Advice for Total Confusion

[Carmama]

I’m just looking for advice on whether or not I should just delete all of my information and start over. I am very confused about the envelope fills as they are always larger than my budget. I used the “Get Back on Track” blogpost and it didn’t work, so now I’m at an impasse. I can keep playing with some things or just start over and try to remember all of my scheduled transactions ,etc.

Has anyone done this and is it worth it? I’ve already paid for the year subscription so I don’t want to stop using GoodBudget.

[Tiffany]

You should be able to untangle this without starting over!
First, it’s important to remember that your Fills and your Budget aren’t always identical. For example, my budget for gas may be $300/month but I’m planning a road trip this month so I bump it up to $500. If I “Set” my fill to $500, it will add enough to start there even though it’s over budget.
Another possibility is that you’re underspending (yay!) but have your Fill triggered to Add. This means (in my gas example) if I tell Goodbudget to Add $300/month, it’ll do that, even if I still have $100 left. Then my envelope is overfilled by the leftover $100 at the beginning of the month.
Here’s how I’d tackle this problem: (it’s definitely easiest on the web version)
First, check your Scheduled Transactions and make sure there’s only one Fill instruction for the start of your budget period. If you have multiples, it may be a good idea to combine everything that happens on the same day into just one Fill and delete the rest.
Next, open the scheduled Fill (for October 1st, probably) and be sure that every envelope you want to start fresh each time is toggled to “Set”. On the web, the “Set” button may appear gray when it’s selected so be sure that’s what you’ve chosen. Only choose “Add” if you want any remaining money to roll over, or if you sometimes “borrow” from the next month and go negative in an envelope.
Now make sure the amount you’ve “Set” to is the same as the budgeted amount on the right side of that screen.

Finally, here’s how to clean up this month’s envelopes (I’m assuming you started budgeting on the 1st; if not, substitute the first day of your budget)
Open each envelope and look at the balance on the 31st. For example, I had $98.99 in my Gas envelope with a $300 budget. Now open the posted Fill from September 1st and change the filled amount to the difference, in this case $201.01. Save your changes, and the envelope should be accurate for the start of the month.

You’ll have to do this for each envelope with a discrepancy, but if you’ve made the edits to the scheduled Fill you shouldn’t have to do it again after this round.
I hope that helps!

[Carmama]

Thank you so much for your help - here’s what I did before I wrote:

First, check your Scheduled Transactions and make sure there’s only one Fill instruction for the start of your budget period. If you have multiples, it may be a good idea to combine everything that happens on the same day into just one Fill and delete the rest.

Yes I did that. I even deleted the monthly scheduled Fill or any fills I had and started over. I even set all of my envelopes fills to 0, and checked the amounts in the envelopes so I could start over again.

Next, open the scheduled Fill (for October 1st, probably) and be sure that every envelope you want to start fresh each time is toggled to “Set”. On the web, the “Set” button may appear gray when it’s selected so be sure that’s what you’ve chosen. Only choose “Add” if you want any remaining

This I did not do, I just changed the new fill to todays Date (I get paid on the first of each month, so I didn’t think 2 days would be a big deal). And I think I did Add, because that’s what it said to do in the video about setting up the envelopes.?? In the image you posted on that envelope page, all of the numbers that are in the places of the arrows that you have are all the same.

Finally, here’s how to clean up this month’s envelopes (I’m assuming you started budgeting on the 1st; if not, substitute the first day of your budget)
Open each envelope and look at the balance on the 31st. For example, I had $98.99 in my Gas envelope with a $300 budget. Now open the posted Fill from September 1st and change the filled amount to the difference, in this case $201.01. Save your changes, and the envelope should be accurate for the start of the month.

This is the part that is just totally confusing to me. Why would I be looking at the 31st? I am also not sure what you mean by “posted” fill. Also, I thought you said to start on October 1, so why would there be a fill from September 1 (and sadly, I cancelled that one and started on 9/3). Also, I’m not sure what the “difference” is because the values are all different - I don’t even rember which number (the top or bottom) was the one I wanted in the envelope to begin with.

Also, when I started from scratch by deleting the fills I had, the blogpost told me to go and update my accounts so I did and not there’s all of these in my transactions

and it’s confusing me.

So I’m really just lost altogether.

[Tiffany]

"…I just changed the new fill to today’s Date…
This is fine; starting today is not an issue if you get paid on the 1st and the last couple of days aren’t a deal-breaker. Changing the scheduled Fill (for 10/1) is cleaning things up for NEXT month and beyond, but won’t affect today’s fill. What you want to do though is be sure that your instructions for next month are in line with what you want to happen, and that has to be done in the Fill that hasn’t been posted yet. (If you just posted the 10/1 fill today, be sure to go back into Scheduled Transactions and make sure to make the next one 10/1, otherwise it won’t fill until November)
Whether you use Add or Set with envelopes that are all at $0 won’t make any difference now but it will matter next month.

“Why would I be looking at the 31st?”
Because your envelope fill would base its values off the amount remaining that night. Since you effectively made today “the first” and zeroed out your envelopes prior, you can ignore that part.

“… not sure what you mean by “posted” fill”
The posted Fill appears in your Envelopes; the Scheduled Fill only shows up in Scheduled Transactions and should have a date one month in the future.

“I’m not sure what the “difference” is because the values are all different - I don’t even remember which number (the top or bottom) was the one I wanted in the envelope to begin with.”
Sorry, the top number is the amount of the transaction (plus or minus) and the bottom number is the running balance in the envelope. Ideally the balance in the envelope will represent the budgeted amount on the first of the month, and it will decrease as you spend money until you next refill it. So in the second screenshot (I edited to add that one, so you may need to refresh) it shows the remaining balance of $98.99 on 8/28, then the Fill added $201.01 and now my Gas envelope is back up to $300, equal to my budget for September.

“…there’s all of these in my transactions…”
Without seeing the line items, I am assuming that those are adjustments to your account balances that occurred when you updated your accounts.
That’s a little trickier–in order to get your accounts and your Goodbudget in line and able to be reconciled you’ll need to make sure the account balances are correct as of today, without including any transactions that are pending. THEN add the pending transactions back in so the Goodbudget balance will look lower than your real-live balance, but will be accurate as far as the amount you have to spend. That’s harder to explain, and is more complex and so may be worth shooting an email to the Admins to see if they can get into your account with you and help straighten it out.
I hope this is helpful–keep sending questions if you have more!