What is Canvas?
Canvas is a blank page for working things out by hand. Open it and you can draw, write, and type notes freely. It isn't a general-purpose sketchpad, though: each canvas belongs to a paycheck or to a budget, and the paycheck's real numbers are one tap away.
Two kinds of canvas
A paycheck canvas belongs to one pay period. Tap Canvas on a paycheck on the Track tab of the home screen and you open that period's page. The app bar reads Notes for followed by the paycheck date.
Move to a different paycheck and you move to a different canvas. Notes you make for one period stay with it.
A budget canvas belongs to the whole plan. Tap Canvas at the top of the Analyze tab and you open it. The app bar reads Notes for the whole budget. It's the place to gather working notes that don't belong to any one check. You can also send a page there from any paycheck canvas. See Working with Pages.
Your numbers, on hand
A paycheck canvas has a Bills panel. It lists the paycheck's housing, debts, and expenses, with totals for Paycheck, Bills total, Savings, and Remaining. Tap any line and it lands on the page as a text note, so you're working with your real figures rather than copying them across.
There's also a small Calculator panel for the arithmetic in the margin. Both panels float over the page and can be dragged out of the way. See Tools & Drawing.
A budget canvas covers every check, so it has the calculator but no Bills panel.
What it's for
Some financial thinking doesn't fit into fields. You're looking at a tight pay period and want to work out what happens if you move one bill, skip a discretionary purchase, and put the difference against a card. The app can't give you a form for that. You have to work it out yourself.
Canvas is space to do that with the actual numbers in front of you.
Typical uses:
- ›Sketching how to cover a period where bills bunched up
- ›Working out a "what if I moved this" scenario before rebuilding
- ›Circling the bills you intend to cut and doing the arithmetic in the margin
- ›Annotating a period you want to remember something about
- ›Jotting notes during a conversation with a partner about the month ahead
Where it's best
Canvas is at its most natural on a tablet with a stylus, where writing is as fast as thinking. A stylus also gets pressure-sensitive pen lines, and a palm resting on the screen while you write is ignored. It works with a finger on a phone, though drawing precision suffers.
A page keeps its shape across devices. Something written on a phone opens undistorted on a tablet, scaled to fit.
If you're mostly on a phone, the text tool tends to be more useful than freehand.
What it isn't
It isn't connected to your plan. Nothing you write on a canvas changes your budget, your bills, or your projections. It's a scratch surface. If you work something out here and want to act on it, make the change in the Builder. See Editing & Rebuilding a Budget.
It isn't a document manager. There's no library of canvases to browse. You reach a canvas through its paycheck or its budget.
It's a Thrive feature
Canvas is locked on the Free plan. The page area shows Canvas requires a subscription plan. with an Upgrade button.
Sharing is gated the same way, so a lapsed subscription locks both. See What's Included with Thrive and Sharing & Exporting.
Saving
You don't save manually. Canvas saves on its own a moment after each change, and again when you close the screen.
A cloud icon in the app bar shows where things stand: a tick when everything is saved, a spinner while saving, and a red cloud if a save failed. Tap the red cloud to try again.