I receive a lump sum at the beginning of the year and must budget from that.
How do I:
- set up my income to be one deposit on Jan 1
- set each envelope to get a deposit on January 1 that is the amount for the year
Thanks!
Goodbudget doesn’t have an annual budgeting option, although it does offer annual envelopes. Since it’s difficult to conceptualize spending over a full year, would it be easier to set up the single income but then “dole it out” in monthly allotments over the year? If so, you would enter the income into an Account on January first, then set up a monthly budget with monthly recurring Fills for 1/12 of the total to the envelopes you’re using throughout the year. Your Unallocated balance will represent the amount left from your annual allotment plus any money that was in that account before, unless you’ve chosen to assign that value to an envelope as well to help keep things separate.
If you’d actually prefer to do an annual budget, you would just set all your envelopes up as Annual envelopes, then do a single Fill from New Income to put the money into each one.
Hope that helps!
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Hi Tiffany,
My situation is similar to Trish’s. However, I’ve been spending from my lump sum for almost two months now. I’d like to be able to begin my Goodbudget accounts from January 1. Is there a way to enter income and expenses retroactively?
Sure, you can set any date when you enter a transaction
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The easiest way to do this would be to download the transactions from your financial institution in a compatible file format, like .csv or Quicken. You’ll then import them into the correct account and specify which envelope each one should be in. It’s a bit labor-intensive the first time, but it’s easier than typing each line in its entirety.
Hope that helps!