Question over handling saving transactions and debt payments

New to Tiller and trying figure out this last remaining hiccup in my mind on how to best handle this scenario. I am used to using an envelope/zero based solution for budgeting/planning. I looked at the Tiller budget and have concern over future compatibility with future templates and solutions. So I would like to stick with the Foundations.

I know this question has been asked before and I have seen time reading the posts and I think I have it worked out but just want to be sure. Also, I am not worried about keeping track of track of savings goals. Basically our paychecks enter the checking then money is transferred to savings. I want this to decrease available spend so I plan on treating the outflow from checking as an expense. Then the inflow to savings as income and have this hidden. For this I created “ToSaving” as expense and “FromChecking” as income(hidden). Then for the reverse for “ToChecking” as expense hidden and “FromSaving” as income when I need to pull from savings.

I also thinking about using the debt paydown workbook to help with paying down debt faster. When the transaction is recorded on the lender side is it best to split the transaction between principle and interest or just keep not worry about that or does it depend on a person wants to see that data. Looking at the help article for the workbook it doesn’t mention seperating principle and interest, so just curious.

To answer your debt question:
Technically, interest is an expense item and principal is a balance sheet item. If you were to split these, then the principal payment would be a transfer to and from the account and the interest would be an expense. For budgeting purposes, you want to budget the full payment since that’s your cash leaving your account. For this reason, I’d recommend if you do keep more detailed records, then keep it totally separate from your budget and reports. You can do this by either creating categories that are hidden from reports OR you can keep your own Loan Payment Schedule on a separate tab that tracks this all.

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Kirsti, thanks for the reply. From what is sounds like the simplest thing to do is just worry about the total outflow.