The Net Worth template, found in the Tiller Money Feeds extension menu, displays the balance of each account or group of accounts over a range of weeks, months, quarters or years. This should show how your cash position is changing over time.
Whether I use a credit or debit account to pay for any given expense, the categories I’ve set up give me a clear picture of what I spend, and where. I use the Budget Plan created by @jpfieber to populate my budget based on these categories. I highly recommend this template.
I use the excellent Bill Payment Tracker contributed by @jono to stay on top of upcoming expenses. This template seems to capture almost every obligation I have, except for things like vacation travel, home renovations, and large occasional purchases.
Another helpful template is the Recurring Expense Template contributed by @adambecker, which can bring to my attention expenses I may have overlooked.
Since all transactions, regardless of account, can be categorized as expenses like groceries, clothing, etc, I don’t hide anything based on the account. I do hide accounts that have little or no activity, like a home equity line of credit that we keep for emergencies. If I was tracking an account like my kids’ custodial accounts, I might hide them or track them in a separate Tiller sheet.
I do hide some categories from reports when they don’t inform my understanding of day-to-day finances. Two examples are an insurance claim and the sale of a house. These are anomalies that occur rarely and while they must be documented, they don’t really shed any light on the household budget. I unhide them if/when I want to see the bigger picture.
I categorize payments toward credit card balances as transfers, since they do not change my net worth. I’ve budgeted for the underlying expenses, so to budget for the CC payments would be duplicative. If a CC payment included interest, I’d split that transaction to capture the interest expense. I can then track and budget for that interest if I choose.
Avoiding overdrafts is the only consideration you’ve mentioned that the above approach doesn’t really address. For this, I’ve created a small table on my Dashboard page that displays my current checking account balance. I’ll add to that table any big payments coming up that draw on that account (like paying the credit card bill, or estimated tax payments), with a due date or payment date, and the amount. I’ll calculate their impact on my bank balance in the approaching days or weeks. When the payment actually appears in my bank feed, I’ll delete it from the dashboard. With this, I can see at a glance when my balance will be low, and plan transfers or payment dates accordingly, without disrupting my budget categories.
Just one approach among many.