I am looking for a way to not affect my envelope balances nor have it show up as unallocated when I fix the balance of my account. I am trying to reset my envelopes without losing past entries but I can’t get my account balance right without affecting the amounts in either envelopes or having it show up as unallocated. Please help!!
Welcome Karen!
Since Accounts and Envelopes represent the same money in different ways, any adjustment to your Account will be reflected in the amount of money you have available for Envelopes. If you have more money than you thought in your Account, you can Edit the account and adjust the balance, but this will still give you some Unallocated funds (money you didn’t know you had) to be disbursed, if you like. If your account balance is actually lower than is reflected in Goodbudget, correcting the balance may lead to a negative Unallocated balance, since you’ve assigned more money to envelopes than you really have to spend. (I should also add that it’s OK to leave money in Unallocated if you wish—some people like it as a “buffer” while others like to assign every penny; dealer’s choice!)
Bottom line: you can’t adjust an account balance without affecting your envelopes, because it’s all the same money displayed from two different perspectives.
I hope that helps!
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Unfortunately that is what I am trying to avoid. I want to temporarily decouple the two so I can fix the problem.
Unfortunately they can’t be decoupled since they represent the same funds. That would be the equivalent of trying to increase the balance in your checking account without making a deposit. Are you suggesting there’s an error in the match—the envelopes and account totals aren’t equivalent? That can happen, rarely, and can be corrected by an Admin. But if the account totals and envelope totals match they can’t be made to represent different values.
I don’t want to lose my the historical data but at the same time I am trying to bring everything up to date which means some items were never recorded and amounts don’t match. I am trying for a do-over on the envelopes and accounts without erasing all my past purchases that we still want to keep as information.
I think the easiest way to do that would be to Edit your account balance(s) so they are accurate as of today. Don’t do a transaction, just change the amount in the account to the accurate current balance (this will create a line item that you can rename to “Adjustment” or something useful). Be sure any outstanding checks/debits/pending payments are recorded too. Then check your envelopes to be sure the money is allocated as you wish. None of your old transactions will be affected nor your current envelopes, but your Unallocated balance will now be accurate compared to the money you have. Does that make sense?
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I’ll try that. Thank you.