Hello, I’m new to Goodbudget. I used to have a Simple banking account and used all the budgeting features they had, I paid off over $60,000 by sticking to my budget on Simple. So I understand how easy-to-use budgets can be and how absolutely necessary they are to everyday life.
After trying Everydollar, YNAB, and Tiller, I found Goodbudget to be the easiest one to use. But one thing I don’t understand is why the “fill envelopes” don’t work correctly and by correctly I mean when I choose the amount that the envelops suggests I add to it, the amount does not reach that little line on the progress bar (which i found out in the help section is supposed to be how much is needed to be on-track to reach the targeted fund date). Some of my envelopes get left over with odd amounts, and on Simple it would automatically recalculate exactly how much I needed to set aside each pay period to reach my targeted fund date on all my different envelopes (they called them expenses in Simple though), I could even change my targeted fund date and Simple would recalculate how much I needed to set aside. On Goodbudget I have to do all the calculations myself. Which isn’t a huge problem, but it would sure make the app easier to use if it would automatically recalculate by itself.
I guess my question is, is this normal or am I doing something wrong?
I also noticed this last time i filled envelopes, that the little line on the progress bar don’t seem to be correct all the time, is that normal?
I get paid weekly and I set my budget up to be weekly, in case that makes a difference. I know from trying all those other budgeting apps that doing a weekly budget is not considered normal.
Welcome to Goodbudget, and sorry for the confusion getting started! I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can.
Since you’re budgeting Weekly, the progress bar should reset each week moving from right to left. When your Envelopes are full and it’s the first day of your budget, your green bar (or balance bar) and the black line should both be all the way to the right. It sounds like you’re saying that the green bar doesn’t go all the way to the black line, my guess is that you’re using the ‘Add’ refill option, which is the rollover option. When you do that, Goodbudget will add your budgeted amount on top of what you already had in the Envelope. If your Envelope’s balance was negative from the previous week, then you’ll have less money in the new week, which means the balance bar won’t meet the black line at the far right.
If you want to have your Envelope’s balance reset to full at the start of your Weekly budget, try using the ‘Set’ refill option instead.
I also noticed this last time i filled envelopes, that the little line on the progress bar don’t seem to be correct all the time, is that normal?
I explained a little about how the black line works above, but here’s some more info. If that doesn’t sound like what you’re seeing, can you let me know more about what you are experiencing?
The attached screen shot is a picture of my monthly and annual envelopes.
So in general my monthly expenses should be the total divided by 4. But instead, goodbudget comes up with these weird numbers that seem to be exactly 92.3% of how much I actually need to reach my target date therefore if I put in exactly how much they say I need weekly I’ll be exactly 7.7% short by the time that expense is due. Why is that? Did I set up the envelopes incorrectly somehow? The Annual envelopes seem to be correct, because goodbudgets weekly numbers line up with what Simple said I needed to save weekly for those same expenses.
And when I click on the “Set” button while filling envelopes my entire balance disappears out of that envelope, thats why I figured you had to use the “add” button. Is that supposed to happen? And for my weekly envelopes that is fine, but it does the same thing for my monthly and annual envelopes which don’t really make sense to me.
I set up my weekly budget to start on the day I get payed, Wednesday. Every month this year has at least 4 Wednesday’s. March, June, September, and December have 5. But even if it calculated the weekly amounts with 5 paydays a month it would be 80% not 92.3%.
@Moonwaves has described the discrepancy in percentages. By assuming four weeks every month you’re “losing” four weeks per year (52 actual weeks vs. 48 budgeted). That’s the source of your 93.6% adjustment. I think the confusion stems from the fact that you’re budgeting weekly (since you get paid on Wednesdays) and thinking that Goodbudget will calculate the monthly total from your four weekly payments (but there are 4.3 weeks/month). You’re resetting your budget every week which will ultimately meet your monthly goals (it’s including the extra days each month in its calculations).
If you want to meet your entire monthly goals with just four payments and just keep the leftover money from the four extra weeks, it sounds like you may want to change to Monthly budgeting (which makes sense for things like rent, phone bill, electricity and others you have noted above) and make your Fill ¼ of your budgeted amount each week. Goodbudget works best when the budget is based on when the bills come due/money is spent and fills are based on pay days.
Hope that helps!
I tried changing my budget to monthly but when i do the “more envelopes” has no weekly option. My weekly envelopes, in the way that my budget always worked on Simple, wouldn’t make sense as monthly envelopes because I use the money on a weekly basis and I don’t need it to carry over to the next week. The only way I can think of to make my primary budget monthly is to change all my weekly envelopes to Goals envelopes with no due date, although that seems kind of silly.
I guess I’ll continue to do the fill calculations myself since goodbudget doesn’t seem to work off of actual due dates. From my point of view it shouldn’t matter whether there are 52 or 593 weeks in a year. The bills have a due date, goodbudget knows you get paid weekly (since you set the budget to weekly), it knows how much money is saved up already and it knows how many pay periods (in my case, Wednesday’s) are left till the due date therefore it should be able to calculate how much money you need to fill each week to stay on budget from the bills due date, not from 52 weeks a year. Simple did all of that and I never had to worry about whether there were 5 Wednesday’s in a month or 4 Wednesday’s in a month, because no matter how the days fell my envelopes were full on the due date.
