Starting Fresh

I started fresh on 1/1 by following the steps listed in the help section but my unallocated amount was not correct after I set all my envelopes to zero. Is there a way to change that amount? I thought by setting up my accounts it would reconcile that, but it did not. Any help?

Hi there,

Thanks for posting and sorry for the trouble with Unallocated! Unfortunately, you can’t change the balance of Unallocated without making changes to either your Account or Envelope balances. That’s because Unallocated is money you have available in your Accounts but haven’t allocated yet – so all of those balances are connected to each other.

If Unallocated seems wrong, double-check that your Account balances accurately reflect what you have in real life. If they do, then what’s in Unallocated is money you have available to budget with. If they don’t, try updating your Account balances to make them match, and Unallocated will update too.

If that doesn’t help, send us an email to support@goodbudget.com so we can take a closer look at your Household and investigate further.

Hope that helps!

Hi Happy Couple –

Had the same problem. Here’s how I fixed it. Go to upper left of your homepage and click on the plus sign for new transactions. Then enter new income for the amount that is negative in unallocated. (Assuming your unallocated is minus.) Voila. You’ll see your unallocated is now zero. Let me know this doesn’t work for you. I do this at the end of every year on 12/31 which tells me how much I overspent that year.

If the new income you enter is actually income AND all your account balances match what they are in real life AND the total of your accounts (as seen on the accounts tab) equals the total of all your envelopes (as seen on the envelopes tab) then this will work. Otherwise your finances are not balanced and you either have more or less money in real life.

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Isn’t this just adding fake money to your budget? Money that you don’t actually have.

This depends. If you took the unallocated money out of an emergency fund, then no. If you’re carrying it on a credit card balance, then yes. It’s the only way that I could figure out to make it work.

Well I mean, if you’re just adding a new income transaction without actually getting new income from somewhere. The money has to come from somewhere in reality. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re doing.

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The only reason one would add income without actually receiving income is to match GB’s account with the actual bank account. In other words, some where along the way a mistake was made and GB’s account is no longer balanced with the bank account. If the error can’t be found, then an income fill could be added to balance the GB account.

Let’s say my bank account balance is $1000 and GB’s bank account shows $800 balance. I look to find where the mistake was made, but can’t find it. Then I just add a $200 income fill to that account. Now I will have GB’s bank account balance at $1000, which is what my actual bank shows. And now I have $200 in unallocated to fill envelopes as I please.

This is not fake money because it’s what I actually have in real life that wasn’t being reflected in GB.

^ this is definitely a legitimate case to adjust your balances, but I would recommend doing this as an account adjustment rather than by adding a new Income transaction.

What you’d do is go to your Edit Accounts page and manually update the number in the Current Balance field (so in that example, you’d erase 800 and write 1000 instead). Once you save, it’ll have the same effect of increasing your household balance (and thus Unallocated) by 200, and it’ll even generate a transaction line you can rename, but it won’t throw off your Income numbers and get confusing in that way!

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