I recently had to purchase a new furnace. I paid for the furnace with my credit card, but am using money from savings to pay the credit card. The only catch is I had to transfer the money from my savings into my checking account. I will then transfer the money from my checking to credit card.
I am trying to figure out how to account for the money moving around in Good Budget. I added transactions in GB, so I now have an envelope that shows -$XXXX. Is there a way to show the “income” that moved from savings to checking, and then to credit card, and add the “income” into the envelope?
If I just use the fill envelope option, I can say the “income” is going to the credit card, but that doesn’t deplete it from the checking account.
This is a complex transaction so it will take a couple of steps (and there are different ways to accomplish it), but it’s completely do-able! First, record the furnace transaction as usual on your credit card, leaving a large balance due in that account.
The next step will depend on whether you’re tracking your savings account in Goodbudget. If you are, then you’ll want to record an Account Transfer from Savings to Checking so that those two accounts have the correct balances. (Don’t forget to adjust your Savings envelope if you have one by transferring the same amount into the envelope from which you took the furnace payment, otherwise transfer from Available if that’s where your savings are recorded.)
If you’re not tracking savings in Goodbudget, just record the transfer into checking as a “Fill from New Income”, and include the distribution to your furnace envelope there.
Any time you make a payment on a credit card it should be recorded as an account transfer from the checking account to the card. You’ll do the same here, and then everything should align.
I should note that you could “skip the middleman” and just record a transfer from Savings to the credit card if the values are identical, but you’ll have to remember that the two transfers (Savings to Checking and then Checking to Credit Card) cancel each other out when you reconcile the checking account. You won’t have Goodbudget entries for them but it won’t affect the final balances, and if you’re doing auto-import from your bank then this won’t be possible without deleting transactions.
Hope that helps!
Thank you for your help!
I ended up “skipping the middleman”. I recorded the income to checking and filled the envelope that way, and then just manually adjusted the savings account amount. Once I transfer from checking to credit card to pay the cc off, I will record that transfer like I normally do.
I needed to talk through that one, it was throwing me off!
Thank you again!
Is the “Fill from New Income” available in the app? I don’t see anything that looks like it does on the web. Perhaps in the app this is done using Add Transaction, Income, select “In my Envelopes” for Step 2?
