Cash Envelopes IRL (Pairing with debit transactions & reimbursing with cash deposit)

When I get paid, a specific amount is withdrawn as cash from the bank and placed in various envelopes. Sometimes instead of using the cash, we use the debit card, then reimburse the bank account with the cash from the envelope within a couple days. I understand I need to categorize the initial cash withdrawal by splitting it accordingly, but don’t know what to do from there. I don’t want the cash withdrawal and the debit card transaction to both come, since that would double up. I also don’t know how to then reconcile when I deposit cash back into the bank account to cover the debit transaction. Example: $100 cash goes into my “personal spending money” envelope IRL. I spend $10 of that on my debit card. I then take $10 IRL and deposit it into my back account to cover the transaction. How do I handle this in Tiller?

Welcome to Tiller. If I’m understanding you correctly, it sounds like most of what you’re describing are transfers between different accounts rather than underlying transactions. I would probably just create a manual account called Cash and add manual transfer transactions between Cash and your banking account as necessary. Hope that helps.

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My main goal with Tiller is to see where the outflow of money is going, so I only have my checking account linked, since that’s where all the money (income) originates. Would it work if I only categorized the cash withdrawals into the appropriate categories, then deleted any debit transactions tied to the cash in envelopes and deleted any cash deposits coming back in to reimburse those debit transactions? That way, I’m only counting the money coming in once and only counting it going out once, without all the back and forth…Sorry, I’m not understanding how to handle a Cash account entered manually, so wondering if the method I laid out would work instead. Thanks for your help!

If that workflow works for you, then sure, it seems like it should be fine. One of the great things about Tiller is that we can all customize it to our own preferences.

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