Entering a monthly budget item that doesn't occur every month

This article is relevant, especially in the UK, for Council tax payments (which are paid monthly but only for 10 months in each year, and with a unique first instalment), but want to have a scheduled bill and make the budget work properly.

It can be used wherever you have a payment which occurs regularly, but you need to occasionally or regularly not pay it.

Taking the council tax example, if you set up a monthly payment using the figure that applies to the majority of payments (i.e. the payment you make 9 months of the year) in bills/deposits. This then appears as a Scheduled Bill in the Budget Planner.

Next, in Customised Spending (Edit the budget and then make sure you're editing the expenses) in the Budget Planner, put in negative amounts for February and March (the two months when council tax is not paid) to zero out the amount budgeted. These negative values should be added on the ‘Other expenses for Bills:Council Tax’, as pressing ‘edit’ on the scheduled bill will show you the bill from the bills/deposits area which isn't what you want.

Add the difference figure for April (which is the 'first' month of the council tax year, and is sometimes higher or lower). This way the budget exactly matches the annual Council Tax demand.

On the due dates in February and March, the recorded payment must be changed manually to zero.

If you are adapting this to other payments, then you just need to add negative amounts to months where you don't pay the bill, and difference amounts where amounts are slightly different.

Thanks to Rednelle from the UK Newsgroup for most of the contents of this article