Cron Jobs¶

Comaney requires two management commands to run on a schedule inside the web container. Without them, recurring expenses are not generated, due-date notifications are not sent, auto-settle does not fire, and end-of-month rollover does not happen.

Required cron jobs¶

`run_cron`: every 5 minutes¶

*/5 * * * * <user> docker compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml exec -T web python manage.py run_cron

What it does:

Materialises recurring expenses. For each active ScheduledExpense, computes upcoming instances (based on the recurrence rule) and creates Expense records for them if they don't already exist.
Sends due-date notifications. Scans all unsettled expenses with notify=True and sends email alerts when an expense is in the soon (2–4 days away), tomorrow, today, or late (overdue) class, but only if it hasn't already sent that class for this expense.
Auto-settles expenses. For expenses with auto_settle_on_due_date=True, marks them settled when their due date passes.
Processes end-of-month rollover. When a user's financial month transitions, checks whether unspent budget should be deposited to savings or carried over, and creates the appropriate Expense record.
Resets the demo user (if enabled). When ENABLE_DEMO_USERS=TRUE, checks whether the demo account's last_seen is older than one week. If so, deletes the account and recreates it with a clean slate. See Demo user for configuration.

`reset_trial_budgets`: monthly (1st of each month)¶

0 0 1 * * <user> docker compose -f /path/to/docker-compose.yml exec -T web python manage.py reset_trial_budgets

What it does: Resets ai_trial_budget_spent to zero for every user. This allows each user a fresh allowance of the shared Anthropic trial key in the new calendar month.

Setting up cron on the host¶

The cron jobs run on the host machine via docker exec (or docker compose exec), not inside the container's own cron daemon. This is intentional; container restart and lifecycle management stays with Docker, not with cron inside the container.

Example `/etc/cron.d/comaney`¶

*/5 * * * * comaney docker compose -f /home/comaney/comaney/docker-compose.yml exec -T web python manage.py run_cron >> /var/log/comaney-cron.log 2>&1

0 0 1 * * comaney docker compose -f /home/comaney/comaney/docker-compose.yml exec -T web python manage.py reset_trial_budgets >> /var/log/comaney-cron.log 2>&1

Replace comaney with the system user that owns the docker-compose file, and adjust the path accordingly.

Notes¶

The -T flag disables pseudo-TTY allocation, which is required when running docker compose exec from cron (no interactive terminal).
If you use docker exec instead of docker compose exec, replace the command with:
```
docker exec -T comaney-web-1 python manage.py run_cron
```
where comaney-web-1 is the container name shown by docker ps.
Redirect output (>> logfile 2>&1) to avoid cron sending emails for every invocation.

What happens if cron is not running¶

Feature	Effect without cron
Recurring expenses	Not generated; recurring transactions never appear
Due-date notifications	Never sent
Auto-settle	Never fires; expenses stay unsettled indefinitely
End-of-month rollover	Never happens; no carry-over or savings deposit is created
AI trial budget reset	Never resets; users stay at their monthly cap permanently
Demo user reset	Never fires; demo account accumulates data indefinitely

Comaney will otherwise continue to function normally; you can still create, edit, and view expenses manually.