Bill Tracker

A checklist that comes back

Most to-do apps are built around tasks that happen once. Paying the bills is the opposite: the same ten or fifteen items, every month, forever. Tick "pay the water bill" off in an ordinary task list and it is gone — you have to remember to create it again, and if you forget, nothing tells you. Bill Tracker is built the other way round. You describe each bill once, and the list rebuilds itself for every month you open.

How it works

Add each recurring payment with how often it falls due and roughly what it costs. The This month tab then shows exactly what is due in the month you are looking at, sorted so anything already past its date is at the top and anything already paid sinks to the bottom. Tick a bill as you pay it. A box appears with the amount already filled in from your estimate, so if the electric bill came in higher than usual you can correct it in one keystroke — or leave it and move on.

Nothing is "reset" at the start of a new month, because nothing needed to be. A bill is not marked paid; it is marked paid for a period — September, or the third quarter, or 2027. When you page forward to October, the app looks for October's record, finds none, and shows the bill as unpaid. That also means the app cannot lose track of where you are if you do not open it for two months, and paging back to August still shows August exactly as you left it.

What the totals mean

The three figures at the top are for the month on screen. Paid adds up what you actually recorded paying — the real amount if you typed one, your estimate if you did not. Remaining is what the bills you have not yet ticked are expected to cost. If any bill in the month has no amount at all, a line appears saying the totals are a floor rather than a figure; a monthly total that is quietly short by one variable bill is more misleading than no total.

How often a bill can repeat

Six options cover almost everything people actually pay: monthly on a day you choose, weekly on a weekday, quarterly, twice a year, yearly, and a one-off for a single dated payment. For the quarterly and twice-yearly options you pick one month of the cycle and the rest follow — a water bill anchored to February falls due in February, May, August and November.

Days that some months do not have are handled rather than skipped. A bill set to the 31st falls on the 30th in April and on the 28th — or the 29th in a leap year — in February. It never disappears from a month or turns up twice in the next one.

Starting and ending

Every bill has a start date, so adding one today does not invent a year of unpaid months behind it. When a bill genuinely ends — a loan paid off, a subscription cancelled — give it an end date rather than deleting it. It stops appearing in new months, and everything you recorded paying stays in the History tab. Deleting a bill removes its payment record with it, which is the right thing only for something you added by mistake.

Your data stays on this device

Everything is stored in your own browser and never sent anywhere. There is no account, no server and no tracking, and the tool works with no connection at all. The flip side is that clearing your browser's site data clears your bills too, so if the list matters, use Export JSON now and then — the file it saves can be read straight back in with Import.

One thing this tool deliberately does not do is remind you. It cannot send a notification or an email; it is a page you open. Think of it as the piece of paper on the kitchen counter, not an assistant.