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?
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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Hi, thanks for the response. Should I add the periods on the Categories sheet manually? I don’t recall doing that in the past.
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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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.
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 ± 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:
- Create the savings categories (or identify existing categories to use) on your
Categoriessheet and set the budget for each of those categories to$0for January 2021. This will ensure than they all show up as available categories on your January 2021Savings Budgetsheet. - On your
Savings Budgetsheet, make sure you are looking at January 2021 and set theAdjust ± Modifiesdropdown inG4toSavings. - For each category with savings you want to zero-out, subtract the entire
SAVINGSamount in columnC, entering in theADJUST ±columnG. This should leave only January 2021’sBUDGETminusACTUALin theAVAILABLEcolumn. - 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.
- Divide the savings sum above as you see fit, entering those amounts in the
ADJUST ±columnG. - Select all values in the
ADJUST ±columnGand verify that the sum is$0. - After all savings adjustments have been entered, open the
Add-Onsmenu and navigate toTiller Money Labs > Toolsand selectUpdate Savings Budget. - Your savings have now been redistributed!
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I recommend @cculber2’s approach, @jpkica, as I think it is more thoughtful, but, if you’re looking for a simple, pragmatic way to zero out your savings, you can follow these steps…
- (Temporarily) zero your budgets in the current month (January 2021) in the
Categoriessheet. - On your
Savings Budgetsheet, make sure you are looking at the current month (January 2021) and set theAdjust ± Modifiesdropdown inG4toSavings. - Enter this formula into cell
H8:=arrayformula(if(L8:L="Category",if(M8:M="Income",1,-1)*F8:F,iferror(1/0))) - Select the range
H8:Hand paste as values intoG8:G. - Open the
Add-Onsmenu and navigate toTiller Money Labs > Toolsand selectUpdate Savings Budget. Your savings should now be zeroed. - Delete the formula in
H8. - Restore your current-month budget values.
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. I’ll update once I do have a chance to finish setting up my 2021 budget.
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