Hi @MikeAndClaire – I echo what @Rebecca.S said about how the Savings Budget primarily tracks the unspent portion of your budget from previous months. Just to build on her comment:
“The Savings Budget compares the monthly budget you’ve set for each category against your actual spending in those categories, and keeps a running tally of the unspent (“available”) funds in each category. If you’re starting April with an extra $1250 from your savings envelopes, you can add it as a lump sum to one of your expense categories, using Adjust ± Modifies, as you did in your last screenshot, or divide the total between multiple categories.”
To simulate that in your sample sheet:
- Add a new Expense category called “Savings Envelope” and give it a budget of $1,250 for March.
- Don’t assign any transactions to that category for March.
When you flip the Savings Budget sheet to April, you’ll now see $1,250 in the Savings column for that category—this simulates carrying over your envelope balance. From there, you can distribute that savings to other categories using the Adjust ± Modifies workflow.
Going forward, even with a very basic setup, you’ll start to accumulate unspent funds in your budget categories each month. You can either distribute those savings directly to other categories where you need them, or transfer them all into your Savings Envelope category to pool them and redistribute later.
If you plan to add $1,250 each month to replicate a savings envelope process, Savings Budget might be a force-fit. I don’t personally use savings envelopes, but you might consider the Envelope Register template: