So… still getting used to things… and not sure whether my initial approach was correct or not. Let me explain what I did and perhaps someone can point me in the right direction.
I created two accounts — one for my primary checking account and one for my savings account. I then looked at all the transactions for Sept and built a bunch of envelopes based on bills and regular transactions… I’ve NOT filled any of the envelopes yet.
So… I was able to verify that ALL the transactions are in for the two accounts and the totals match my bank balances perfectly…
But I’ve found the unallocated bucket has over $1800 in it because of my initial “opening” balances and my two paychecks for the past two weeks…
Is it just a case of doing the fill at this point or ? I don’t want to mess up what I’ve got in the system at this point. Actually I get paid in 2 days and not really sure what the next step is…. Thoughts?
If you have money in your Accounts but haven’t Filled your Envelopes yet, it seems logical to me that you’d have a balance in your Unallocated. If you haven’t Filled your Envelopes, the only way you’d have 0 in your Unallocated is if you had no money at all in any of your Accounts, as the Unallocated balance = total sum of all Accounts - total sum of all Envelopes.
As for your more general question, Goodbudget is designed so that you should be able to start using it at any time in the month or pay cycle, so that part shouldn’t be an issue.
I’m not sure if I’ve gotten to answer your question, so please feel free to leave more questions and I, or someone else, will try to help you.
I just want to know whether my assumptions are correct with regard to filling the envelopes the first time. As it stands now, the envelopes are filled with negative amounts (owed monies) as I’ve assigned transactions to the different envelopes to match the transactions earlier in the month (in the accounts).
So… I was thinking of manually assigning envelope amounts to the non-zero envelopes to essentially bring them to zero. Once I’m done I’d assume that my unassigned monies would match my account balance with all these transactions applied (whether debits or credits).
But when I played with it last night it was somewhat close but not completely which through me off a bit. I wasn’t sure why the difference. Anyway, perhaps my thinking is incorrect or ?
Just do Fill Envelopes->Fill from Unallocated and set all your envelopes to 0. This will bring you to “clean slate” point and tell you how much you have left to allocate for future expenses.
Thanks both of you! I was able to eventually figure out how to get the envelopes to behave… my “cash” envelope I needed to add in the mix which threw me off a little but all matches now…
Now that I’ve got the initial base-line I’ll see about using the IOS apps to keep on top of things… Regarding my upcoming payday on Friday I guess I can just use the Fill from new income feature for the first time and it’ll use my paycheck and fill the envelopes that way — and use the “remember” feature for next time.
This is more interesting than I expected… I’m super pleased with this app… I had looked at so many out there… all had their short comings — either too simplistic or not flexible enough or somewhere in between… This one has all the right features!