Annual Budget

Professional financial management starts with good planning. The Annual Budget in Anfitrión lets you define how much you expect to spend each month and watch for unexpected overruns.

What is the annual budget?

It's your financial roadmap. Instead of recording expenses as they happen, here you define recurring concepts (Electricity, Water, Insurance, Mortgage) and their estimated amount per year.

How to create a budget

1. Head to the Budget section.
2. Click "Add Item" or "Start from scratch".
3. Define the basic fields:
   • Concept: Descriptive name (e.g. Electric Supply).
   • Category: Group items to see reports by area.
   • Frequency: Indicate whether the expense is Monthly, Quarterly or Yearly.
   • Estimated Amount: What you pay per charge — the quarterly amount for a quarterly item, the annual amount for a yearly one.
   • Month it is billed: For quarterly and yearly items, the month the charge actually falls due.

Recurring Elements

Anfitrión distinguishes between the cash due in a month and the monthly provision:

• Monthly: Charged every month.
• Quarterly: Charged in its due month and every three months after it. A due month of February means February, May, August and November.
• Yearly: Charged only in its due month. Ideal for property tax, waste fees or annual insurance.

Each item also reports a monthly provision — the charge spread across the period it covers, so a €600 annual property tax reads as €50/month of set-aside.

Figure	Meaning	Used for
Due this month	Cash actually payable in that month	Compared against your real expenses
Monthly provision	The same charges smoothed across the year	Planning, break-even and the Strategy simulator

IMPORTANT

Actual expenses are always compared against cash due, never against the provision. A month where an annual bill lands shows the full amount, matching your bank statement.

Months that are simply not billed

A recurring cost does not always run the whole year. When a supply contract is formalised part-way through — you take the property in January but the electricity contract only starts in March — the first months are never invoiced at all.

Use Months billed in the item's form to deselect those months. A deselected month produces no charge, no pending entry and nothing in the ledger.

TIP

Prefer this over setting the amount to €0 for that month. A €0 override still counts as a budgeted charge, still appears as pending, and still generates a €0 transaction. "Not billed" removes the charge entirely, and the yearly total and monthly provision adjust accordingly.

Bills paid outside the period they cover

A quarterly bill that was never issued on time often arrives much later — an April quarter invoiced in July, alongside the July quarter, both paid the same day.

Anfitrión records when you paid and which charge it settles as two separate things. When you register a payment from an overdue row, the payment date defaults to today while the charge being settled stays the one you clicked, and the dialog says so explicitly:

Recorded on this date, but settles the April charge.

That way the April charge clears, the July charge stays open until its own bill is registered, and both payments appear in the ledger on the day they actually happened.

To correct a payment that was already recorded against the wrong period, open it from the Transactions list and use Settles the charge for.

Or roll the missed quarter into the next bill

Some communities do not reissue the missed quarter separately — they add it to the next term as extra debt, so a single invoice arrives covering both. That is equally valid to record, using the tools already described:

1. Mark the missed month as Not billed.
2. Set a monthly override on the next charge for the combined amount.
3. Register one payment against that charge.

The yearly total and the monthly provision come out identical either way; only the shape of the charges differs.

Which to use? Follow the paperwork. The goal is that each transaction corresponds to a document you can produce if asked:

Situation	Record it as
Two invoices arrived, paid together	Two payments, the older one pointed at its own charge via Settles the charge for
One invoice arrived covering both terms	One charge — skip the missed month, override the next amount

Two transactions keep per-quarter history and let you see each period's variance. One combined charge matches a single invoice exactly, which is what matters when the invoice is your evidence for a deduction. Neither changes what you owe across the year.

NOTE

Payments recorded before this existed carry no explicit period and keep matching by date, which works whenever a bill was paid inside the period it covers.

Acting on what is outstanding

Two lists sit at the top of the page, and both act directly — there is no month to select first:

• Overdue charges — charges whose due month has passed with no payment recorded. Each row shows its own month.
• Pending payments to register — items due in the current month that have no transaction yet. Generate all creates them in one click.

Every row in both lists offers the same two actions:

Action	What it does
Register	Opens the payment form for that exact item and month
Not billed	Marks that month as not billed for that item — the same as deselecting it in the item's form

The Annual evolution grid below is a read-only overview of budget versus spend for each month of the year. It is there to be read, not clicked: everything actionable lives in the two lists above.

TIP

Automatic Mortgage: If you have configured a mortgage in the Property section, Anfitrión will automatically include it in your budget and monthly totals. You don't need to add it manually as a budget item unless you want to override its description.

Visualization and Control

The budget view offers a visual comparison between estimated and actual:

• Progress Bar: Indicates what percentage of the total monthly budget you've already consumed.
• Margin: The difference between your budget and your actual expenses. If positive, you're saving; if negative, you've exceeded.
• Pending Items: The app identifies budgeted items that don't yet have a linked real transaction.

Semi-automatic recording

If you have pending items this month, you'll see a "Generate all" notice. With a single click, Anfitrión creates the corresponding transactions so you don't have to enter repetitive data each month.

Budget Deviations (overruns)

If you pay more than expected one month (e.g. an unusually high electricity bill), Anfitrión marks it in red as a Deviation.

• Expenses not in the budget are tracked as "Unbudgeted", letting you see what surprises are eating into your profitability.

Best Practices

• Annual Import: When changing year (e.g. from 2025 to 2026), use the Import function to bring your previous budget over with a single click. You only need to adjust amounts if rates have changed.
• Synchronization: Try to always link each real expense to a budget item to have surgical control of your deviations.