When I look at my accounts tab, my GB figures all agree with my bank. However, a portion of those totals is unallocated in my envelopes tab. In which account does my unallocated reside? Does that make sense?
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It doesn’t live in any one account; it’s the aggregate amount of all the money in your accounts minus the amount you allocated to envelopes (whether or not you’ve spent it). If you have a savings account, it’s a good idea to create and fill a savings envelope to match so that money doesn’t look like it’s available to spend.
Hope that helps!
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In accounting terms: Assets = Liabilities + Equity
This is the basic accounting equation and is the foundation of all bookkeeping systems. Everything on the left side of this equation represents money in your control, and everything on the right side represents an ownership claim against that money. You can think of your Accounts as Assets, your Envelopes as Liabilities (i.e. Payables), and your Unallocated as Equity (i.e. the remainder after you pay everything you owe).
Consider several of the typical GoodBudget transactions:
Create an Account: Debit (increase) Assets and Credit (increase) Equity
Fill Envelopes: Debit (decrease) Equity and Credit (increase) Liabilities
New Income: Debit (increase) Assets and Credit (increase) Liabilities and/or Equity
Account Transfer: Debit (increase) one Asset and Credit (decrease) another Asset
Envelope Transfer: Debit (decrease) one Liability and Credit (increase) another Liability
And so on. Debit balances (i.e. Assets) always equal Credit balances (i.e. Liabilities + Equity), and Debits always equal Credits for every transaction.
Most of the time GoodBudget just calculates Unallocated for you as the remainder of whatever you’ve entered for Accounts and Envelopes.
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It’s a good example of the fact that none of the money in your envelopes “lives” in any particular account.
The total of all of your accounts equals x dollars, $10500 for example. The total of your envelopes plus unallocated also equals $10500, but that is the end of the relationship. You can make a group of envelopes correspond to an account if you want to, but that’s the user enforcing that restriction. There’s nothing inherent in GB that ties an envelope to an account and unallocated is just a special envelope.
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