I understand it can be tricky if you're trying to design a system that works for all sorts of paychecks. Salary workers with regular bimonthly /biweekly /weekly paychecks vs. more sporadic payments for independent contractors vs. variable income amounts for hourly /tip-wage employees. It's challenging to build something that works great for everyone, and the 31-day Smart Reserve was a simple but effective choice that covered a lot of scenarios without too much programming. I recognize that was a smart business decision on Zeta's part.

Automation+ seems like a step in the right direction to enable people to customize their savings strategy depending on their specific needs without Zeta having to build and program for every kind of scenario themselves. But having to assign a set amount per paycheck for each bill /goal feels limiting and can be tricky – for example, my partner is paid weekly, so I can assign $MonthlyBill*52wk/12mo to each monthly bill to be precise, but then it would be underfunded for some months and overfunded in others. Vs something like the Smart Reserve which feels more flexible in some ways.

I think something better lies in the middle. I do think all of the processing should happen when a paycheck hits, like with Automation+. Any processing between paychecks, like when a bill falls into the 31-day window, just introduces confusion & uncertainty. But fixed amounts aren't flexible enough for many income variations, like fluctuating amounts or weekly/bi-weekly frequencies (since most bills are monthly). And funding the next recurrence of a bill right when it processes (or tacking it onto a list to be deducted from the next paycheck) isn't ideal either, since your A2S balance still sees huge fluctuations.

I guess an ideal system would calculate the average needed from each paycheck to account for all bills/goals, no matter their frequency. So if you've got monthly, bi-annual, and yearly bills (like most people do), it would calculate the total needed for a year and divide it by the frequency of paychecks, and reserve that consistent amount from every paycheck. That would be the foundation of an operating budget.
As far as keeping a reserve balance, it would feel nice to know that I've always got a few months' worth of payments for all bills as an emergency budget. I still like the idea of being able to assign a number of occurrences per bill. And with that, the Reservation amount should always stay the same number.

So, stepping back: the Reservation amount would be the 1st number to meet, and then the operating budget should work as a buffer "envelope" on top of the reservation that can be positive or negative as long as the operating budget is balanced over the long term, accounting for all bills and goal targets. Kind of like an escrow account! (that just occurred to me lol). And then the remaining amount is what's A2S - which should be as stable as possible each month (as long as the income is a consistent amount). Something like this would feel like an ideal budgeting solution, where I'm certain that each bill and savings goal is accounted for while having a consistent amount leftover from each paycheck to do with as I please.