I have a checking account with a minimum balance requirement that I can’t use unless I close the account. I don’t want this amount to show in my assets because I want to see how much money I actually have available to spend.
I tried two things:
I’m not sure what’s the best way to exclude the minimum balance from my assets.
Well technically it is an asset and is liquid. If I were trying to do what you’re doing I would just create a manual liability/expense account called “Minimum Balance Offset” and add the sum of all accounts with minimum balances into that.
I created a manual account of type Asset and created a manual withdrawal transaction of the minimum balance and checked the box “update balance” when adding the transaction but the balance in the balances sheet shows $0.
I tried updating the balance manually to -5500 but it changes to +5500. It’s very weird and unexpected behaviour!
I hacked it to show a negative minimum balance by manually updating the Balance History sheet. I had to read the formula code to see where report is pulling data from.
I think there is a bug that does not allow entering a negative balance.
The amount is positive because it’s an asset. If you want a negative amount, you’ll have to choose a liability. Amounts will show in absolute value, then polarity is determined by the class.
As I understand it, a withdrawal from an asset should show as negative. This is explained when you make a manual transaction. I deliberately made it an asset so that it deducts the minimum balance amount from liquid assets.
Are your other manual accounts/transactions working as expected except for this workflow? You are welcome to write into support if you’d like to share some screenshots with our team to troubleshoot what might be happening.