Planning a Move in Artful Agenda and Slate & Serif: Budget, Projects and Notes

By Kieran, Slate & Serif

The movers are booked. The deposit is paid. You still need a cleaner, an internet connection and somewhere to keep the three quotes and the reason you chose one. This is Slate & Serif's own comparison of how the two planners could handle one fictional move, including the money behind it.

I'd recommend Slate & Serif for a job like this if you want the planner to do the budget arithmetic and give the move a project space with room for its paperwork. What we didn't find in Artful Agenda's documentation is a budget that compares planned with actual spending.

Method. We compared our own product documentation with Artful Agenda's public documentation, checked on 3 November 2026, without a paid hands-on test. Where Artful's documents don't mention something, we say so; that's a gap in what we read, not proof it's missing.

The move

Here's the fictional move. Today is the 15th.

• Dates: you collect the keys on Friday the 20th at 4 pm, and the movers come on Saturday the 21st.
• Jobs:
  • book a cleaner for the old place;
  • forward your mail;
  • set up internet at the new place;
  • pack the kitchen, which is really six small jobs.
• Reference: three mover quotes (650, 720 and 810), the new landlord's number, the crew lead's number and the meter readings you'll take on the day.
• Money: you chose the 650 quote and paid a 200 deposit. The remaining 450 is due on moving day. You've also bought boxes and tape (64.50) and bubble wrap (23.50). Still to come are the cleaner (180), the internet connection fee (75) and pizza for the helpers (48).

All amounts are in one currency. Every number is invented.

The dates and the jobs

Slate & Serif. The key collection and the move are events. Each appears on Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Calendar, and if the movers shift to Sunday, you edit the event once. The jobs are to-dos, each placed on the day you mean to do it, and they also appear in the Monthly Plan task list. On the Weekly Overview, the 20th and 21st sit beside everything else you've entered for that week, so you can see what the week already holds before you add more.

Artful Agenda. Its getting-started guide documents repeating events with alarms (getting started). Since October 2026, tasks and goals can have subtasks on the Month, Week and Day tabs (subtasks). "Pack the kitchen" can carry its six steps underneath, and "Moved in by the 21st" could be a monthly goal with its own steps.

Its documented alarms, and the push notifications described in its FAQ (FAQ), can support reminders for the 450 balance and the cleaner's visit. Slate & Serif has reminder choices on entries, but private browser-notification previews aren't available yet, so you'd have to check the planner yourself.

The quotes and the phone numbers

This is where the two planners start to diverge.

Artful Agenda. Its Lists tab stores and sorts lists and notes, with pinning (getting started). The company's own comparison article describes notes and lists as searchable (Artful Agenda). You could keep the quotes and phone numbers in a pinned note, or spread them across several lists, and find them again.

Slate & Serif. The move gets a project space of its own. There are twelve project spaces with seven starting types, and you add sections as the job needs them. For this move, keep the following together:

• The kitchen packing steps.
• The three mover quotes and a note on why you chose 650. Keep this reference material separate from the actual spending you record in the Expense Tracker, below.
• Contact details for the landlord and the crew lead.

The meter readings can go in the same project on the day, or in a notebook. Keep them with the information you will return to on moving day.

The reason to choose Slate & Serif here is a dedicated project space, with each kind of information in its own section under the same job. By the second week of a move, with quotes, measurements, lease paperwork and five phone numbers in play, having them all under one job is easier to scan.

The money: planned costs and recorded payments

Slate & Serif. Monthly Finance keeps budget and actual columns, and the Expense Tracker feeds the actuals. For this example, keep the unpaid movers' balance separate from the expenses so you don't count the same payment twice:

1. The movers' balance is a bill. Enter a bill for the remaining 450, due on the 21st, with 450 budgeted. Its actual stays blank until you record the payment.
2. Everything else is an expense category. Allocate 650 to an expense category for the other moving costs. Each purchase goes into the Expense Tracker with a date, category, description and amount.

So the category shows 650 budgeted and 288 actual, which leaves 362.

That's where the planner's arithmetic stops and your judgment starts. The costs you already know are coming in that category add up to 303: the cleaner (180), the internet fee (75) and the pizza (48). Subtract that from 362 and your real cushion is 59, not 362.

Across the whole move you budgeted 1,100: 650 for costs plus the 450 balance. You expect to spend 1,041: 288 already, 303 still to come and the 450 balance. You're 59 under, if nothing else comes up.

At the month level, the 450 balance is already counted in Left to budget, because it's planned. It isn't yet counted in Left to spend, because there's no actual entry. That's part of why Left to spend is higher until moving day: the move's lines add 812 of planned money not yet recorded, which is the 450 balance plus the 362 still unspent in that expense category.

Two headline figures, two questions. Fictional figures from our Help guide.

There's no bank connection. You type every amount, and a purchase you forget to record won't be in the totals.

Artful Agenda. We didn't find a budget-versus-actual tool or an expense tracker in the Artful documents we reviewed. That's a gap in what we read, not proof that no such feature exists. With the tools it does document, you could:

• list the amounts in a note;
• set alarms for the payment dates;
• tick off payment tasks.

The sums (288 spent, 362 left in the category, 59 of real cushion) would be yours to work out. That could be in your head, on a calculator or in a spreadsheet you keep beside the planner.

What's left to you in either planner

Neither planner chooses the mover, decides whether a 59 cushion is enough, or remembers to record the bubble wrap. The difference is the upkeep:

• In Slate & Serif, recording an expense updates the category's actual and remaining amount, and Left to spend. The budget and Left to budget still reflect your plan; they change when you change the planned amounts.
• On Artful's documented tools, you keep the amounts and redo the arithmetic yourself as the numbers change.

Who this suits

Choose Slate & Serif for a move, a renovation or any job that has a date, steps, paperwork and a budget, if you want:

• the money calculated beside the plan;
• a project space with a place for each kind of information.

If payment alerts and an outside calendar connection are essential to the move, check that requirement first. Our external calendar connections and private browser-notification previews are not available yet.

Try a made-up move in our desktop Premium sample (it resets after its displayed 24-hour period).

Add Slate & Serif as a preferred source on Google. It's a personal setting that only affects what Google shows you.