For me it is imperative that i can ensure that my budgeted OUTGOINGS do not exceed what i expect to earn for the year.
I cannot find a way to do that here. I thought maybe setting up INCOME envelopes with negative targets might do the job … however INCOME transactions cannot be allocated to an envelope.
With my own manual system done in a spreadsheet, whenever i change the existing budget it must reconcile with my projected earnings for the year, else budgeting has no meaning to me
I think I understand your budgeting concept although I’m not entirely sure, but I did want to clarify one point about income.
You can allocate income to an envelope by using a Fill instruction. When you receive money, instead of posting it as a deposit use a “Fill from New Income” transaction to send the entire amount to your target envelope(s). I’m not really sure how that works in your budget though, as you’d have to transfer those funds out in order to use them.
You can also create Goal Envelopes which I believe may help you as well, but I may be misunderstanding your intent.
Hope that helps a little.
I create a budget for the year … predicted expenses, both fixed and variable, allocated to either monthly, quarterly or annual envelopes, let’s say. In any case, after completing the budget of expected expenditure I will have a total expected outgoing for the year.
At the same time a yearly estimate of total income from all sources can be made … in my case it is a straight forward exercise as it is fixed and known in advance.
How then can I be sure that the total of budgeted expenses does not exceed that which I am expected to earn for the year? And further, throughout the year the budget may need to be adjusted to cater for new expense items as they arise, but this adjustment needs to be done in a manner so that the total budged expense does not exceed the total budgeted income.
In short, what is the point of making a budget if it is going to exceed ones means??
I cannot find how to do this … .what am i doing wrong?
All you have to do is calculate your monthly income then create your monthly budget based on that. In the website, go to Add/Edit Envelopes then plug in your monthly amounts for each envelope until the total equals your income. It shows the monthly total on the right.
You can create an account for “Projected Income” and set it’s balance to the amount you plan to receive for the year. Initially, this will set your Unallocated balance to the very large amount. You can then allocate this money to all of your envelopes.
Every time you receive some of that income you record it as an account transfer from the “Projected Income” account to the appropriate account (Checking, Savings, Cash, wherever your income lands). Over the course of the year, the Projected Income account will decrease to zero as it feeds your other account(s), and you just log expenses in your envelopes against the regular accounts.
You would therefore only use the “Add Income” feature of Goodbudget to record additional/unexpected income that was not part of your projection.
