Hi - This month is my 3rd using Good Budget and it’s working pretty well, but of course I’m still coming up with minor issues to solve. This month we have gone negative in several envelopes. It’s not a problem as all the spending is on a credit card which I pay off monthly, and I have the cash available to offset it, but, I have a question about it. The monthly amount shown at the top reflects the NET remaining in all the envelopes, with all the positive envelopes less the negative envelope amounts. Is there a way to see at a glance how much total negative spending there is without having to add it all up? We had several Envelopes go negative form just a few pennies to several hundred dollars, including Groceries, Gas, Eating out, Gifts, etc. We hosted Christmas at our house and hadn’t allocated for it correctly in our envelopes. We’ll be better prepared next year. Thanks for any suggestions.
I don’t think there’s an easy way to do what you’re asking–I tried playing around with different reports, dummy Fills, etc. but none of the solutions seemed any easier than just doing the math by hand. The “Spending vs. Budget” report is a nice way to visualize the data, but 1) it doesn’t total them by +/- and 2) it only reports the last complete budget period.
“Spending by Envelope” comes close and may be more helpful for future budgeting in the long run, but it’s tedious to extrapolate just the most meaningful envelopes since there doesn’t seem to be a way to either exclude some or include several selected ones.
In the “ideal” world of budgeting, you’d move money from your overfilled envelopes to your underfilled ones as soon as they went red but I work the way you do–some of my envelopes always go negative (I’m looking at you, Dining Out) and I just clean them up at the start of the next budget period. It’s a luxury to be able to do that, I know, but it’s easier for me that way.
I can see how this would be a nice feature to include, and if you want to suggest it the Goodbudget Admins are great about reading our emails and adding things to the queue for consideration. You can find instructions for that here.
Sorry that’s not more helpful though!
Hi Tiffany - You gave me the answer I expected, and I was hoping to suggest it as an added feature, and you gave me the answer as to how to do that. Thanks VERY much!