What You’ll Need to Get Started
You don’t need to connect a bank account, hand over your financial passwords, or arrive with a perfectly organized spreadsheet.
To start using Cn2cash, you’ll need:
- A Cn2cash account and an active subscription
- A reasonable estimate of the money you have available now
- Information about the income you expect to receive
- Your recent and current bills
- Any less-frequent income or expenses that may be easy to forget
Start With What You Know
Your first budget doesn’t have to be perfect.
Gather the information you already have, enter your regular income and expenses, and improve the budget as you go. Old bills, account statements, receipts, pay stubs, tax records, renewal notices, and recent emails can all help.
Cn2cash can only forecast from the information you enter, so greater accuracy will produce a more useful projection. But you don’t need to find every missing receipt before you begin.
Your Starting Balance
Start with the amount of money currently available to support the budget.
Depending on how you manage your finances, this might include balances from:
- Checking accounts
- Savings accounts used for regular expenses
- Cash on hand
- Other accounts you actively use to pay bills
You don’t need to give Cn2cash access to those accounts. You enter the relevant amounts yourself.
Regular Income
Gather information about income you receive on a predictable schedule, such as:
- Paychecks
- Retirement or pension income
- Social Security or benefit payments
- Regular business or freelance income
- Child support or other recurring payments
- Contributions from another member of the household
Record how much you normally receive and how often you receive it: weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, monthly, or on another schedule.
Irregular and Seasonal Income
Not all income arrives monthly.
Think about money you may receive only occasionally, including:
- Quarterly commissions
- Annual bonuses
- Tax refunds
- Seasonal work
- Periodic freelance payments
- Rebates
- Insurance reimbursements
- Expected gifts or distributions
Irregular income should be entered cautiously. A payment that might arrive is different from one you can reasonably expect.
Monthly and Recurring Bills
Your recent and current bills will usually provide most of what you need.
Common recurring expenses include:
- Rent or mortgage payments
- Utilities
- Internet and phone service
- Insurance
- Groceries
- Transportation
- Fuel
- Childcare
- Medical expenses
- Loan and credit-card payments
- Subscriptions and memberships
- Regular savings contributions
Review several months when possible. Some bills vary with the season, and a single month may not represent what you normally spend.
Quarterly, Annual, and Easily Forgotten Expenses
Monthly bills are only part of a real budget.
Look for expenses that occur every few months or once a year, such as:
- Property taxes
- Estimated tax payments
- Income-tax payments
- Vehicle registration
- Driver’s-license or professional-license renewals
- Insurance premiums
- School fees
- Membership renewals
- Software renewals
- Holiday spending
- Annual medical or dental expenses
- Home and vehicle maintenance
- Vacations
- Gifts
- Subscription renewals
These expenses can create major cash-flow problems precisely because they don’t appear every month. Adding them to Cn2cash allows the forecast to account for them before they arrive.
Debts and Payment Obligations
For each debt, gather:
- The normal payment amount
- The payment frequency
- The next due date
- Any expected final payment date
- Any planned extra payments
This may include credit cards, personal loans, vehicle loans, student loans, medical payment plans, tax obligations, or money owed to another person.
Cn2cash is designed to forecast cash flow. It does not require your account credentials, and it does not need every detail contained in a lender’s records.
Planned Purchases and Financial Changes
You can also include expenses or income changes that haven’t started yet.
Examples include:
- Buying a car
- Moving
- Purchasing a home
- Starting or ending a loan
- Changing jobs
- Retiring
- Adding a childcare expense
- Canceling a subscription
- Taking a vacation
- Making a major repair
- Beginning a savings plan
Cn2cash includes a testing mode that lets you try out planned purchases and financial changes before adding them to your working budget. You can use it to gauge how a new expense, income change, loan, or major purchase could affect your future cash flow.
These planned items are what turn a basic budget into a useful simulation.
Estimates Are Fine
You may not know every amount exactly.
Use a reasonable estimate, then compare your budget with actual bills and account statements as time passes. Update the numbers whenever your income, expenses, timing, or plans change.
After you’ve been using Cn2cash for a while, Cn2cash AI can use your past amounts to suggest likely future amounts. This can be especially helpful for expenses such as utility bills that rise and fall with the seasons.
A budget is not something you finish once. It is a working model of your financial life.
You Don’t Need to Provide
Cn2cash does not require:
- Bank-account usernames or passwords
- Credit-card credentials
- Brokerage credentials
- Automatic access to your financial accounts
- A complete historical record of every transaction
- Perfectly precise information before you begin
You remain responsible for checking your budget against your actual financial records and correcting it when necessary.
Ready to Begin?
Gather your current balances, regular income, recent bills, and any quarterly or annual items you can identify.
Then create your account, choose your subscription, and start building your budget.
You can fill in the gaps later. The important thing is to begin with an honest picture of the money coming in, the money going out, and the expenses waiting farther down the road.
