New Year Not Shown in Savings Budget

Google Sheets
1

Hi, I was checking my Savings Budget this morning, and I am not able to select January 2021 for it. I upgraded to the latest version (0.71) but I still cannot view the Savings Budget for this year. Is there something I need to do to allow for this?

2

Hi @jpkica,

The year dropdown is a category list driven by your budget periods in your Categories sheet. Have you added budget periods for 2021 to that sheet yet? If not, give that a try and see if 2021 shows up after adding the new budget periods.

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3

Hi, thanks for the response. Should I add the periods on the Categories sheet manually? I donā€™t recall doing that in the past.

4

Yes, you are good to add them manually. There is a guide provided by Tiller with a few tips and tricks, but the process is fairly straightforward.

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5

Hi, that worked. Thanks! One more question: what should I do if I want to reset my savings for the year? I do not want to pull forward savings from last year into this year.

6

Glad to hear it worked!

what should I do if I want to reset my savings for the year? I do not want to pull forward savings from last year into this year.

I think the answer to your question depends on how you use those savings categories. Those category savings in your budget are (or should be) real money in your accounts, so simply clearing the savings totals will give a diminished view of your actual financial state. Ideally, you would transfer excess savings from each category you want to zero-out for the year to a savings goal or multiple goals such as an emergency fund, vacation savings, or other known future expenses using the ADJUST Ā± column of the Savings Budget sheet. Each goal can be set up on your Categories sheet as an Expense category with Savings selected in the appropriate column. Here is my recommended workflow:

  1. Create the savings categories (or identify existing categories to use) on your Categories sheet and set the budget for each of those categories to $0 for January 2021. This will ensure than they all show up as available categories on your January 2021 Savings Budget sheet.
  2. On your Savings Budget sheet, make sure you are looking at January 2021 and set the Adjust Ā± Modifies dropdown in G4 to Savings.
  3. For each category with savings you want to zero-out, subtract the entire SAVINGS amount in column C, entering in the ADJUST Ā± column G. This should leave only January 2021ā€™s BUDGET minus ACTUAL in the AVAILABLE column.
  4. Once all desired categories have had negative adjustments entered, select all of those entries and use the quick statistics dropdown in the bottom-right corner of the Google Sheets window to get the sum. This is how much savings you have to distribute to your savings goal categories.
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  5. Divide the savings sum above as you see fit, entering those amounts in the ADJUST Ā± column G.
  6. Select all values in the ADJUST Ā± column G and verify that the sum is $0.
  7. After all savings adjustments have been entered, open the Add-Ons menu and navigate to Tiller Money Labs > Tools and select Update Savings Budget.
  8. Your savings have now been redistributed!
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7

I recommend @cculber2ā€™s approach, @jpkica, as I think it is more thoughtful, but, if youā€™re looking for a simple, pragmatic way to zero out your savings, you can follow these stepsā€¦

  1. (Temporarily) zero your budgets in the current month (August 2022) in the Categories sheet.
  2. On your Savings Budget sheet, make sure you are looking at the current month (January 2021) and set the Adjust Ā± Modifies dropdown in I4 to Savings .
  3. (Temporarily) enter this formula into cell I14 (the empty space to the right of the manual-entry column): =arrayformula(if(N14:N="Category",if(O14:O="Income",1,-1)*H14:H,iferror(1/0)))
  4. Select the range I14:I and paste as values into H14:H.
  5. Open the Add-Ons menu and navigate to Tiller Community Solutions > Tools and select Update Savings Budget . Your savings should now be zeroed.
  6. Delete the formula in I14.
  7. Restore your current-month budget values.

(Instructions :point_up: updated on August 22, 2022 to match current version of the template.)

Let me know if you run into any issues.
Randy

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Thank you for such helpful and detail replies. I have not had a chance to revisit this, but I really appreciate the responses. Iā€™ll update once I do have a chance to finish setting up my 2021 budget.

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9

@randy what is the range H8:H?

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I was just using those cells to create some temporary values, @maktampa.

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About the formula below (posted Jan '21), are the column identifiers still correct/current with columns in Savings Budget v 0.75 (installed 8-15-22)? For example, Adjust Ā± Modifies dropdown in G4 to Savings is now in ā€˜I4ā€™ (unless Iā€™m confused).

Or another way to ask my question, if Adjust Ā± Modifies moved two columns to the right (from G to I), did columns in the formula below also move two columns to the right, e.g. L8:L becomes N8:N, M8:M becomes O8:O, etc?

Summary: there is a lot of stuff happening in the hidden columns that I donā€™t understand, so Iā€™m not comfortable changing the columns on my own to get my savings budget to zero out in the current month. Thanks in advance.

=arrayformula(if(L8:L=ā€œCategoryā€,if(M8:M=ā€œIncomeā€,1,-1)*F8:F,iferror(1/0)))

12

Great question, @dbruns. Apologies for the confusion. The content got a little stale.

You were pretty closeā€¦ just needed to update the row numbers too. I have updated the instructions in the original post here.

Can you try and let me know how it goes?