How do I add a one-time income payment to a specific envelope?
Adding off-schedule income seems to freak the app out. I figured out how to add some money into “Unallocated”, but trying to get it from there into envelopes seems to make it want to distribute the money across all envelopes, which is very much not what I want. I’ve tried adding directly from within an envelope, but all UX flows seem to just drop you into this thing where it wants to divide any new income across all envelopes.
Welcome! The simplest way to accomplish that, and the way Goodbudget is designed, is to perform a “Fill: From New Income” transaction. (In iOS it’s labeled “Add Income” under the transaction type) You’ll be asked whether to put it into certain envelope(s) or just into Unallocated, and where to sweep any remainder. (For example, you receive $738, put $500 into your Savings envelope, then just instruct it to send any leftovers to “Entertainment”). You can put all of it into one envelope or spread it however you wish—just choose an envelope and enter the amount to add.
However, now that you’ve entered it into Unallocated, just do an Envelope Transfer from there to the envelope you wanted to use initially and you’ll be where you wanted to be.
I hope that helps!
Thanks for the quick reply Tiffany. I really appreciate it.
What you describe is what I’ve tried, but I only have “In my Envelopes” and “In Unallocated” as my two options. The former doesn’t appear to work as you describe. When I select an envelope, I seem to land in a completely new UX flow where it’s asking for the amount again and acting like it wants to adjust the normal monthly budget for that envelope. (I’m using GoodBudget on my iPhone, btw.). I apologize, but this is super not-intuitive for me, so I guess I need step-by-step, screen-by-screen instructions. I feel like I’m missing something or tapping on the wrong thing somewhere in this process.
You’re super close to the solution. When you get to the screen you think is changing your budget, just choose “Add specific amount” and the amount you want in that envelope.
You can put it all in one or a little bit into several envelopes, your choice. Anything you don’t assign will be added to Unallocated funds.
Does that clarify?
I agree this flow is not very friendly, in particular the “Rollover Remaining Balance” toggle is just terrible.
HI Tiffany, thank you so much again.
Yes, that makes sense and I was able to do it. I feel like the UX flow there needs a little more text to hand-hold the user, but now that you’ve walked me through it, I get the process. Thanks again!
This is really confusing- I need to add a one time deposit to my food envelope (somehow it got messed up). Ive been working at it for the past 30 minutes and am immensely frustrated.
When you mention a “deposit”, I think of Accounts instead of Envelopes. If you just need to put more money into an envelope you can either do an Envelope Transfer from Unallocated (or another envelope, if one is overfilled) into your Food envelope, or you can do a single Fill from Unallocated to just that envelope, leaving all the others unchanged.
If you are actually adding new money that you want to go to that envelope (for example if you deposited a check or moved money in from an account outside of Goodbudget), you can either do a Fill from New Income with all of the total placed into the Food envelope, or you could add Income and designate the Food Envelope as the destination.
Hope that helps!
