Hello everyone
Please help me figure out how to correctly reflect the money I lent in GoodBudget?
Of course, I can reflect them as an expense (and then as an income). But I think this is wrong, because this is not an expense at all.
It depends on whether you loaned the money from money you use in your budget. If so, it IS an expense for now, but you can add repayments as income. It sounds like that’s not what you intend though.
In that case, my personal solution would be to make a new Goal envelope specifically for your loan, with a negative balance equal to the amount you loaned (if it wasn’t from your “everyday” money) or a transaction for that amount (if it did come out of money you would normally have to spend). Make sure your budget instruction is set to “Add $0” and enter each repayment as a “Fill from New Income” to that envelope.
Hope that helps!
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Thanks, Tiffany!
I use an Envelope to track reimbursables. The Envelope’s balance and budget are zero. When I loan money out, I expense it against that Envelope. The negative balance indicates to me that someone owes me money. When I get paid back, I’ll add it as a credit back to the Envelope.
Hope that helps!
@karisa - how that’s what I have been doing as well, but then it shows expenses as spending that I didn’t actually spend…
This page on the user guide is meant to address this topic - https://goodbudget.com/help/budgeting-with-goodbudget/credits-refunds/ - but I don’t get it.
The credit means that I don’t improperly count the reimbursement as income, but it doesn’t do anything about the fact that I entered an expense that wasn’t really spent does it?
I want to be able to pull a report that shows all of my annual spending vs all of my annual income (this is one of my BIGGEST pet peaves about this program, that the reports don’t total up the months to an annual total). So I don’t want things that were reimbursed to show up as expenses if they were paid back.
I’m so confused.
I, too, would like to see the overall total on the income vs. expense report for whatever time period I choose. Having to manually add up the totals of each month is pretty silly when the data is all there and can be easily reported.
Hi @Lmeloy88,
Thanks for posting and sorry for the confusion! When you add a credit, Goodbudget will count that as negative spending in some of your reports. So if you spend 50 on Fun, and then add a credit back to Fun for 20, your Spending by Envelope report would tell you that you only spent 30.
Is that what you’re after? Thanks again.
Hi, I’m new to the forum. I’m puzzled on the same subject.
I created an envelop: “credits” and an account: “cash”
I lend someone €1000 (i know, I’m generous)… so new transaction, €1000 from account “credits” and account “cash”.
Balance result: “Credits”: -€1000, “Cash”: -€1000
I’m lucky, the guy gives my money back. New income: €1000, Acct “Cash”, Envelope: “Credits”.
Balance result: “Credits”: €0, “Cash”: €0. Perfect!
The problem: €1000 should be in “unallocated” or some other envelope or they are not counted as “available” to me.
But if i fill the “unallocated” envelope the “credit” envelope signs -€1000 and we cannot track the return.
Any suggestion?
Thank you!
Elio
I think the problem is with the negative value. Your tracking makes it seem as if you loaned money you didn’t have, which can’t be the case. Instead, fill your Cash account with €1000 first (transfer from another account? Fill from New Income you took from under the mattress?), then loan the money just as you did, from the Credit envelope/Cash account.
Now Cash will be €0 (correct) and Credit will be -€1000 (money that’s owed to you). When you receive the money back, Cash will go back to €1000 (and drop into Unallocated unless you instruct it differently) and Credit will be €0 (no money owed to you).
Hope that helps!
Thank you for your reply Tiffany! I like the idea of transferring the money to “cash” account before loaning the money. That solves half of the problem. I still don’t see how “Unallocated” AND “Credit” can both be filled at the same time when I receive the money back 
You’re right of course, and I misspoke. The deposit of returned funds would be Unallocated unless you 1) assigned it to the Credit envelope 2) did a second “fill from Unallocated” transaction 3) transferred the money from Unallocated to Credit, or 4) recorded the repayment as a credit transaction instead of a deposit. (Lots of options!)
While the money was on loan, you were at -€1000 so now that it’s back you’re at €0. If your budget can handle that, I think it’s the easiest way to manage a loan and see it visually represented. I do this with all reimbursable work expenses so I can see what I’m owed.
If on the other hand you want to know how much is actually available to spend, you would fill both the Account and Envelope with €1000 before the loan, but this makes the visibility of money owed to you a bit less transparent. When you loan the money, both the Account and the Envelope go to €0, and when it’s returned the Account goes to €1000, Unallocated goes up by €1000, and the Credit envelope remains at €0 since no money is owed to you anymore, but the loan transaction is still there and its repayment isn’t clearly noted. I find this to be much harder to track but it does accomplish the same thing.
I hope that helps!