Track progress with snapshots and milestones

Snapshots and Milestones let you build a history in Beyond Payday instead of only ever seeing today's numbers. A Snapshot captures your net worth, income, and bills at a point in time; a Milestone marks a life event like a new job or a move. Both are free, and both show up together on your dashboard's historical chart.

Current income uses enabled recurring sources active on the date being captured. Future, ended and one-time entries do not increase that current baseline. Gross income includes bonuses counted toward totals, tips, per diem and stipends, using the same income calculation as the Income page.

Steps

Save a Snapshot

1. Go to Dashboard (opens in a new tab) and scroll down to Historical Tracking.
2. Click Snapshots.
3. Click Create from Current to capture today's numbers automatically, or Add Manually to enter numbers for a past date.
4. If you're entering one manually, fill in the Date, Monthly Gross Income, Monthly Taxes & Deductions, Monthly Needs, Monthly Wants, Total Assets (Exclude Insurance, HSA, 529), and Total Debts — Notes are optional. Beyond Payday calculates Money left over and Net Worth for you as you type.
5. Click Create Snapshot.

Automatic snapshots

Automatic snapshots are on by default. After you update your balances, Beyond Payday saves a snapshot once they've been quiet for a day — at most one a month. To turn it off (owner or spouse only), click Snapshots and switch off Automatic snapshots.

Log a Milestone

1. From Historical Tracking, click Milestones.
2. Click Add Milestone.
3. Enter a Date (a year like "2020", a month and year like "7/2021", or a full date like "7/2/2021"), a Title (for example "Lost Job" or "Sold House"), and optionally a Category (for example "Employment") and Description.
4. Click Create Milestone to save it.

How it works

• Each Snapshot becomes one point on the Net Worth and Disc. Income (Money left over) lines in the historical chart, plotted by month.
• Each Milestone becomes a small green pin on the chart, grouped by the month it falls in — hover to see its title.
• If you have a permanent life policy and snapshots on both sides of October 5, 2026, a dashed line marks "Life insurance cash value counted from Oct 5, 2026". Net worth started counting that cash value that day, so a step up there is not new money.
• Create from Current pulls live numbers from your Income, Bills, Assets, and Debts pages the moment you click it — the fastest way to build a history without typing anything by hand.
• You can edit or delete any Snapshot or Milestone later from the same Snapshots or Milestones button — look for the pencil and trash icons next to each entry.
• Automatic snapshots show an Automatic label in the Snapshots list. Each one is dated on the day of your last balance update, and hovering it on the chart says Automatic snapshot — plus a note when some balances in it hadn't been checked in a while (for example "2 balances not checked in a while: Old Checking (14 months)"). The owner and spouse see the account names; other members see the count.
• If you later fix a past balance (from a record's balance history), any automatic snapshot on or after that date updates itself within about an hour and notes "Updated Sep 30 after a balance fix".
• Saving your own snapshot in a month replaces that month's automatic one, and no automatic snapshot is saved within 14 days of one of yours.
• Editing an automatic snapshot makes it a manual one: it won't update on its own anymore.

Good to know

• Both features are free on every plan — they're gated only by your family permissions, not by Pro.
• A snapshot stores your total assets, total debts and net worth, so a family member sees each total only with access to the areas behind it: total debts needs Debts, and total assets and net worth need both Assets and Debts. Saving a snapshot needs both too.
• Snapshots and Milestones are hidden from child accounts — children never see Historical Tracking.
• Automatic snapshots only follow balance updates. If you haven't updated anything, none is saved. Once your newest snapshot (automatic or your own) is three months old, the dashboard shows a reminder above the chart: update your balances, debts, and income, then click Take snapshot. Click Not now to hide the reminder for 30 days.
• Snapshots store totals. For one account's or debt's balance over time, open its balance history from the Assets or Debts page.