Triggers are the way that DailyBalance handles recurring tasks. You can find all of your Triggers in the “Triggers” root folder in the Master List.

Triggers act like templates for recurring tasks. When you create a Trigger, you create a recurring schedule just like you would for a repeating appointment in a calendar app. When the Trigger comes “due”, the Trigger will “fire” and DailyBalance will create a new Task in your Inbox folder. The Task gets created by the Trigger, but they are separate after that point.

For example, if you have a Trigger for “Pay the Bills”, you might create this with a monthly recurring pattern and have it due on the first day of the month. When the first day of the next month comes around (say March 1st), DailyBalance will “fire” the Trigger and a Task will get created in your Inbox folder called “Pay the Bills”. The due date on the new Task will be March 1st. Now if you want to delay it a bit, you can change the due date on the Task to March 5th. That will set the due date for that Task but won’t affect the “Pay the Bills” Trigger. If you looked at the Trigger at this point, you would see that it is set to fire next on April 1st.

This behavior lets you keep your “recurring template” separate from the Tasks that get “spawned”. This keeps things simple and avoids a lot of confusion. The “Pay the Bills” Task can be checked, edited, or deleted without affecting the Trigger that created it.

To see this in action, watch the How to use triggers video.