For budgeting reasons, I put a number on what the monthly budget is for my Electric Bill and my Gas bill. Here in the North East, my electric bill soars in the summer, and my gas bill soars in the winter, and in the shoulder months, who knows.
Because of this, I want to carry extra money in a given envelope, but my scheduled envelope fills keep saving the add value so it doesn’t surpass the envelope value.
How can I make it stop doing that? If the monthly budget for the gas bill is $150, then I’d like the 2 week fill to dump $75 dollars into that envelope, even if that means that it brings the total over that $150 budget.
It sounds like your budget instruction is on Set. If you’ll change it to Add, the amount specified will be added each time regardless of how it reflects your budgeted value. This may mean there are times when it’s underfunded, but it also means there will be plenty of months when the balance is far more than that month’s bill.
The toggle for Set and Add are somewhat counterintuitive; be sure to open your next scheduled Fill and click the Add button next to those envelopes before saving changes. That should give you the result you’re looking for.
That was the behavior I was expecting as well. I’ve double checked that it is on add, not set. Same situation. Once I click save, and then reopen the scheduled fill, envelopes are automatically cut off to not add more than the budgeted envelope amount. For instance, I’ll set up the gas bill budget to add $75, then I click save. When I open the scheduled fill, the gas bill budget envelope is now ready to add 0.
@TheGees Are you using a Due Date on the Envelope? If so, that’s likely why you’re seeing ‘Add 0.00’ when you view your scheduled Fill. If the Envelope has already been filled with the full budget for your budget period, then Goodbudget won’t suggest adding more and your scheduled Fill will show ‘Add 0.00.’ But once your new budget period starts and your Envelope hasn’t received funds for that period, you’ll see ‘Add [budgeted amount]’ and that will be the amount that Goodbudget adds to the Envelope when the Fill posts.
The important thing is that the ‘Add’ option is selected, so that Goodbudget rolls over your Envelopes balance, instead of resetting it.
If that doesn’t answer your question, please email us at support@goodbudget.com from your Household email address so we can take a closer look at your how you have your Envelope set up.
Do your utilities offer equalizer payments? Accomplishes the same thing but they manage the averages and balances so my payments stay roughly the same all year.