Hi! Need some help about resetting envelopes.
So I did an envelope reset earlier in the year via the web app so that I can reset all my envelopes to zero during my biweekly fills.
So I’m able to maintain a zero balance in the web app, but unfortunately I keep seeing a lot of negative balances when checking the same household envelopes in the Android app. Am I reading the balances wrong on the app? Is there any way I can get what I see on the web app to be consistent with what I see on the Android app?
Would appreciate any info I can get on my situation. Thank you!
Think of these like physical envelopes filled with cash. You won’t want a 0 balance in your envelopes—remember, that’s the money you’ve assigned to be spent. If the envelope is empty, at 0, then anything you spend will put it into the red. Instead, fill each envelope with the amount you’ve allowed yourself and as you enter transactions, the balance will go down, but hopefully stay in the green. Filling an envelope doesn’t affect your Account balances, just the Available amount.
The easiest way to do that is to schedule a Fill that “Sets” each envelope to its budgeted amount. Then you will have given yourself money to spend according to your budget.
Does that help?
To add further context on my situation, I shifted to bi-weekly budgeting last March instead of monthly as I was having trouble aligning my envelope situation with the cash I actually had on hand. So what I actually do every two weeks is:
Perform transactions to reset the envelopes to zero (ensuring all my funds for the last two weeks are accounted for)
Enter the new income to fill the envelopes back up
My concern is about these numbers on the web and android apps that don’t align. In the web app, upon zeroing out my envelopes in preparation for a new fill, the transaction is reported as below
The grey number below the transaction is zero here, as I would expect. However, in the Android app, I would see a red negative number instead of the grey zero I expected-- the numbers totally don’t align for me so I felt like I made an error somewhere.
Are these numbers below the transaction amount indeed the envelope balance in both Web and Android? If so, I get totally different things, and would appreciate knowing how to resolve this.
Well that’s odd. I don’t know about Android but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be showing the same balances. You’re correct that the 0.00 you see is the remaining envelope money, but I don’t know why they’re not aligned. Sounds like something is awry!
Sorry—this is one for the Admins I’m afraid!
Hi @hystericblue32 - Thanks for your post and sorry for the confusion! I think you’re saying that your Envelope’s running balances don’t necessarily match when you view your Envelopes on web vs when you view them on your Android.
That’s likely happening because the ordering of transactions within any given day is probably different on web vs. Android, and that is resulting in the running balances being different under each transaction.
There’s not anything you can do change that, since it’s just how things are coded on each platform. But your Envelope’s current balance should be correct in both places.
