Every bill, on a calendar, before it's due

What it does

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

Kemback’s Bills page keeps all of it in one place. You add each bill, or let Kemback find them in your history. It shows them on a calendar, marks each one paid when the real payment arrives, and points out when a bill costs more than it used to.

How it works in Kemback

A bill is a schedule: a payee, an amount, the account it’s paid from, and how often it repeats, every so many weeks, months or years. Tick Money in and the same schedule tracks a paycheck or other regular income.

A bill never creates transactions on its own. Kemback works out each due date and matches it to the real transaction when that arrives, from an import or one you enter. Each due date is upcoming, paid or overdue.

• The calendar. A month view shows each bill on its due date, green when paid, red when overdue and grey when upcoming, with arrows to look ahead to a heavy month.
• Still to pay this month. A list of everything not yet paid. If a payment arrives that might be the bill but doesn’t quite match, Kemback asks: “Did a $52.30 payment pay this?” Answer yes or no.
• Enter now. Paid a bill before your bank shows it? Enter now adds it to the register straight away, so your balance is right today.
• Looks recurring. Kemback looks through your history for the same payee at a similar amount on a regular interval, and lists each with how often it repeats, how many times it’s been seen, when the next is due and what it costs a year. A $15.99 subscription is easy to ignore; $191.88 a year is easier to question. Choose Add for the real bills.

When a bill goes up

Prices creep. When a matched payment is higher than the bill’s usual amount, Kemback says so on the Bills page, for example “City Water went up $7.30 (usually $45.00)”, and the same news appears in the review inbox with the old and new amounts. It’s a prompt to check whether it’s a rate change, a busy month, or the end of a promotional price worth renegotiating. Bills whose amount varies, like utilities, show their usual amount with a ≈ in front.

Reminders and safe to spend

Your bills feed several other parts of Kemback:

• Bill due alerts. On the Alerts page, the Bill due alert tells you a set number of days before each bill is due, in the app, by email and as a notification in the iPhone app. Each member chooses their own alerts.
• The weekly summary. If you opt in, a weekly email includes the bills due in the coming week.
• Safe to spend. One figure from the money in checking and cash, less card balances, minus what’s held for upcoming bills and what’s left in this month’s budget. If it goes negative, it reads Over-committed. Savings and expected income aren’t counted, so it’s cautious by design.
• 90-day projection. Each account shows where its balance is heading over the next 90 days from your bills and recurring income, with a warning if it’s projected to drop below zero, and when.
• The overview. The dashboard shows the bills due in the next two weeks and their total, with overdue ones marked.

Where it runs

Bills, the calendar and safe to spend work in any browser at kemback.com and in the iPhone app, which is in beta. Alerts and the weekly summary are live in the browser and the iPhone app (beta). All of it is on the Free plan. Transactions come in from files you download from your bank until automatic bank sync arrives with the Plus plan; Kemback doesn’t pay bills for you.

For a full walkthrough, read bills, recurring transactions and the bill calendar, and for the reasons behind rising bills, why bills go up.

Questions

Does Kemback pay my bills?

No. Kemback tracks bills and reminds you about them; you pay them as you do now. When the payment shows up in your transactions, Kemback matches it to the bill and marks it paid.

How does Kemback find my subscriptions?

It looks through your history for the same payee at a similar amount on a regular interval, and lists each one under Looks recurring with how often it repeats and what it costs a year. You choose which to add as bills.

Will a bill be counted twice once I pay it?

No. A bill is a schedule, not a transaction. When the real payment arrives, Kemback matches it to the due date instead of adding a second entry.

How do bill reminders work?

Turn on the Bill due alert on the Alerts page. It tells you a set number of days before a bill is due (three to start with), in the app, by email and as an iPhone notification.

Can I track my paycheck too?

Yes. Add it as a bill and tick Money in. Regular income then counts towards each account's projected balance.