Savings & Debt not populating balance etc

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@MidnightPrzm

I have multiple categories set up for savings such as vacation, emergency fund, soft savings
…
I just recently switched them to expenses as I was thinking that maybe I would treat them as expenses as I figure this all out.

Any goal or savings fund you want to have should be set up in the Categories sheet as an expense, and the Track should be set to Savings. So I would have the Vacation, Emergency Fund, and Soft Savings categories set up like this. Then, you set the budget for each goal to the amount you plan to save monthly.

As long as you do not categorize any transactions with those categories, the amount you have saved will match what you have entered in the Budget Plan, and will show up in the Savings column on the Savings Budget sheet for the subsequent months (column D).

@MidnightPrzm

The thing is, although I am budgeting a certain amount for each individual savings account, I don’t always hit those numbers if I have other more important expenses like paying down credit card balances.

If you fall short one month and can’t save the full amount you expected, the solution is to create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amount, and pass in a negative number. No need to touch what you have entered in the Budget Plan sheet at all!

Example:

If you realize you can’t save $50 you initially budgeted toward vacation this month because of credit card debt, you would:

• Make sure cell I4 is set to Savings
• Enter -50 in column I next to Vacation (should be colored green)
• Go to: Extensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings Budget

This will create a record for -$50 in the Budget Journal sheet, which will lower your available amount by $50 to keep you in line with reality.

@MidnightPrzm

I do not however categorize any of my transactional expenses as an emergency fund expenditure
…
Like if I was to go traveling then I would pull that money out of my vacation fund then spend it all on airfare, excursions, lodging, etc.
Each of those has their own category so in this manner what would you propose that I do?

I fully agree that it is not optimal to categorize the transaction for buying the toilet under “Emergency Fund”, and this is also not what I do. It’s just what the documentation for the solution/responses from Tiller suggested. The solution I found that works best (and what will solve probably 99% of your problems) is to do what I outlined above and create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amount down, but also simultaneously transfer the funds to the categories in which you use them.
Note: this requires those categories to also have their Track set to Savings.

Example:

Say you have $3,000 saved in your Vacation expense, and you spent $1,600 of it on vacation recently.

• $1,053 on airfare
• $547 on lodging

You would just transfer the funds between the savings buckets using the Budget Journal.

• Make sure cell I4 is set to Savings
• Enter -1600 into column I next to Vacation
• Enter +1053 into column I next to Airfare
• Enter +547 into column I next to Lodging
• Go to Extensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings Budget
• Click Update Savings Budget

Now, on the Savings Budget sheet, Vacation should have $1,400 instead of $3,000 (what you didn’t spend). Airfare should have +$1,053 and Lodging should have +$547 (provided they both started out at a $0 balance). Then, when the airfare purchase hits the Transactions sheet, you categorize it as Airfare. The +$1,053 amount for the Airfare category will decrease by the amount of the transaction. The same for when the Lodging purchase comes through.

@MidnightPrzm

Or let’s say I end up hitting my max save goal for my emergency fund then I would start putting higher amounts on those other budgets, but I don’t want to create an entire new row in the Budget Plan to account for the change in amount from one month to another month especially long-term like I have to do for any recurring transactions for actual expenses like monthly subscriptions that either increase or get paused, etc.

I believe this is a limitation to the Budget Plan solution interacting with the Savings & Debt solution. Remember, the savings calculation is:
(what’s in Categories) - (what’s in Transactions) +/- (what’s in Budget Journal).

Normally, you would set the budgets on the Categories sheet up in a way where you allocate each month’s budget individually. Since Budget Plan calculates everything using a formula, you can’t really change anything mid year for a line item without messing up prior month budgets. This effectively locks you out of making changes to the Categories sheet, which is the first part of the calculation.

You can do one of two things to get around this:

1. On the Budget Plan sheet, set the budgets for these goals up manually using the ExternalSource feature. I haven’t done this (I don’t use Budget Plan personally, but have plans to integrate it into my solution soon), so I can’t really guide you on that path. There’s a little info on it in the documentation.
   

   

2. The other option is to, again, create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amounts retroactively.

   Example:

   • You had $500 set aside monthly for you Emergency Fund, and $200 set aside to Vacation.
   • After 4 months, your Emergency Fund of $2,000 is funded, and you now have an extra $500 to throw around to the other budgets each month going forward.
   • You want to take $400 of this and start putting it toward the Vacation fund to total $600 monthly.

   Currently, the Vacation fund has $800 in it ($200 x 4 months). If you adjust the budget in the Budget Plan to instead be $600 a month, this goes up erroneously to $2,400 ($600 x 4 months). It gives you the correct monthly goal going forward, but now your total available is out of alignment with reality because you wasn’t saving that much for the first 4 months. To fix this, create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amount down to where it should be.

   • Make sure cell I4 is set to Savings
   • Enter -1600 in column I next to Vacation ($2,400 - $800)
   • Go to: Extensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings Budget

   Afterward, the available amount should show correctly as $800 again, and you will be allocating $600 to it going forward. This same concept applies to expenses that are not savings goals, like monthly subscriptions that raise or are paused, etc..

@MidnightPrzm

As far as credit card balances go, how could I budget them in a way that shows what I spent paying them back? If in the transactions sheet each payment is an outflow from my checking and an inflow into the credit card, then that in essence is an account transfer. Do you categorize that as a transfer too? I would think that would be an expense. Or do you only consider the interest you pay an expense? So, if you spend 7k on a credit card then you make your payments, and any interest payment transactions are separate monthly transactions that your bank charges you and that would be an expense but all the other payments would be 7k out and 7k in so they would zero out.

Your last part there is correct. I only consider interest that I pay as an actual expense in terms of credit card balances. Otherwise, you’re essentially double-counting your expenses. When you buy lunch for $20, you categorize it as Dining (or whatever), which is an expense category. That $20 goes on your credit card to be paid later. When you go to pay the $20 off, there will be two transactions pulled into the Transactions sheet:

• +$20 to Chase Freedom from 5/3 Checking (Transfer In)
• -$20 from 5/3 Checking to Chase Freedom (Transfer Out)

If you categorize the -$20 coming from the Checking Account as a category set up as an expense, you would be double-counting that lunch expense: once under Dining and another under 5/3 Outbound (or whatever). Any payments made to/from a credit card should be treated as transfers between accounts, and use categories that are transfer types. The initial transactions are what should be categorized under expense types.

If you wanted to see how much money you spent paying off cards, I would look into other solutions that report off of the Transactions sheet and groups by account. All you would need is something that queries the transaction sheet for the sum of all transactions that have a positive value (payments to the card, as opposed to expenses against the card). I’m not sure of a solution off the top of my head, but there’s likely one out there.