Ok, I know this is basic but I’ve read all of the blog posts I could find and I still don’t really understand the “Total Rollover Savings (with Rollover Adjustment)” number on the Monthly Budget Dashboard.
I understand the rollover for individual categories, and I can see how that number tracks month-to-month. My assumption, though, would be that if all of my categories roll over to themselves then my Rollover Savings would be zero. And yet I still run into situations where I have a rollover savings amount, positive or negative. Where is that number coming from?
The rollover savings is the total of all rollovers for all categories. So if you total up the rollover amounts for all your categories in a given month, that would be the rollover savings. The idea (if you add a rollover balance to categories prior to the Tiller Budget actually rolling any values over) is that this can track pretty closely (though we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy) to the balance of your linked accounts where you’re categorizing transactions that are appearing in your budget.
The rollover adjustment could be affecting that value if you have a rollover adjustment value at the top of your budget dashboard. Rollovers are introduced in various ways, which are important to understand as they affect this savings value.
You can read more on that here:
Does that make sense? Let me know if you need more clarification.
Thanks! That seems straightforward enough. What about transferring rollover from one category to another? That shouldn’t affect the rollover savings at all then, right?
Lets say I have categories A and B, and I want to use some of my rollover from category A for category B this month. I would use the “Adjust Category” add-on to transfer from A (rollover) to B (rollover). Is that a good way to do it without breaking anything? Also, what would happen if I transferred from A (rollover) to B (budget)? The add-on allows it, but I can’t quite see what the purpose would be.
I also have (semi-related) questions about rollover adjustment. Should I make a new topic for that, or ask them here?
@matt, you can ask your other questions here. It’s helpful (I think) for other folks review the thread here to have the answers in line with the rest of the conversation. Please make sure you’ve reviewed the content via the URL I previously sent to be sure your question isn’t already answered there.
You can use the “Adjust category” menu option, or you can use the dynamic shortcut commands in the adjust cell. r+/-[amount]
As long as you move the same amount from one to the other, it will not alter the Rollover Savings.
If you moved rollover to budget for a category that would reduce the Total Rollover Savings by that amount. That is an interesting scenario to consider though I agree, I’m not sure how it’s useful in a real world application.
Ok thanks. Sorry that some of my questions might be a bit basic, but I’ve struggled with the details of rollover for a while now. And I promise I did read the article from the link you sent! Everything you’ve described is pretty clear now, I think I just have one more question about rollover adjustment.
Lets say I see the alert at the top of the page that says “For budget accuracy, redistribute $100 of favorable Rollover Adjustment”. Assuming all of my categories roll over and everything is categorized, that means that my income for the previous month was $100 higher than my budget, right?
So to fix that, I picked a category and entered “r+100” in the adjust cell. Should that get rid of the rollover adjustment alert? If so, is there something I need to do to recalculate it? Because I did that and the alert didn’t change at all. Or should I be doing something else?
@heather
Thanks for the explanation. My big question, though, is how exactly do I redistribute Rollover Adjustment? If I have $100 in favorable rollover adjustment, then pick a category and enter r+100 in the adjust cell, should that take care of it? Because if so, that doesn’t seem to be working for me.
The only way to redistribute rollover adjustment is to use the Adjust Category menu option from Add-ons > Tiller > Budget > Adjust Category. You can move the rollover adjustment to another category’s rollover or “none”
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