Hello all, it seems that no matter what I do I can’t trust the cashflow in/out on my monthly budget. Here’s what I’ve done and the problem I’m experiencing:
Let’s assume I have an income of 2k and a mortgage of 1k*, and no other transactions.
I get paid +2k. Listed in categories tab, my planned income is 2k.
My mortgage is 1k. My planned expense is 1k. My expected total cashflow is -+1k (salary - mortgage)
The mortgage payment appears as a -1k in checking.
In the mortgage account, it appears as +1k.
My expected cashflow is -1k, but because of the +1k to the mortgage account, my cashflow is -0-.
The money from your bank account (-1000) is actually a transfer to your mortgage co (+1000) then the mortgage company actually applies the funds to the correct expense ( - interest, - principal, - escow account) I am not sure if you are seeing these transactions in your mortgage account.
I said technically, because while correct it is annoying and not data I choose to track. instead, I only mark the one item out of my checking as Mortgage. I then create a new category called Mortgage Details (type = Transfer) and categorize all of the other mortgage transactions with that one. Since the category is a transfer, the cash flow reports just ignore them, and the cash flow now looks correct.
thank you for the reply. So the action item is to label certain transactions as Type = Transfer, so that they will not appear on monthly budget by category sheets?
Yes. Most Tiller spreadsheets use a convention where money moved between accounts is categorized with a “Transfer” type (which is typically hidden) so it is not shown as income or expense.