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Updated 9 min read

Savings goals: tracking a project, month by month

A trip, a bike, a down payment, an emergency cushion: people rarely save “in general”. They save for something, and often for a date. Arca’s Goals page tracks those projects. You say how much you are aiming for, what holds the money — an account or an envelope — and, if you like, by when. Arca tells you where you stand, and how much to put aside each month.

The page opens from the Goals entry of the More section, in the sidebar (on a phone, in the More sheet). Search (⌘K or Ctrl+K) leads there too.

A savings goal measures; it moves nothing

A savings goal doesn’t move a cent. It assigns nothing to an envelope, doesn’t count towards “To assign” and changes no envelope’s need. It reads a balance and compares it with your target.

To create one: New goal, then four fields.

  • Name.
  • Target amount.
  • Track the balance of: An account or An envelope, then which one.
  • Target date (optional), to the day.

With no account and no envelope, Save refuses and says so: “Choose an account or an envelope to track.” A goal that tracked nothing would stay at zero forever. Closed accounts aren’t offered, except the one a goal already tracks; on the envelope side, only spending envelopes that aren’t hidden are, plus the one the goal already tracks.

What the progress follows

Progress is never stored: Arca works it out again each time it is shown, from what the goal tracks.

  • An account: its balance today. An entry dated tomorrow only counts from tomorrow.
  • An envelope: its available amount for the current month, counted over the accounts the budget tracks. Assigning money raises it; spending from the envelope lowers it, and the progress with it.

Fix an entry, move some money: the card follows, with nothing to re-enter. Arca connects to no bank, so the balance it tracks is the one from your entries and imports. An account dedicated to the project reads best: a goal backed by your checking account rises and falls with your salary and your bills.

The card shows a percentage, a bar and two amounts: what is tracked, “of” the target. The percentage is rounded down, so 99.95% shows as “99%”, and “100%” only appears once the goal is reached. A negative balance leaves the bar empty; a balance above the target leaves it full.

The goal is expressed in the currency of what it tracks, with no conversion. An account in dollars gives a goal in dollars, and the target amount is entered in that currency, shown next to the field. An envelope counts in the budget’s currency.

At 100%, the card says “Reached”. Nothing fires: Arca doesn’t move the money and doesn’t close the goal. What comes next is up to you — spend it, aim higher, delete the goal.

The monthly amount

With a target date, the card adds a line, for example “Save ≈ €400.00/mo by Mar 2027”. The calculation is the one used by the “By date” envelope target: what is left to gather, divided by the months left, the deadline’s month included, rounded up to the cent. Only the deadline’s month counts, not its day: whether it is 15 March or 31 March, March is a month in which you can still put money aside.

A made-up example. On 12 October 2026, you create “Cargo bike”: €3,000 by 15 March 2027, backed by a savings account that already holds €600.

  • €2,400 is left. From October to March, October and March included, there are six months: €400 a month. The card shows 20%.
  • In November, the calculation starts again from what is really in the account:
    • you put in €400: €2,000 is left over five months, still €400;
    • you put nothing in: €2,400 over five months, €480;
    • you put in €600: €1,800 over five months, €360.

On the very day you put in October’s €400, the line drops to €333.34: October still counts among the six months. It goes back to €400 in November.

A skipped month doesn’t turn into a hidden debt: it is spread over the months that follow. In March, the deadline’s month, the card asks for everything that is missing.

With no target date, there is no monthly line: the card gives the percentage and the two amounts.

Deadline passed, goal not tracked

From the month after the deadline, no monthly amount is offered any more. The card says what is missing, in amber, for example “Deadline passed — €400.00 to go”, and its bar turns amber too. A new target date restarts the calculation.

A goal that no longer tracks anything — its envelope was deleted, or its account is gone — shows “Not tracked” instead of the percentage, and “Choose an account or an envelope to track.” A 0% would be a lie: nothing is being measured any more. Deleting an envelope doesn’t delete its goals: they let go of it and wait for a new link. When it is the account that is gone, the card doesn’t show the target either, since its currency is no longer known.

Deleting, and going back

Tap the card to edit the goal; the bin, at the bottom of the sheet, deletes it. A message confirms “Goal “Cargo bike” deleted.” and offers Undo. ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) does the same.

Achievements

Two achievements on the Achievements page are about savings goals: Goal set — create your first savings goal — and Goal reached — reach 100% of a savings goal. Once unlocked, they stay earned, even if the goal drops below 100% or you delete it: Arca keeps them in your budget, with their date. Until “Goal reached” is unlocked, its bar follows your furthest-along goal.

Savings goal or envelope target?

Arca has two kinds of goals, and their names tell them apart.

  • An envelope target is set on an envelope, in the Budget. It says how much to assign to that envelope — every month (“Monthly”), every week (“Weekly”), by a deadline (“By date”), to keep a level (“Refill”) — or it sets a spending cap (“Limit”), which funds nothing. For the others, what is missing to meet them goes into the envelope’s need.
  • A savings goal lives on the Goals page. It measures an account or an envelope, and asks nothing of the budget.

With a deadline, both apply the same formula. What sets them apart is what they look at and what they steer. A “By date” target follows its envelope’s available amount and tells you what to assign this month. A savings goal can also follow an account outside the budget, a savings account for instance, that the budget doesn’t see.

For a bill that comes back every year, the “By date” target is the right tool: annual bills shows it step by step. For a project you save for alongside the budget, it is the savings goal.

A reminder of a large expense, in the envelope target

A yearly expense — an insurance premium, a service — is the one people forget to plan for. Research measures it. Howard and his colleagues followed 187 members of a Canadian credit union for five weeks. They had predicted, on average, $2,276.74 of spending for the month; they spent $2,693.51, a prediction 15.5% too low. According to the authors, people predict from their usual expenses, and unusual ones stay out of sight. Asking participants to think about reasons why the month might differ from usual raised their predictions by 36.7%, and the gap stopped being significant. Sussman and Alter had shown the same blind spot in 2012: exceptional expenses are underestimated overall, and overspent one by one, because each one seems unique.

Arca recalls those expenses with a fact taken from your entries. When you open the target of an envelope that doesn’t have one yet, and one month of the past year cost it clearly more than usual, the editor opens on “By date” and writes, under the amount, for example:

By date: €420.00 for March 2027

You paid €420.00 in March 2026.

Use fills in the amount and the deadline, at the end of the same month next year. If you ignore it, the suggestion leaves nothing behind.

It only appears when all of these hold:

  • the envelope has no target yet;
  • it has at least twelve closed months of history;
  • one of those months cost it at least 2.5 times its monthly average over those twelve months — the most recent, if there are several;
  • that month was an outflow: a refund you received is never presented as a payment;
  • the same month next year is still ahead: nothing is suggested for the current month.

A caveat about these studies: they measure how accurate a prediction is, not saving, and they did not test an app. Nothing proves that a reminder in Arca makes anyone save more. It only brings into view what the prediction leaves out.

The suggestion learns from your entries, so it obeys the “Suggest from my entries” switch, in Settings, “Data & privacy” section, on by default. Turned off, no reserve is suggested any more. Turned back on, it returns: nothing is stored, it is worked out again each time the editor opens. What Arca learns from your entries details everything that switch turns off.

Going further

Sources