New Envelope Budget v. 2.0 Released for review

All, I am excited to release version 2.0 of the envelope budget sheet that I started building last year. I am a huge fan of envelope budgeting. Honestly it has changed how I manage my finances and how I view spending and money in general.

Just to be clear, this is not a Tiller supported template but it does work with the Tiller Foundation Sheet.

I am still working on the updated documentation but wanted to send out so people could start kicking the tires and give me feedback I have used this version for several months as my daily budget so it should be good for you too.

Click on this link to make a copy of the new sheet.
Envelopes with Templates 2.0 - Make a copy

I have added a bunch more capabilites to the sheet, but have tried to keep the ease of use and simplicity of the original sheet.

Main Capabiities: (items with a * means it is new in v 2.0)

  • Fund Envelopes using customizable templates
    image

  • Show Savings Goals and progress towards goals.

  • Dedicated Funding Sheet to easily track the filling of envelopes.

  • Ability to track current month and future balances( YNAB users rejoice)

image

  • *Build custom View Templates to quickly change the current view with 11 different insights and more coming.

image

  • *View by Group or Account
    image

  • *Improved Categories Sheet ( but still maintains Foundation Sheet Capabilities)

  • *A new Balance Comparison Sheet that allows for easy reconciliation of Envelope to Bank Balances

image

Until I finish the full documentation, the best way to get started is just to click the link which should prompt you to make your own copy of the sheet.
Envelopes with Templates 2.0 - Make a copy

There is already sample data in the file ( transactions, funding transactions, and categories) you could just add to these or delete these and start your own. If you wan to learn the basics just refer to the existing documenation sheet as most things still apply.

Goodluck and I hope you like it. If you need any help donā€™t hesitate to reach out.

Rich

Thanks for sharing an updated release @richl! Exciting to see the improvements :slight_smile:

1 Like

This is awesome! Would love it if you could do a quick video walkthrough of how to use the sheet & set it up!

1 Like

Hi @richl ! Iā€™ve been using and loving this template for a couple of weeks now, but I have a question that might be obvious, but I didnā€™t see it covered in the documentation. On the Envelope sheet, Iā€™m having confusion around Income.

If I categorize a transaction as income, and itā€™s not hidden from the sheet, it goes to the Income section of the sheet, is added to the current balance, and also appears in cell B4 as available to be allocated. However, allocating those funds does not reduce the Current Balance shown, and that Current Balance rolls over to the next month. Am I missing a step here, or misunderstanding how this should be used?

Glad the sheet is working for you.

You are correct. In my sheet, I dont track any income category itself, Instead as you see I track the money that is able to be allocated. Because of this, I just hide any income category from the categories sheet by selecting he field ā€œHide from Fundingā€ ( Which after looking at it is a weird heading)

Thanks for the quick response!

That makes sense. But then when the income categories are Hidden from Funding, B4 on Envelope says that Iā€™ve overfilled. Is the tracking of money to be allocated something you do manually? I can totally do that if needed, I just wanted to make sure Iā€™m not missing out on additional functionality.

So hiding the income categories shouldnā€™t change the amounts that you funded. It should just prevent the income category from showing up on the envelope sheet. That is odd.

I actually track the funds available to allocate in cells O26 and O27. ( see below) O26 is actually a formula that looks up all transactions of income categories. This gives you the total amount to allocate. Column O27 is a formula that adds up all of the funding transactions. the difference is amount you can allocate. It looks like the amount of funding transactions is more than the income.

The goal is to get your Total Envelope balances to match to your actual bank balances. In order to do this, you may need to add some initial balances so your income will match your envelopes balances.

Take a look and dont hesitate to replay back if that doesnt make sense

1 Like

From what Iā€™m seeing, this may be due to the formula in AG7, specifically this part:

iferror(vlookup($AJ$7:$AJ,{$BE$8:$BE,$BG$8:$BG},2,false),ā€œ(hidden)ā€)

This causes a hidden category type to be ā€œ(hidden)ā€, but the formula in O26 is looking for ā€œIncomeā€. When I click the ā€œHide from Fundingā€, the income totals donā€™t show up in AG:AK. I even made a fresh copy of your template, and the same thing happens: Copy of Envelopes with Templates 2.0 - Tiller - Google Sheets

1 Like

you are absolutely right. I have updated the template file to fix teh formula. so you can download again or just update the formula in cell AJ7 to this

=arrayformula(query({Transactions!A1:E ;ā€˜Funding Transactionsā€™!A1:E},ā€œSELECT Col4 ,SUM(Col5) WHERE Col4 IS NOT NULL AND Col2 < date 'ā€&TEXT(eomonth(O7,0)+1,ā€œyyyy-mm-ddā€)&"ā€™ GROUP BY Col4 LABEL SUM(Col5) ā€™ Current Balanceā€™",1))

This will allow you tohide teh income category, but not mess with the available to fund amount

thanks for finding this.

1 Like

Did that fix your issue?

Rich, I was having the same issue with my income not showing in the Envelope sheet. I attempted to paste your formula into AJ7, but as you have it typed, some of the single and double quotes are somehow in a different format and not recognized by Google Sheets. (For example, the double quote characters around [yyyy-mm-dd] are different from the one after the next ampersand.) I had to delete a retype those characters to get it to recognize the formula. Once that was fixed, it works perfectly and I can hide my Income category from funding while still pulling the total correctly.

hmmm, I think it may just be how it is displaying in this forum as the formula is working in my sheet. Here is a screenshot for other that may have the same issue.

Agreed, I had no problems with the formula itself, I just had to change the characters when I pasted into the formula bar of my Google Sheet.

1 Like

Hello, first of all thank you for your efforts and sharing!
Iā€™m looking to use a budget sheet that shows me my current budget compared to my actual real time account balances. In addition to budgets & savings, a funded column. Similar to YNAB (I think, Iā€™ve never actually used that). Think of what an envelope budget would be in the real world: as you make cash, you put it into envelopes to fund the budgets. I do not think the current Tiller-supported ā€œSavings Budgetā€ really does this. Am I wrong? Does the savings budget add-on do that and compare to actual account balances? I appreciate any help in understanding these tools.

Correct, this is one of the reasons I built this version of the envelope sheet. I believe the Tiller envelope sheets and savings sheet use the budget amount to determine the envelope balances. Instead, mine uses the actual income coming into your accounts. Only that actual money is used to fill the envelopes, not future money. Like you said, to represent a physical envelope system. In fact, I have a specific sheet (Balance comparison) that compares your bank balance with the envelope balances, to easily see any issues. . You can also see how much money is left to fund, compared to your budget. Lastly, my sheet allows you to build specific funding templates to allow easy filling of the envelopes.

2 Likes

Hi Rich,
Iā€™m new to Tiller, trying to find a replacement for mvelopes. Your template looks really promising and Iā€™ve copied it and connected it to my Tiller feed. of course, since I copied your template, it has your sample data in it. I can delete the sample transactions without any problems, but how and where do I delete accounts? They show up on three or four different sheets, and I canā€™t tell which one is the original source from which all the others are derived. I thought I had it figured out and I deleted one account row on one sheet (I canā€™t remember which one right now), and I was sure surprised when it reappeared in about two seconds!

Which sheet is the master for removing accounts?

Thank you,
Steve

Hi, I just dealt with this very issue last night! Went 'round n 'round
Make sure to remove any reference on the Transactions, Balance History (this one I kept forgetting), and Accounts (this is only used for overrides) tabs.

1 Like

That is stored in the balance history sheet. Just delete all lines.

Also donā€™t forget to clear the funding transactions sheet. This the sheet that stores the transactions used to fill your envelopes. If you have any more questions let me know.

Hi Rich,
For some reason the balance comparison sheet isnā€™t pulling in my envelope balances. Any thoughts on how to fix this? Thanks!