Rhythms, months and short months
Choose a daily interval or calendar rhythm and see how Ebbe handles short months and instalments.
On this page
Every rhythm in Ebbe follows one of two patterns: a fixed number of days, or a particular day in selected months. Familiar choices such as weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly are shortcuts for those patterns.
Every N days
A payment that repeats on a fixed interval, counted from the item’s start date. Weekly is 7, fortnightly is 14. Anything from 1 to 366 is allowed; a year is the sensible ceiling. For longer intervals, choose the relevant months instead.
This rhythm moves through the calendar. Groceries every 7 days is not the same as four times a month: some months contain five payments, just as they do on the account.
On a day of certain months
A list of months, and a day within them. Monthly is all twelve; quarterly is four; yearly is one. Any combination works — a bill that arrives in February and August is two months in the list.
The day is 1 to 30, or the last day of the month.
Why there is no 31st
Use last day of the month for payments due at month-end. It means the 28th or 29th in February, the 30th in April, and the 31st in May. This covers the same dates a 31st-day setting would produce, with a label that remains clear in every month.
The 30th is genuinely different and is offered: it is the last day only in the short months, and the 30th everywhere else.
What happens in February
The rule is: move to the last day that exists, never skip the month.
- The 30th falls on 28 February, or 29 in a leap year.
- The 30th falls on the 30th in April, June, September and November.
- “Last day” is 28, 29, 30 or 31 as the month requires.
The payment is always included. If its chosen day does not exist, Ebbe places it on the month’s final day instead of leaving it out.
Leap years are handled exactly, not approximated.
Instalments follow the same rule
A one-off split into monthly instalments keeps the exact date you chose for the first payment. Later payments use the same day of the month and move to the last day in shorter months. A purchase dated 31 January therefore has its February instalment on the 28th, or the 29th in a leap year.
Dates are never times
A date in Ebbe is a plain calendar date — a year, a month, a day. There is no time of day, no time zone, and no moment. That is why a payment cannot slip into the previous month for somebody reading in a different country, and why the date you type is the date you get.
How that date is written is your own setting: Settings → Appearance →
Date format offers several, from 20/04/2026 to April 20th, 2026. It
changes nothing but the display.
Where you set a rhythm
In the recurring item form. The preview box under the fields lists the next six dates as you type, so you can check the rhythm before saving.