Cashflow alerts: hear before an account runs short

A bill doesn't bounce on the day you happen to look. It bounces on the day it comes out. An alert watches the projected balance for you and tells you, in one sentence, which account drops too low, on which day, and why. Here it is on the budget: Prairie Credit Union Chequing drops below its Alarm amount on November 12 when usual spending is included, the ENMAX bill is the cause, and Bow Valley Savings has enough money to cover it.

The same line appears on Budget, Accounts and Cashflow. Only a few are shown, then a count of the rest, so thirty accounts never fill the page. Dismiss hides an alert for that date. Mintro doesn't create alerts for you: if you have none, Cashflow offers to set one up in one click, watching each cash account two weeks ahead for a balance below $0, and telling you in the app and by email.

The first choice is which balance to watch: Each cash account, All cash, or one account by name. Each cash account is the suggested choice, and the Reyes household shows why. All their cash adds up to $26,834.98 and never comes close to trouble, but chequing on its own drops below Alarm on the 12th. A total can look fine while the account your bills are paid from runs dry, because the money is sitting in savings.

When one account drops below its amount, Mintro looks at your other cash accounts and names one that stays above its own Alarm amount for the whole period, by at least the amount you are short: savings has enough to cover it. That is only a suggestion, never a transfer. Moving the money is up to you.

Cards don't have alerts. For a card, the chart shows what you owe against its limit, which never goes below $0, and the Cashflow screen already shows the day a card gets close to its limit or goes over.

Look ahead: 2 weeks, 1 month, or 3 months. Two weeks gives you time to move money; three months gives you time to change your plans.

Alert me when: the balance would go below $0, below your Warning amount, below your Alarm amount, or below an amount you type. Warning and Alarm are amounts you set for each account under Alarm and Warning in Cashflow's Settings tab: the chart turns yellow at or below Warning, and red at or below Alarm. If you choose Warning for an account that has no Warning amount yet, the alert tells you so (No Warning line set) with a link to set one, and starts working as soon as you do.

Forecast counts: scheduled bills only, or bills and projected spending, the same two views as the chart. Bills only tells you when your fixed costs alone won't fit. With spending tells you when your usual month won't fit.

A note in the app means the alert line on the budget. Telling your agent sends a cashflow alert with the account, the day, the cause, and the amounts, through Mintro's events feed and any webhook you have set up, so ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi can bring it up the next time you talk, or do what you told it to do in that case. It is also told when the problem goes away. Email goes to the person who created the alert, and nobody else.

Emails leave out amounts unless you tick Show amounts in email. Without it, the email names the account, the day, and the cause, and mentions that the alert can show amounts if you want them. With it, the email also says how low the balance goes, how far short that is, and how much the account that could cover it has to spare.

Mintro checks again whenever something changes the projection: new transactions from the bank, a transaction you enter, a bill added or moved, or an amount or alert you save. It does not check on a timer of its own. The alert line in the app and your agent are updated straight away. Email follows the rules below, so you hear about every time a balance is going to drop too low, without an evening of edits filling your inbox:

• It waits until nothing has changed for 15 minutes, then checks again. If the problem was fixed in that time, no email is sent.
• You get one email when a low balance first shows up. You are not emailed again about the same one.
• You are emailed again only if the low day moves 3 or more days earlier.
• You get one reminder when the low day is 2 days away.
• You never get more than one email a day for the same alert and account.
• A low balance only counts as over once the balance has stayed clear for a full day. If it drops again within that day, it is treated as the same one.
• If the balance is already too low when you create the alert, you get one email, and after that the alert line in the app keeps showing it.
• You are never emailed when everything is clear again. The alert line in the app simply disappears.

Already know about it? Mute until the balance recovers is right there on the alert line, and every alert email ends with a link to a page that asks you before it mutes anything. A muted alert shows no line in the app and sends no email, though your agent is still told, with a note that it is muted. Once the balance has stayed clear for a full day, the mute ends by itself.

A low-balance alert is about the future. Two other alerts are about something that just happened, and they are under Alerts in Cashflow's Settings tab as Also tell me when. Both are off until you turn them on; the Reyes household has both turned on.

Payday missed tells you when a scheduled income is two business days late and nothing like it has arrived in its account: a Friday paycheque counts as late on Tuesday. A deposit under a different name still counts if it is at least half the expected pay, so a payroll company changing its name doesn't set it off. The alert tells you what your balance looks like without that paycheque, and the day it would drop below Alarm, if it does, because the projection already leaves out a late paycheque.

Bill bigger than usual tells you when a scheduled bill comes out at least 20% and at least $10 above its usual amount, meaning the scheduled amount, or its recent average if that is higher. It names the bill and says by how much, so a $142 power bill that comes in at $180 is something you hear about right away, not a surprise at the end of the month.

You hear about each one once: in the app beside the low-balance alerts, through your agent, or by email at most once a day. Emails leave out amounts unless you tick the box for them. Muting works the same way as for low-balance alerts: Mute until the balance recovers on the alert line, or the link at the end of the email. A missed paycheque clears when it arrives; a bigger bill clears when it is corrected, or after two weeks.

In Cashflow's Settings tab, under Alerts, Weekly digest sends you one email a week, on the day you pick, from 7am your time. It tells you the lowest your balance will get in the month ahead and when, whether it goes below Alarm, how much is safe to spend until your next income, any alerts that are currently active, and how many bills are due that week. The forecast counts picks the view, bills and projected spending or scheduled bills only, the same two as the chart. It is off until you turn it on, and it never changes anything in your budget.

It leaves out amounts unless you tick Show amounts in the email; without them it says the same things in words. You never get two in one week, even if you change the day. Every digest ends with a link that turns it off, without needing to sign in.

You can do everything on this page by asking ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi. Your agent can create an alert, change one, list them all with where each stands, mute one, turn on Payday missed or Bill bigger than usual, and turn the weekly digest on or off. Ask “will any account go too low this month?” and it reads the same projection the alert does, and tells you which view it used.