Your Active Budget
One plan at a time is active. It's the one the rest of the app runs on.
Strictly, it's a plan — one of the plans a budget produced, like Aggressive or Minimum Effort. You make one active when you pick it on the results screen after building a budget, or later from the Archive.
What it controls
The active plan determines:
- ›Your paycheck schedule — the pay periods on the home screen
- ›Your bills — what appears in each paycheck
- ›Your dashboard — every number and chart in Analyze
- ›Your canvases — each canvas belongs to this budget or one of its paychecks
Change the active plan and all of that changes with it. It's the single setting with the widest reach in the app.
In the Archive, the active budget sits at the top in a card marked ACTIVE BUDGET and On Home, and its plan is tagged In use when you open it.
If nothing is active
If you've never picked a plan, Analyze shows Nothing to analyze yet with a Get Started! button.
If you've built budgets but haven't picked a plan, open one in the Archive and put a plan on Home. If you've never built a budget, start with Creating Your First Budget.
Switching to a different plan
Open any budget in the Archive, select a plan, and tap Use plan name at the bottom. A sheet asks Switch to plan name? and shows what you're on Now next to what you'll be on After. Tap Switch to confirm, or Not now to back out. You'll land on Home with the new plan.
This works for a different plan in the same budget or a plan in an older budget. If the plan you've selected is already active, the button reads On Home now.
Reasons you'd do this:
A plan is too aggressive. You picked Maximum Effort, discovered it doesn't survive an ordinary month, and want to go back to something sustainable. This is a good decision, not a retreat — see Understanding Your Results.
You were exploring. You built a scenario budget to see what a move or a purchase would do, switched to it to look around, and now want your real plan back.
Circumstances reverted. A temporary income change ended and the old plan fits again.
Switching plans is a Thrive feature. On the Free plan the button reads Upgrade to switch plans. See What's Included with Thrive.
What happens to your tracking
Each plan keeps its own tracking. The bills you've marked paid and the edits you've made on Home belong to the plan you made them on.
When you switch, the plan you're leaving stays in the Archive with everything you did to it, and it's all still there if you switch back. The plan you switch to brings its own paychecks, marks and edits — for a plan you've never used, that means none yet.
The paycheck schedule comes from the budget, so a budget built with a different next payday or pay frequency will lay out its periods differently.
Expect the dashboard to look different immediately after switching. It's reporting on a different plan.
Switch or rebuild?
Switch when a past budget still describes your situation accurately. Nothing has really changed; you just want a different plan.
Rebuild when your circumstances have moved — new income, a cleared debt, a move. An old budget put back on Home will project from figures that are no longer true.
If in doubt, open the budget in the Archive and look at What went in. If the income and debts listed there aren't your current ones, tap Edit in Builder and generate a fresh budget instead. See Editing & Rebuilding a Budget.
One at a time
However many budgets you have saved, only one plan drives the app. The others are reference and comparison material until you switch to them.