For some reason my Unallocated funds seem to add up faster than they should.
My budget seems pretty straight forward. I put $260 into unallocated every 2 weeks, then I assign $260 from unallocated into my envelopes.
As I was looking into my transactions to figure what’s going on, I noticed that the scheduled transaction to fill unallocated says $260, but the transaction to fill my envelopes says that the ‘amount varies’.
When I look into the envelope filling transaction, each evelope is assigned a dollar amount and the amounts added up equal $260. Why is it saying they vary?
I’m hoping that if I figure that out, then my unallocated funds will work themselves out.
Hmmm…you shouldn’t have to put money into the Unallocated envelope unless you mean you’re making a deposit to an account and not assigning it elsewhere when you receive it; is that right?
The “varies” part usually (but not always) means you have some envelopes scheduled to “Set”, that is, to add whatever amount is necessary to set the envelope to a certain value, even if it was over- or under-spent in the previous budget period. Because of that, the amount needed could be more or less than the budgeted amount.
If you want to add exactly $260 to your envelopes with every Fill, just be sure every envelope’s instruction is set to Add. (Some people find this tricky—depending on your display, it might be difficult to tell whether the toggle is on Add or Set.) That may mean some budget envelopes are over- or under-filled, but the entire Unallocated amount will be distributed as expected.
Hope that helps!
@Tiffany and @Jescey - Thank you both for posting! I just wanted to clarify, Fills from Unallocated will always say ‘Varies,’ even if all the Envelopes have the ‘Add’ option selected. So long as your Envelopes add up the expected amount, it’s likely the Unallocated issue is coming from somewhere else.
If Unallocated seems wrong, double-check that your Goodbudget Account balances accurately reflect what you have available in your real life accounts. If they don’t, then you can manually adjust your balances to make them match what you have in your real life. You can do that on the web by clicking on Add/Edit on the Accounts tab. From there, update your Current Balance and be sure to save your changes when you’re done. Once you’ve updated the balance, Unallocated will also adjust.