I did not add all my expenses as they happened last month, how do I go back into january and add my expenses to that month?
Also, my income varies from month to month, but we have set our income at a set average amount. Similar to the last question, how can I got back into the last month and change my income to the actual amount rather than our placeholder average amount?
Thanks!
Just enter the expenses on the date they occurred. Depending on what you have in your envelopes, their balance may go negative. This will also affect your bank account balances. So I’m not sure how you were balancing your bank accounts, but account balances in GB need to be the same as as your actual accounts. If they are, you’re good so far. If they’re not then you’ll need to make a one time bank balance adjustment. At this point don’t worry about the negative envelopes.
Now to update your income. Just allocate the difference in income, whether positive or negative in unallocated. Now from the unallocated envelope, hopefully after your income fill it’s positive, you can do envelope transfers from unallocated to the envelopes that are negative, and fill other envelopes that need to be filled to maintain your budget.
If after updating your expenses and income and you still have negative envelopes, then you’ll either need to stop spending in those envelopes until you have income to fill them or do envelope transfers from other envelopes that may have extra funds in them.
Two key takeaways after all this is first, your account balances MUST equal your actual bank account balances and second, your total bank account balances MUST equal your total envelope balances. The total envelope balance is shown on the Envelopes tab just below the “Envelopes”. The total bank accounts balance is shown on the Accounts tab just below “Accounts”.
There’s others in this forum that may very well approach this differently than I have, so they may chime in and clear up the muddy water😊
I’d like to just add one thing to this excellent suggestion–if your income changes regularly and that makes it difficult to track, don’t use “Fill from New Income” instructions. Instead, make your paycheck a transaction all by itself (that will add money to the Unallocated balance) and then “Fill from Unallocated”. Changing the total of the paycheck is then as simple as changing any other transaction; simply click it and edit the total.
Hope that helps!
So, it seems like any expenses that I add after the month in which they occurred get taken out of the current month’s envelope. Is there any way to make the expenses tracked into the month in which they were incurred?? For example: I’m trying to add in a few March expenses and it is now April; the expenses I am entering for March are coming out of Aprils envelopes rather than March’s (which should then rollover).
Any help?
You can’t pull them from an “earlier” envelope (it’s not a new envelope each month), but adjusting the amount of the Fill does the same thing. For example, my Fuel budget is $300. At the end of the month I have $20 left, so my automatic Fill (with the Set instruction) adds $280. Then I remember to include a $15 fill up from 3/29, so my actual ending balance should have been $5. I can adjust this by changing the Fill to $295 so that April has enough.
Goodbudget treats everything like cash, so if you “past-date” a transaction it doesn’t adjust retroactively. I make it a habit to clean everything up on the last day of the month, but Fill adjustments are a simple fix if I do miss something.
I am going to have the same problem to get me off the ground with the first reconciliation of the account to continue to equal the bank. I am going to have to find a simpler method as I have 47 envelopes and that is a lot to remember
Reconciling the envelopes and the accounts are two different, but related processes. The easiest way to capture any missed transactions from the bank or a credit card is to download all the transactions and use the Import function. Goodbudget will attempt to match any imported transactions to any existing ones, allowing you to adjust, create or match others as necessary. For those that were overlooked, you can quickly drag-and-drop them into a frequently used envelope or drag them into the “Other” category to make more adjustments or choose other envelopes.
Because the envelopes act just like real-world envelopes, you’ll find that entering past-dated transactions won’t change earlier fills but will leave your envelopes with the correct amount of money for the present day. You can, if you wish, add more when you reconcile OR you can easily go back and adjust the fill to make the month’s total what you expected it to be by looking at the Filled amount against your expected budget and adjusting if needed.
Thanks Tiffany, I was going to try to get it to match Quicken for my credit card which is the biggest, most used. I did do an import from the Credit Card of current transactions and added any that were missing to GB, also doing a fill from “Unallocated” at an earlier date using the amounts of the transactions I added, to the appropriate envelopes.
I then added any uncleared transactions that were not previously added due to import, etc. using the same method.
What I ended up with was a confused mess. Tomorrow, I will be adding my SS income (the 2nd Wed) and filling my envelopes with my monthly distribution. I use the SS date as I already have prior incomes added the last day of the prior month, so I will be using the 2nd Wednsday as my end of the month.
I think that what I will do is to wait for the reconciliation of the credit card account to clean up the many messes that I am sure that I am going to have. I will then do the same with Checking and Savings and any other credit cards.
I am not real worried as I am still running Quicken and can use that to check GB. I am trying, in the long run, to move away from Quicken to go wholy GB which I find so far to be much easier for me to use and especially so my wife can also use. It is the Start up to match Quicken and my accounts that is the confusing part.
Tiffany, after reading this, I would appreciate any warnings before I get into trouble if this doesn’t look like it will work.
