Budget/Actual/Available

I am kind of overwhelmed and a new Tiller User.

I am confused on the Budget/Actual/Available in regards to my savings. All of my savings goals are fully funded for the month, and one of my savings goals (our trip to Canada) is completely funded. Why is the “Available” for my Long Term goals “0” even though I have money designated to those accounts? And why is the “Available” for Canada “$3,000”? Is it cause it’s fully funded and the others only have $20-$30 in them?

Screenshot 2023-02-09 084702|690x245

Welcome to Tiller, @amcelroy09!

Based on the screenshot, I think you would do better with the Savings Budget. I’m not sure how you are creating your monthly “actuals” in the screenshot but the Savings Budget is a simplified envelope budget that will accrue unspent budget (as “savings”).

I hope you’ll give it a try.

@randy well it was with the savings budget that I was able to setup my Savings Goal sheet.

I followed the YouTube instructions that tiller put out. I used the Savings Budget to setup my Savings Goals sheet.

But it’s my monthly budget (in the screenshot above) that is confusing me.

I believe what you’re looking at here is the monthly budget so that budget amount comes from the categories sheet and the amounts on each month depending on what month is selected on the budget sheet

The actual amount is the transactions that have been categorized during the time period selected summed together.

And the available balance is the difference, or what’s left to spend on that category.

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I’m not totally clear. Are you using this Savings Budget template? (The one that looks similar to the Monthly Budget?)

If you’re using the Savings Budget, you should just hide the Monthly Budget. The Savings Budget essentially replaces that functionality if you want envelope workflows.

The screenshot didn’t have some headers but it looked like it was from the Monthly Budget… which is not relevant for what you’re doing.

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Okay. Sorry! This is all so new to me and I’m not a Spreadsheet person or a math person so it’s a lot to understand.

I have all three sheets: Savings Goals Sheet, the Savings Budget, and the Monthly Budget (the basic one that just came with the starter template.)

@randy You’re saying that if I am using the Savings Budget, I don’t need to use the Monthly Budget?

Right. You might not want to delete it… just hide the Monthly Budget.
But yes… if you’re using the Savings Budget, it replaces the Monthly Budget for month-to-month management.

Screenshot 2023-02-10 063810|690x239

@randy So now that I am using the Savings Budget, my question is still the same… Why does it show progress on my Long Term Goals, but it shows “$0” for our Short Term Goal of our Canada Trip, even though that $3000 is fully funded?


Now, a side note: We had the $3000 for Canada in January. But we didn’t start using Tiller until February 1st. So I had to “assign” or allocate the $3000 balance in our Savings Account to the Canada category.

With the short term goals, we moved that money after February 1st so there were actual transactions.

Here is a shot of our Savings Goal Sheet:

Screenshot 2023-02-10 064357|690x212

I think there may be a little confusion on how these tools interact.

  • The Savings Goals sheet does not feed into the Savings Budget.
  • The Savings Goals sheet is about setting long term TARGETS for savings and understanding how long they will take to achieve based on existing balance and monthly budgets.
  • The Savings Budget does not consider savings targets.
  • The Savings Budget simply allows you to budget for direct monthly expenditures (like Groceries) and also long-term expenses (like a periodic car insurance payment). Any unspent budget will accumulate and rollover to the following months and show in the next months Savings category. That period’s available spend will then be the rollover “Savings” + the current month’s “Budget”… so you can save for a trip for several month by not spending Vacation then have a large budget for your trip.

In the screenshots, I can’t tell where the Actuals are coming from on your Long Term items. I don’t think there should be actuals (which reduce the savings) for these items.