13 instead of the 12th, when Maya’s pay comes in, is enough on its own. So would spending $100 less before November 13, about $7 a day, most of it from Utilities and Fun money.

Try it draws a fix on the chart and works the answer out again, without saving anything; Add to my plan keeps it. Moving a bill only changes the day Mintro expects it to come out. It moves no money, so check that the company you pay will accept the payment a day later.

A plan is a list of changes you want to try before you make them, kept in Cashflow’s Plans tab. Each change is one of four kinds, each with its own button: a one-off purchase or deposit on a day; a bill paid on a different day; an envelope kept to an amount until a date you pick; or a lump sum you want to put somewhere, like an RRSP or the emergency fund. Keeping an envelope to an amount is said both ways: keep Dining out to $44.05 from October 29 to November 11, about $3.14 a day, when you usually spend $84.05 in that time, so it saves $40. As you add each change, the chart redraws your balance with it, and keeps your balance as it is now as a faint line behind. Nothing in your budget changes, and no money moves.

Add a $650 couch out of chequing on October 29, and the screen shows that chequing would go below its Alarm amount on November 1, when the mortgage comes out, instead of on November 12, and that only $10.48 would be safe to spend before the next paycheque, compared with $660.48 without the couch.

Every plan answers two questions. How much can you set aside? Pick a day, usually your next payday, and Mintro shows the most you can move into savings without your balance going below $0 later. And how do you keep your balance above $0? Spend a little less, or pay a bill a few days later, each one click from being added to the plan.

Keep as many plans as you like. When you are ready, Apply this plan to my budget first lists every change it would make. A bill gets its new date for that one payment. A spend-less change offers a smaller monthly target on its envelope, and only changes it if you tick the box. A lump sum becomes a reminder on its day, because Mintro never moves the money for you. The plan you apply becomes your current plan, described in the next part. Changed your mind? Edit any change in an applied plan and it takes effect when you save it, or Stop this plan to put the bill and the target back.

The plan you apply becomes your current plan. You have one at a time, and Mintro draws it on every cashflow chart: on Cashflow, on Accounts and on Budget. The main line is your balance if you keep to the plan, and a faint line shows your balance without it, so you always see what the plan is worth.

A plan is only useful if you keep to it, so the Cashflow overview shows Your plan, with how each promise is going. A promise to spend less has a bar, what you have spent so far and about how much the plan allows a day. Mintro compares what you have really spent in that envelope since you applied the plan with what the plan allows up to today, and says whether you are on track, ahead of the plan, or over it.

The Reyes household applied a plan called Tighter November on October 20: $60 less on Groceries, $50 less on Dining out and $10 less on Fun money until November 12, and Netflix paid a day later. Groceries is ahead of the plan, with $168.31 spent so far and about $23.99 a day allowed. Dining out is $28.32 over, and its bar is red. The Netflix change says it is done.

The promise also follows you to Budget, where the money is. Each envelope the plan touches says so under its name, with how it is going, and opening the envelope shows the whole promise beside its figures. If a plan and your budget disagree, such as a promise to spend less from an envelope that is already empty, Mintro says so beside the promise.

Applying a plan never takes money out of an envelope. The money stays where it is and the plan's limit shows beside the envelope, so Ready to assign never looks like spare money the plan is counting on. Applying a different plan replaces your current one: the confirm says exactly what that undoes, and the old plan stays saved so you can apply it again later.

An envelope says what money is for, but your bank account can still be short of it. A purchase nobody has filed has left the bank but not an envelope. A bill for next month can come out before your pay arrives, when no envelope holds next month’s money yet. Spending can run past what its envelope has left. That is how people end up with full envelopes and an empty account. Mintro checks every day until your next pay, taking each bill and each day of expected spending out of its envelope and your bank together, and says which of these it found.

On Cashflow, the panel Your envelopes and your bank before your Oct 30 pay answers in three numbered parts, each with its figure. Today compares what your envelopes hold with what your bank accounts hold, and says why they differ. Before your pay is the money going out that no envelope has money for. The third part is what that does to your bank balance: the lowest it gets, and whether your pay puts the money back. Under the three parts, it lists what you can do: file what is waiting, try moving a bill past your pay or spending less in a plan, or give a short envelope more. Each credit card is checked against its payment envelope too.

For the Reyes household before their October 30 pay, their envelopes hold $27,312.98 and their bank accounts $26,834.98 today, because a $900 purchase is still waiting to be filed and $62.40 was spent past what an envelope held. The check follows the plan their chart shows, Tighter November, the same way the chart draws it. Before the pay, $3.01 of everyday spending in Fun money has no envelope money behind it ($3.68 without the plan). Their bank balance stays above zero, lowest at $26,776.13 on October 29, but only by using money the envelopes are holding for other things, and the October 30 pay is enough to put it back.

You do not have to open Cashflow to find out. The same check runs across the top of Budget, under the month, in a panel as wide as the budget. Its first line says the most important part, and under it are three figures: today, the envelope money that is not in your bank accounts yet; before your pay, the bills and spending with no envelope money behind them; and your bank balance at its lowest, with the day. The panel is plain when everything is covered, yellow when something is short, and red when your balance would go below zero. When it is plain, you can fold it to its first line for the month.

Fix my envelopes, on that panel and on Cashflow, works out the money moves that would give every envelope what its bills and spending need before your pay. It takes from Ready to assign first, then from envelopes the chart does not expect you to spend from before the pay, then only what other envelopes have left after their own bills and spending, and from savings last, marked as savings. It never moves more than an envelope needs, and it does not count on a plan’s spending less until you apply that plan. Each move is listed with why, ticked, and you untick any you do not want. Nothing moves until you press Move this money, and the message that follows has Undo, which puts every envelope back as it was. If moving money cannot cover everything, it says how much is left and why.

Moving money between envelopes only changes what your envelopes say your money is for. Mintro never moves money between your bank accounts.

Many people like to keep a month of bills in hand. In Mintro that is a buffer: a goal, sized from your scheduled bills (a number of weeks or months of them, or an amount you type), that keeps a cushion of money in your account so your balance never gets near $0, for All cash or for one account. Safe to spend holds the buffer back by default, and when a balance would drop into it, the chart shades the cushion and says so. The Reyes household keeps $4,165.99, one month of bills, across All cash, and their cash would cover 188 days of bills.

Owing money on a card is not the same as running out of money, so cards are not added into All cash. Each card gets its own row instead: how much you owe out of its limit, the most you will owe in the period shown, and the day it gets close to the limit or goes over. With groceries counted, the Reyes household’s Visa climbs from $3,710.05 to $8,288.87 by January 28, still under its $12,000 limit.

Cashflow has its own place in the Mintro app’s main menu, and the same chart also appears where you already look. On Accounts, it shows the balance of the account you are looking at, above its transactions. On Budget, a smaller version sits above your envelopes, so the month’s plan and the days ahead are on one screen. If you would rather see the budget on its own, the way YNAB shows it, press Hide this chart, and turn it back on in Settings whenever you like.

On a phone the screen shows the same things in the same order: safe to spend first, then the other figures, the chart, the paydays, and your plans.

Your agent reads the same forecast the app draws. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi whether a purchase fits, and it tries the purchase as a plan, reads what it does to your balance, and answers with the same figures you would see on the Cashflow screen. It can also save the plan, set up an alert, change your Alarm amount, or turn on the weekly digest for you.