Rollover Adjustment Warning Wrongly Displayed on Envelope Budget Dashboard

Google Sheets
, , ,
10

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