Recurring Bills and the Bill Calendar in Kemback

Most of a household’s money goes out on a schedule: rent or a mortgage, utilities, insurance, phone, streaming services, a car payment. Knowing what’s due, what’s paid and what’s coming is half of staying on top of things.

Kemback’s Bills page tracks all of it. You tell it about each bill, or let it find them in your history, and it shows them on a calendar, marks each one paid when the real payment arrives, and tells you when a bill costs more than usual. This guide walks through setting it up and using it each month.

How bills work in Kemback

A bill in Kemback is a schedule: a payee, an amount, an account, and how often it repeats. It doesn’t create transactions on its own. Instead, Kemback works out each due date and then matches it to the real transaction when that arrives, from an import or one you enter. That way a bill is never counted twice: once as the schedule and once as the payment.

Each due date has one of three statuses:

upcoming: not due yet, and not paid.
paid: matched to a real transaction.
overdue: the date has passed and nothing has matched.

Regular income works the same way. A paycheck can be a “bill” with money coming in.

Step 1: Let Kemback find your recurring charges

If you’ve imported a few months of history, start here. Open Bills from the sidebar and scroll to the card headed Looks recurring: “Found in your history. Add any as a bill to see it on the calendar.”

Kemback looks back over roughly the last year for the same payee at a similar amount on a regular interval. Each suggestion shows:

the payee,
how often it repeats, like Every month or Every 3 months,
how many times it’s been seen,
when the next one is expected,
what it costs a year, and
the usual amount, with ≈ in front if it varies (a utility bill, say).

The yearly figure is worth a moment’s attention. A $15.99 streaming service is easy to ignore; “$191.88 a year” is easier to question. Many people find a subscription or two they’d forgotten about.

For each one that’s a real bill, choose Add. Skip anything that isn’t, like a coffee shop you happen to visit every week.

Step 2: Add the bills it didn’t find

Some bills won’t show up in history: a new one, a yearly insurance premium you’ve only paid once, or anything paid from an account you haven’t imported. Use the Add a bill card:

Payee: “City Water”, “State Farm”, “Landlord”.
Amount (USD): the usual amount, as a positive number, like 49.99.
Account: where it’s paid from.
Every and Period: for example 1 months, 2 weeks or 1 years. Any interval from 1 to 52 works.
First due: the next due date.
Money in (income): tick this for a paycheck or other regular income.

Choose Add bill.

Examples

Bill	Every	Period	First due
Rent, $1,500	1	months	2026-11-01
Car insurance, $640	6	months	2027-01-15
Paycheck, $2,100 (Money in)	2	weeks	2026-11-06
Domain renewal, $20	1	years	2027-03-02

Everything you’ve added is listed under All bills, with how often it repeats and when it’s next due. Delete stops tracking a bill, after asking “Stop tracking City Water?”. Past payments stay in your register.

Step 3: Read the calendar

The top of the page is a month calendar. Each bill appears on its due date, coloured by status:

green for paid,
red for overdue,
grey for upcoming.

Today’s date is outlined. Hover over a bill to see its amount and status. The ← and → buttons move between months, so you can look ahead at a heavy month, like one with a quarterly tax payment and an annual premium in it.

Step 4: Keep track of what’s still to pay

Below the calendar, Still to pay this month lists every bill that isn’t paid yet, with its date, payee, status and amount. Two things can happen here.

“Did a $X payment pay this?”

When a transaction arrives that looks like it could be the payment but Kemback isn’t sure, perhaps because the amount is different, it asks, for example “Did a $52.30 payment pay this?” Choose Yes to mark the bill paid with that transaction, or No if it was something else.

The same question appears in the Review inbox under Bills, worded like “Did this pay City Water? It’s $7.30 more than usual.”, with Yes, it did and No.

Enter now

Sometimes you pay a bill before your bank shows it, and you want your balance to reflect it straight away. Enter now adds the payment to the register immediately. When the bank’s version later arrives in an import with the same amount and within a few days of it, the import flags it as a possible duplicate and leaves it out unless you choose to bring it in. Your categorization rules apply to bills entered this way too.

Step 5: Notice when a bill goes up

Prices creep. When a matched bill’s payment is higher than its usual amount, Kemback shows a Went up card on the Bills page, with a line like:

City Water went up $7.30 (usually $45.00).

The same news appears in the Review inbox with a red Went up badge, so you see it even if you don’t open Bills that week. It’s a prompt to check: a rate change, a higher usage month, or the end of a promotional price you’d want to renegotiate.

Where bills show up elsewhere

Once your bills are in, several other parts of Kemback use them.

Safe to spend

At the top of the Accounts page, Safe to spend shows the money in checking and cash (less card balances), minus what’s held for upcoming bills and budgets. If the result is negative, it reads Over-committed in red. Savings and expected income aren’t counted, so it’s a cautious figure by design.

The 90-day projection

Each account on the Accounts page shows where its balance is heading In 90 days, based on your bills and recurring income. If the balance is projected to drop below zero along the way, you’ll see a red warning instead, like “Goes to -$214.50 on 2026-12-03”. That’s your cue to move money or delay something before it happens, not after.

Overview

The Overview page shows how many bills are due in the next 14 days and their total, and lists the upcoming ones, with overdue bills marked.

Alerts

On the Alerts page, the Bill due alert tells you a set number of days before a bill is due. It starts at 3 days, and you can change it. Alerts can arrive in the app, by email, and as notifications on the iPhone app (in beta).

A monthly routine

At the start of the month, look at the calendar and Still to pay this month.
As payments go out, import from your bank and answer any “did this pay?” questions.
Check Went up for any increases worth questioning.
Every few months, look at Looks recurring again for new subscriptions you may have signed up for.

It takes a few minutes, and it means no bill arrives as a surprise.

#bills #subscriptions #kemback guides

This article is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. For decisions about your situation, talk to a qualified professional.

Bills, Recurring Transactions and the Bill Calendar in Kemback