I know there’s the Transaction Splitter feature which allows you to split a transaction into multiple categories, however I was wondering if anyone else has run into the same problem where I would like to split a transaction into multiple smaller payments across a period of time (like once every month). An example would be: I pay my internet bill yearly (say every January). Instead of having one large bill in January which makes it seem like I went way over my utilities budget for January, I’d like to split it out into twelve transactions that each take place on the 1st of every month of the year.
Another example is property tax payments which in California happen twice a year.
Is this a thing? Do other people manage it like this?
I have seen this type of question posted several times recently in the community. Users are considering making changes to their actual transactions in the spirit of doing budgets and using the budgeting tools. I am not familiar with the budgeting tools so I do not comment on that. Of course, users can do what they want to do but just be sure you really understand what you are doing.
Here is an example. Let’s say you do not have internet and then you decide to get it. Let’s say you get it on 07-01-20 and you pay one year’s worth of service upfront on 07-01-20. Let’s assume $1,200 total for the year which is $100 per month. You can manually break apart that $1,200 transaction payment made on 07-01-20 into 12 monthly payments in Tiller. So, let’s say you run a P&L report for the year 2020. It will show only $600 of expense when your actual expense was $1,200. You have a nice clean budget for internet but you have changed the underlying data. Your P&L is wrong and does not reflect what actually happened. You have changed the actual raw data.
You paid out $1,200 on 07-01-20 and this amount reduced your checking account balance by $1,200 which happens automatically if the bank account is linked. So now you have a disconnect between balance sheet and P&L.
Use caution when making changes and make sure you understand all the many ramifications that result from your changes.
@davidhe Sounds like this could be a good discussion on prepaid expenses, amortizations, etc. There isn’t an exact tool (splitter, calculator, etc) within Tiller that does what you describe. I’d recommend adding a feature request for this. I believe this is the discussion @Blake may be making reference to… although it is referencing income, the same type of logic could be used.
