New Envelope Budget v. 2.0 Released for review

[mgulbin]

Hi @richl , is this more or less your support forum for Ultimate Envelopes? Do you collect feedback on bugs, etc? I haven’t moved to 22.2 yet. I picked it up a few months ago but had trouble transitioning from your old version (pre ultimate). I did a lot of tweaks to the old sheet so I was a bit hesitant to switch, but I think I’m ready to do it now and have been playing around with 22.2 this last week while also running the old one in parallel.

One question I have is do you release updates and if so, how do you send that over to us? Would we have to download a new sheet and go through the process of importing data again? That’s what I always find to be most challenging - getting the sheets setup. Once it’s up and running though, I love it. But even transitioning from the old version to 22.2 has had it’s hiccups.

I would also like to make a major suggestion - the ability to the update the budget from within the sheet. With the old version, I used the Savings Budget in parallel. I loved how that sheet allowed me to change either my savings goals or budget from one sheet. So after I found your solution I abandoned the savings part of that solution, but I kept it in tact so that I could update my budget for the next month. I kept the envelope system on the current month to do category transfers and monitoring and I kept the savings budget sheet on the next month so I could always plan the next month’s budget and make sure it was balanced with my planned income. That’s something that I think would be very useful in your sheet. I couldn’t possibly go in and edit the category sheet manually at this point. Too tedious and no checks on my math. I started trying to import the savings budget solution into the 22.2 sheet that I have setup but it’s telling me there’s a conflict with the Categories sheet (could be one of my tweaks rather than yours).

[richl]

Hi Mike, first off, I am glad you like the sheet. I think you will like 22.2 even better.

Let me try to answer your questions.

Yes, the Tiller community seems to be where a lot of folks ask me questions. The Tiller community is great, and there are so many smart people. Moreover, the folks at Tiller are great and allow so many various sheets to live here. That being said, while it is great for conversation, it isn’t great for support docs and the hosting of files.
This is why I created a notion site to help with instructions, how-to’s and other items.

Here is the link.

I try to keep adding content, but it can be overwhelming. If anyone is an aspiring technical writer and wants to help, let me know.

As far as updates, I do fix things from time to time, and try to release 1 or 2 major versions out each year. Coming soon i want to release one that has an updated Transaction tracker ( screenshot below) and an improved income funding template ( coming soon). I am thinking that this may be of interest to you and others.

If there are any updates I will send out a note and you will get them for free.

That being said, I do agree with you,. Upgrading can be a pain. To help with this, I have been trying to talk to Tiller to host on the community to help with version management, but do to the limited scripting that I use, they are hesitant. I am still working on this and hope to find a better way soon. Honestly, there are so many people that would benefit from this envelope system, but are limited because of the startup process.

In reality, I could make it easier to startup, but I am trying to preserve the interoperability with the other Tiller sheets. I would be interesting in knowing if this is critical for you or not.

I am interested in know more about your issue with budgeting and savings goals. On the current Categories sheet you can set both.

When you add an amount to savings target it will show up like this on the Envelopes sheet and you can also see other details related to the Savings goal.

If you are having issues upgrading, please email me at ultimateenvelopes@thescottland.com with some screenshots, and I can help out. You can also share your sheet with me, and I could resolve pretty quickly.

Let me know.

For anyone else you want to start the new year with a new Envelope budget, go here to learn more about the Ultimate Envelope Sheet.

Happy New Years.

[mgulbin]

Hi @richl, let me give a better explanation of how I use the savings sheet.
To be clear, I do NOT use it for savings. I use it for budgeting.

Specifically, I don’t like editing my budget directly from the Categories sheet. When I started using Tiller, I immediately found it tricky to make sure my budget categories totaled my income categories (I have multiple income categories and hundreds of categories and I frequently make tweaks here and there to a category by a few dollars. I want to make sure those changes balance with my project income).

Here’s an example of that with some callouts:

As you can see, it summarizes my estimated income. It also summarizes my budget for each category. It tells me that I have a difference (or cashflow) of 540. So I know that I need to keep tweaking categories until that is $0. I can tweak multiple category budgets at the same time. When I’m done, there’s a function in the Tiller menus that let’s me commit these changes to the categories sheet. There’s also a “Budget Journal” which has before and after values for anything I changed. So if I mess something up, I can find out what it was before.

I love using this sheet in this way because it helps me make sure my budget is in-balance.

What’s cool is this drop down at the top where you can select whether it modifies the budget or the savings goal.

Again, I don’t use the savings portion, but I think it’s an innovative way to handle modifying different sources. So my wish has always been to have the ability to change your sheet to include something similar instead of going to a separate sheet.

Your next question about keeping to the Tiller foundation sheets, I don’t know if I care too much, but I don’t know what it would break. I do use standard functions like manual accounts and manual transactions to those and other accounts, as well as reconciliation.

I know you use the scripts to fund envelops, sweep etc. and you mentioned that Tiller has concerns about that. But how else would you do that? They don’t use functions but they’re able to make fancy data changes happen. Is there some way you would get that included?

And finally, on the updating your help site, I’m always willing to help. I don’t have much free time, but I use the sheets enough that I could make tweaks here and there. Would also love if there was a way for users of the site to request an update to the page. For instance, on the getting started page, it seems like you’re going to talk through upgrading, but then you talk about making a copy of the sheet and starting from scratch. I’m interested in knowing how to migrate from an old sheet to a new one. I think I crashed my way through it this last week, but more detail would be great there.

So far, I’m really liking 22.2. Much cleaner.

[TheGreatSeby]

Hi, is there any video tutorial somewhere please. I’m really new to all of this, even tiller, but in real life, I know I want to use the envelope system idea.
tks
Seby

[richl]

HI @TheGreatSeby,

Sorry no video (yet) but i did put together a support site on Notion. here is the link. also, you can. reach out to me anytime.

Rich

[michaelrod29]

Just wondering if anyone else using UE has seen double entries when filling the envelopes. Everything else works great, but every month when I fill my envelopes (I do this 1x/month) each envelope gets filled twice. I work around this by going to the Funding Transaction sheet and deleting the extra set of deposits, but pretty sure it shouldn’t work this way. I’m trying to figure out if it’s something I’m doing wrong, or if it’s a Google Sheets issue, or maybe something else.

[richl]

Hey Mike, I actually have refactored the code as was also having trouble with the same error. I have added the new code into the next version of UE,( much faster) but I also couldl get it working for you in the existing sheet. reach out to me via email: ultimateenvelopes@thescottland.com and I will help out.

[michaelrod29]

Ah, excellent. Thanks, Rich. I’ll send you an email.

[mail2tom2]

Next version??? Please tell me more

[richl]

Here are a few screenshots. But honestly, I am really close to releasing. I just need to update a few things and work on the documentation.

New enhanced tracker.

Super fast updating due to refactored script.

Automated Sheet Mangement updates, and archiving

Plug and Play widgets for the main section

curated list of Envelopes to select from

And probably one of the things i am most excited for…

UE Companion app for mobile.

This is a mobile responsive webapp that works on your phone or browser and provides seamless access to most capabilities of Ultimate Envelopes.

The work is in still in progress, but i have been hard to get it released. All existing customers of Ultimate Envelopes will get access to the new sheet.

Stay Tuned.