Rollover Adjustment Warning Wrongly Displayed on Envelope Budget Dashboard

Google Sheets
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1

I had the rollover adjustment warning triggered on the “Total Rollover savings” line when there was no actual adjustment. When I looked at AE16 it said “$0.00.” Oddly when I started adding decimal places and got to around 12 total, it switched to a negative but still zero.

I “fixed” it by rounding the value for the check: =“Total Rollover savings”&if(round(AE16,2)=0,"","
(with Rollover Adjustment)")

Maybe this should be changed in the template.

2

@aronos. Thanks for this feedback. I’ll definitely share this with the team to understand what updates might need to be made.

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Thanks for reporting this to us, @aronos. Sounds like you are an adept debugger of this sort of issue. I’m sorry for the headaches it created for you.

I’ll add this to our issue list for the envelope budget but we aren’t doing much development on that tool at this time. Little secret :shushing_face:: I just started work this week on a new Envelope Budget that should be much faster, more transparent (fewer scripts) and nimble than the one run in the Tiller add-on. More soon…

Randy

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@randy That sounds great. Since you’re starting something fairly new… I do have one “wish list” item.

I’d like the ability have a category not show up on the budget unless it has a balance of some sort. Basically I’d like older ones to “disappear” when I’m finished with them, but still show up for months that they have a rollover or budget assignment. The current “hide” functionality falls short since it’s all or nothing and enabling it makes it look like older budgets that used that category are out of whack.

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Great suggestion, @aronos. I had that mostly implemented but just made it work when there is no budget or actuals but there is a rollover.

Here is a first peek at it…

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Hoping to have something shareable (beta quality) via Tiller Money Labs in a few weeks.

Randy

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If you’re curious about the new Savings Budget (Prototype), @aronos, I published it last night in a beta form…

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@randy Thanks for the head’s up! I’m looking forward to checking this out. I haven’t touched my Foundation sheet in almost a year (and never really finished setting it up to begin with) so I’ll have to dig in with a fresh start when I get a chance.

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At some point, I can imagine writing a migrator from Budgets History to the new format.

For now, unfortunately, you’d have to start over. That said, it’s easy to start a fresh Foundation spreadsheet from the Tiller Money Console. You could even use the Migration Helper workflow in Tiller Money Labs to pull over your categorization from your primary spreadsheet. From there, you’d just need to pull some budgets into the Categories sheets. You’d be ready for test in < 10 minutes.

Let me know when/if you give it a try.

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@randy

I was thinking a migration tool would be pretty handy. I did install and mess around with this a little bit. I loaded my transactions from the server and just did a quick categorization for the last couple of months into some very broad (for me) categories.

My initial feeling is that I really like it. I especially like the journal, because being unable to track changes in rollovers (both in Tiller and my bank’s built in budgeting features) has been a long standing point of annoyance for me. I sometimes would even create “fake” transactions in my sheet that would move funds from one category to another so I would at least be able to look back and see what changed and why. This of course creates other issues, so I really love this feature, even if it was a mandatory byproduct of what you’re doing.

I’m having trouble understanding exactly what the “Rollover Adjustment” line is telling me. It doesn’t seem to correlate with anything I’m seeing in my sheet. (And I’d need a lot more coffee to try to decode that formula.)

While I think the Envelope Budget sheet is an absolute marvel, I’m really liking the simplicity and speed of this prototype. I don’t think I was using any of the functionality that was lost, even when in one case it may have made sense for me to do so. I even like the “delayed processing” of changes. Sometimes my fingers move faster than my brain and with the current sheet, changes would sometimes be written before I realized I made a mistake.

The main thing I’m not seeing right now that I hope is coming soon is displaying totals for groups. I know it’s fairly easy to get that by selecting the columns I want to sum, but having it up there for quick reference is very nice.

I’ll load it up with my real budget next week. This will take a while as I have a ridiculous number of categories that I’ll need to copy over budget amounts for, but it should be a good stress test and will give me a better idea of how it works in actual practice.

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Thanks for digging in! I’ve been kicking this sheet around for almost a month now and your feedback is the first I’ve gotten, @aronos.

Let me address some of your points specifically:

  • Next time, give the Migration Helper a go. You’d be surprised at what it can pull over if you want to try something in a new sheet.
  • Sounds like it was relatively intuitive to transition to. :smiley:
  • I’m glad to hear you appreciate the simplicity of the new Savings Budget. Our team has long felt that we cast a little too big a net when scoping the Envelope Budget. It has a lot of powerful features but it is also challenging to get into for many users wanting basic envelope functionality.
  • I like the journal too. It was @peter’s suggestion. Initially, there as a history log entry for every change (e.g. B+30,S+100,B+50) but we simplified that to just show total changes since a) the box was overfilling & clipping and b) the change-by-change info is available in the Budget Journal sheet.
  • The history log wasn’t entirely a “mandatory byproduct”. We did need it to implement the changes to Savings, but the rows added for budget changes are purely for history purposes as the values are changed & pulled from the Categories sheet.
  • We will probably ultimately rename “Rollover Adjustment” and you can hide it easily via a check box in the hidden area of the sheet (if you don’t like it). It does serve an important function, however. It ensures that your rollovers are properly funded by comparing your income and expense budgets. If you budget $1,000 in income and $2,000 in expenses but only spend $1,000, your rollovers will accrue $1,000 in “savings”. But since your cashflow is zero— $1,000 in and out— the savings is totally imagined. The Rollover Adjustment flags and quantifies this issue. (To be honest, I haven’t done a ton of testing on it so it is possible there are still a few issues with how it is calculated.)
  • I agree that the “delayed processing” is nice. The honest truth is that those instant updates in the original envelope budget leverage an onEdit() call that is kind of crippling for performance. It was important to find a solution that honored the very-popular instant updates but in a way that was more performant and sustainable— i.e. didn’t involve running through a long code tree whenever a user changed a cell in any sheet in any spreadsheet.
  • We will get the Type and Group totals implemented. That isn’t too hard.

If you’re really considering migrating already. We should think through this. Might be easier that we think to do this without starting over completely…

I’m really grateful for the time you spent with the new sheet and on all the feedback!
Randy

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Ok, @aronos… I just took a really crude swing at this.
Welcome to the bleeding edge!

I mocked up a spreadsheet that can help you manually move your Budgets History to the format used in the new Savings Budget (Prototype).

The quick and dirty instructions follow…

  1. Make a copy of the helper spreadsheet.
  2. Delete the sample Budgets History sheet from the copied spreadsheet.
  3. Copy your Budgets History sheet from your envelope budget into the copied spreadsheet.
  4. Delete the sample Categories sheet from the copied spreadsheet.
  5. Copy your Categories sheet from your envelope budget into the copied spreadsheet.
  6. Go to the Categories Migrator sheet.
  7. Update ranges in cell F1 to your monthly Budgets start periods in Budgets History - usually “M01/Budget”. Most likely it is just the end row that will change (e.g. C12 to C25).
  8. Update ranges in cell F2 to capture all of your budget values in Budgets History - usually “M01/Budget”. Most likely it is just the end row that will change (e.g. 12 to 25).
  9. At this point, hopefully, you have a complete Categories sheet populated from your Budgets History sheet.
  10. Run the script from the menu. You will need to authorize the script.

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  1. At this point, hopefully, you have a complete Budget Journal Migrator sheet populated from your Budgets History sheet.
  2. Copy the values in Categories Migrator into your new Savings Budget spreadsheet. Paste as values into the Categories sheet.
  3. Copy the values in Budget Journal Migrator into your new Savings Budget spreadsheet. Paste as values into the Budget Journal sheet.

Notes about this workflow

  • History from budget changes is not migrated because it was never tracked in the Tiller Envelope Budget.
  • The impact of Rollover-To’s is ignored in this simple migrator.
  • The script is expecting to migrate rollover mods from a budget called M01. You will need to change the script (second line) if you want to move over a different monthly budget.

Really curious to hear if this workflow is helpful.

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I would like an easier way to reconcile the savings - actual spent + rollover with the net worth to help get this setup to be truly zero sum. I also am not sure what the savings column represents in the income section?

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@jason91487

This thread is not about the sheet you’re using. Did you see my question to you in the thread you started?

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I made a few improvements to the Categories sheet portion of the migration tool this morning. It should take less work now… but the instructions are no longer correct and I need to run off for some canoeing with the kids. :canoe:

Will update the instructions later.

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Which thread is about the savings prototype for the foundation template? I’m trying to transition from the envelope tool.

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Migrations worked for me. Took a bit for me to get the right ranges in budgets history but I figured it out.

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Well done, @jason91487. I’m working on a fix to make the budget range selection more automatic. Glad to hear you’re up and running. Please let me know if you have any feedback about the migrator or the new Savings Budget.

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I made some improvements to the migration tool (fewer manual changes required) and have improved the documentation. Let me know if you have any feedback, @jason91487 & @aronos.

Best,
Randy

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Thanks, @randy! I expect to be doing this tonight or tomorrow and running it concurrently with my regular sheet for a while.

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Hey everyone— including known testers @aronos and @jason91487— interested in the new Savings Budget (Prototype)!

Based on your feedback and some reviews within the Tiller Money team, I’ve made a number of changes to the template. I’m really excited about the new version. I hope you like it too.

Unfortunately, the Tiller Money Labs / Savings Budget sidebar workflows are no longer compatible with the old version of the sheet. You will need to update your sheet, but the Manage Solutions / Update workflow should take care of most of the heavy lifting. Note that you will need to migrate your rollover settings from the obsoleted “Track Savings” (checkboxes) column to the new “Track” column. I’ve included migration instructions here.

Consider adding your name to our email list so we can keep you up-to-date as the template evolves.