Help / Reminders

Frequency and scheduling

A reminder's schedule is determined by three fields: Frequency, Every, and Start Date. Together they answer "how often does this happen, and when does the first one fall?" This page covers each in detail, plus the limits on the Every multiplier.

The core idea

LedgerBear generates future occurrences by repeatedly adding Every × Frequency to the Start Date. No exceptions, no calendar heuristics. That keeps the behavior predictable but means the Start Date matters a lot: a rent reminder starting on the 1st keeps landing on the 1st forever.

Frequency

Four options:

  • Daily — one occurrence every N days.
  • Weekly — one occurrence every N weeks, on the same day of the week as the Start Date.
  • Monthly — one occurrence every N months, on the same day of the month as the Start Date.
  • Yearly — one occurrence every N years, on the same month and day as the Start Date.

"Same day of the month" is the obvious thing: if Start Date is March 15, a monthly reminder lands on April 15, May 15, and so on.

Every

The Every field is a multiplier, offered as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 in the dropdown:

  • Frequency Monthly, Every 1 → every month (the most common).
  • Frequency Weekly, Every 2 → every two weeks (biweekly paychecks).
  • Frequency Monthly, Every 3 → every three months (quarterly dues).
  • Frequency Yearly, Every 1 → once a year (insurance renewals).

For anything in the 1–6 range, the dropdown covers it. Larger values are technically supported by the backend (up to 31 for daily, 52 for weekly, 11 for yearly) but not exposed in the UI — if you have a use case that needs them, let us know.

Start Date

The date of the first occurrence. Every future occurrence is derived from this by repeated addition of Every × Frequency. Practical notes:

  • Pick the Start Date in the future for forward-looking reminders. A past Start Date works fine too, but the forecast will start counting occurrences from after today, not from the Start Date.
  • For a biweekly paycheck, the Start Date should be the next upcoming payday. LedgerBear walks forward in 14-day steps from there.
  • For a monthly bill, pick the first upcoming due date.

If you set a Start Date, change Every, and save, the schedule shifts around your new multiplier starting from that Start Date.

What happens at month boundaries

A monthly reminder whose Start Date is the 31st lands on the 31st of every month that has a 31st — February gets skipped forward to match calendar behavior (the exact treatment depends on how the underlying date library rolls over, but in practice picking dates in the 1–28 range avoids this entirely).

Practical advice: for monthly reminders that should "land on the last day," pick the 28th. It's consistent and good enough for almost every bill.

What LedgerBear doesn't support (yet)

The reminder form exposes simple recurrence (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly with a multiplier). More complex patterns — "the second Tuesday of every month", "every weekday except the 15th", etc. — are not in the current UI. If you need something that complex, the usual workaround is to create multiple reminders that collectively produce the right pattern.