I want to add an account to GB (a savings account that I use only for long-term savings), so that I can track it; but I want to EXCLUDE the money in that account from being “available” in my accounting / cash flow in GB.
Is there a way to have an account in GB, but exclude the money in that account from “available” and exclude it from being assigned to an envelope?
Currently, in my monthly budget, I include an amount designated for long term savings. Each month I put that money into the savings envelope, and then when I take the money out of my checking account and put it into my savings account (which is not tracked in GB), I record that as an expense in the savings envelope, indicating that I did take that money and put it into long term savings.
What is the intended use of GB in cases where you have a savings account that you keep for long term, but not for cash flow purposes?
NOTE: I came to GB from a competitor, and in that other software, this was just a checkbox on the account that says “exclude from cash flow”
The easiest way to manage that is to just create an envelope for the savings balance. Fill it with the total in savings, and create automatic transactions for any transfers or interest income to keep it aligned.
Be sure any regular Fills you have set up have an “Add 0” instruction in that envelope.
While toggling the accounts would be ideal, it’s not available yet in Goodbudget (but please submit it because the more people who ask, the better our chances of getting them to implement it!)
Thanks for that suggestion, Tiffany. The problem with doing it that way is that it does not give me a way to track the transactions when I actually move the money from my checking account to my savings account at my bank - which does not occur regularly, but only when I get around to doing it. There are also some months in which I don’t transfer the money at all … for example, when I have an unexpected expense.
It would also be helpful if account transfers in GB allowed you to expense / credit envelopes as a part of the transfer. For example, I could do an account transfer, and in that transfer, select to expense my monthly savings envelope and credit my long term savings envelope all at once.
I wholly agree—having to do both an account transfer and an envelope transfer seems like an extra step but at the moment it seems like the only option, and I’ve set up future transactions to make the inputs simpler
(Sorry for the late edit—some of my answer didn’t post)
I wanted to say that my future transactions are far into the future and/or for insignificant amounts, like a yearly transfer of 0.01, scheduled one year from now. When I make the real transfer I just choose “enter now” from my future transactions and correct the amount. The next item is now two years away, but that date doesn’t matter, and I’ve streamlined the entry process.