CountAhead Guide
How CountAhead works.
The ideas behind CountAhead, one screen at a time: what each part means, why it exists, and how to use it. Ten minutes, real screens, no jargon.
In this guide
Concept
What CountAhead is
CountAhead is a planning tool for a Canadian household. Instead of sorting what you already spent, it works from what is coming: the income you expect, the bills and payments you owe, and the money you have set aside. From that it tells you what will be left.
- Forward-looking. A month is a plan you keep up to date, not a bank statement.
- Yours to maintain. Nothing links to a bank. You enter balances and confirm items as they happen.
- Canadian by default. Your Family’s currency is CAD, and TFSA, RRSP, FHSA and RESP accounts are first-class.
Set-up
Start with the pieces of your financial life
Everything CountAhead calculates comes from six kinds of definitions. Enter them once: MonthCast draws on all six, while Financial Health looks only at your recurring income and recurring commitments.
Accounts & Cards
Chequing, savings, cash and credit cards. Each cash account is either included in MonthCast or kept out of it.
Income
Pay and other money coming in, with its schedule.
Bills & Recurring
Fixed bills, plus adjustable estimates such as groceries that you trim during the month.
Savings Contributions
Recurring transfers into savings or investment accounts.
Loans & Mortgages
Scheduled payments, and Line of Credit balances that count as money owed.
One-Time Money
Receivables, Money Lent, Money Borrowed and Reserved Funds: one-off amounts that adjust the month.
- CAD
- An account can be held in another currency and stays visible here, but MonthCast totals count CAD only. Nothing is converted.
- Excluded
- An account you keep out of Leftover on purpose, such as an emergency fund.
- Included
- An included chequing, savings or cash account. Together these are the Included Cash that MonthCast starts from. A credit card or line of credit is never Included Cash — what you owe on it counts against you instead.
How to use it: add your accounts first, then income, then the bills and payments that repeat. You can refine the rest later.
Concept
MonthCast: your plan for one month
A MonthCast is the financial plan for one specific month. It is not a history of transactions. It lists what you expect to come in and go out, lets you confirm each item as it happens, and shows what is left.
1. A month is created on purpose
You create the next month yourself. CountAhead reads your current definitions and shows a Preview of every dated item it would generate, then asks you to confirm.
- Read-only notice
- Creating a new month freezes the previous one (see Latest and Historical).
- Generated items
- Each gets a date and an amount; you can adjust either before confirming.
2. Items and their status
Inside the month, each recurring item — income, a bill, a contribution, a loan payment — is an occurrence with a date. Each one is Pending until you mark it Completed (paid or received) or Skipped. Only Pending items still count toward what is left. One-Time Money works differently: an active item shows as a standing line you read rather than mark, with no status to set and a due date that is there for information only.
- Completed
- Done for this month. It can be reopened if you marked it by mistake.
- Pending
- Still expected this month, and still counted in Leftover.
- Mark Paid
- Completes the item (Mark Received for income).
- Skip
- Drops it from this month only; the definition is untouched.
3. Category and Timeline
The same month can be read two ways. Category groups items by kind, in the six steps you update. Timeline orders everything by date and draws a Today line, so you see what has happened and what is still ahead.
- Today line
- Everything above it has a date that has passed; everything below is still to come.
4. Latest and Historical
Only the newest month, marked Latest, is live: its account balances update as you enter them and its items can still change. When you create the next month, the previous one becomes Historical: frozen exactly as it ended, so your past results never drift.
- Latest
- The month you update. The moment you create October, this row becomes Historical and October takes its place. Latest is also the only month that can be deleted, which makes the previous month Latest again.
- Historical
- Read-only records of what each month came to.
How to use it: near the start of each month, create the month and check the Preview. Then, as things happen, open Update MonthCast, enter balances and mark items. The result of all that is Leftover.
The key number
Leftover
Leftover is what your household will have left at the end of the Latest month if everything still expected happens as planned. It is one number, and it is built from four parts.
Leftover equals Included Cash plus Remaining Inflows minus Remaining Outflows plus Net One-Time Money. Remaining Outflows are the bills, contributions and payments still Pending this month, plus what you owe on credit cards and lines of credit.
- Leftover is not your bank balance. Your balance ignores the pay and bills still to come; Leftover counts them.
- Leftover is not a budget. It does not tell you what to spend; it tells you what remains if the plan holds.
- Leftover is not net worth. Investments, property and long-term debt are not in it. Only this month's cash picture is.
- Leftover
- Stays in view for the Latest month while you update it, and is the same in the Category and Timeline views.
- Accounts & Credit
- What you enter here feeds two different drivers: your included chequing, savings and cash balances become Included Cash, while credit-card and line-of-credit balances count toward Remaining Outflows. Amounts in other currencies are left out; nothing is converted.
How to read it: a rising Leftover through the month means more has come in, or been skipped, than expected. A falling one means the reverse. If a month is Historical, its Leftover is the final result of that month.
Looking ahead
Leftover Forecast
The Forecast carries Leftover forward. Starting from the Latest month, it adds each future month's scheduled income and subtracts its scheduled bills, contributions and payments, for up to two years. It is a projection from your definitions, not a promise about your balance.
- Leftover
- The Latest MonthCast’s Leftover, where the projection starts.
- 6M · 1Y · 2Y
- Choose the horizon.
- Projected Leftover
- Each point is a future month's projection, labelled surplus or shortfall.
How to use it: a dip means a month where commitments outrun income; a steady climb means your definitions leave room. One-Time Money already counts once in the Leftover the projection starts from, and is never repeated into later months, so an expected receipt does not lift the line again further out.
Structure
Financial Health
Financial Health asks a different question from Leftover: in a typical month, does your recurring income cover your recurring commitments? It uses your active definitions, normalised to a monthly amount, and ignores what has or has not happened this month.
Coverage Ratio = Recurring Income ÷ Fixed Commitments × 100
Monthly Cushion (or Gap) = Recurring Income − Fixed Commitments
- Rating
- At Risk below 70%, Needs Attention 70–89%, Slightly Short 90–99%, Healthy 100–119%, Strong 120–150%, Excellent above 150%.
- Monthly cushion
- The cushion (or gap) in dollars per month.
- Not rated
- With no fixed commitments recorded there is nothing to divide by, so the Coverage Ratio is unavailable and Financial Health reads Not rated.
- Scale
- Your Coverage Ratio; 100% is break-even.
- Include Savings Contributions
- Treats them as commitments, which lowers the ratio. Turn it off to see the cushion before saving.
| Leftover | Financial Health | |
|---|---|---|
| The question | What is left in this month, given current cash, what remains, debt balances and One-Time Money? | Does recurring monthly income cover recurring monthly commitments? |
| Based on | The Latest MonthCast: live balances and Pending items | Active definitions, normalised to a month |
| Changes when | You enter a balance or mark an item | You add, edit or deactivate income, a bill, a contribution or a loan |
| Tells you | A dollar amount for this month | Whether your month is structurally covered, and by how much |
The long view
WealthCast: your investments over time
Investment Accounts describe what you hold: a TFSA, an RRSP, an FHSA, an RESP, a non-registered account, each with an owner and an institution. A WealthCast is a dated snapshot of what those accounts were worth. Record snapshots over the years and CountAhead turns them into a history.
Recording a snapshot
Pick a date, then enter each account's Value and, if you know it, its year-to-date performance. A blank field means Unknown, which is different from zero: unknown values are never counted as $0.
- Snapshot date
- One WealthCast per date, and the date cannot be changed afterwards.
- Value
- As of that date. The previous snapshot is shown for reference only; blank means Unknown.
- YTD Performance
- Optional, and needs a Value on the same row.
Portfolio Overview and Performance History
Portfolio Overview shows the latest known values: the total, the split by owner, type and category, and your available Contribution Room, which you keep up to date yourself for each person’s TFSA, RRSP and FHSA (an RESP has no room record here). Performance History keeps one year-to-date figure per year, so you can compare years at a glance.
- Available Contribution Room
- Added up across everyone in the Family, from the TFSA, RRSP and FHSA amounts each person records.
- CAD only
- Totals, splits and performance count accounts held in CAD. An account in another currency is still recorded, just not converted into these figures.
- Account and period
- Choose an account and how many years to show.
- Latest
- Each year shows the most recent figure you actually recorded for it. A later snapshot that leaves YTD blank does not erase it.
Sharing
Family & access
A Family is one shared set of finances. Each person in it is a Family Member, and members who sign in do so with one of three levels of access.
- Family Owner
- One person, who invites members, sets their access and manages Family settings. The Owner also has full read and write access.
- Read only
- Sees everything, including Activity, and changes nothing. MonthCast shows a View page instead of Update.
- No app access
- A member who is part of the finances (a child, say) but does not sign in.
Read & write members can do the everyday work: create and update MonthCasts, record WealthCasts, and edit definitions. Access is changed by the Owner from Family Members.
Staying on track
Reminders & security
Email reminders are off until you turn them on. One switch controls all of them; each reminder under it can then be set on its own.
- Email Notifications
- The master switch. Nothing is sent while it is off.
- Upcoming Payment
- One email when bills, loan payments or contributions at or above your threshold are due within your lead time.
- MonthCast Reminder
- A nudge before the 1st to create the next month.
- Year-End WealthCast Reminder
- A once-a-year nudge to record a December snapshot while it is still allowed.
Keeping your account safe
- Email MFA
- Adds a one-time code, sent to your email, to each sign-in. Optional for Family members.
- Authenticator App
- Shown as Coming Soon; it is not available yet.
- Active Sessions
- Lists the devices signed in to your account and lets you sign out of all the others at once.
How to use it: set up Email MFA once from Settings, change your password from the same place, and glance at Active Sessions if a device goes missing.
That is the whole idea.
Define what is coming, keep one month at a time up to date, and let Leftover, the Forecast and Financial Health do the arithmetic.