I have been looking at this all day and I can’t figure out what’s wrong. I am trying to set up the Savings Budget, so that the balance in my bank accounts roll over every month.
The $4025 is my correct balance from the prior month, and the $762 is the correct balance from the end of the month. But, the “offset” number is still off no matter what I try. It seems like it would be silly to have to create manual transactions on the transactions sheet every month to reconcile my ending bank balance. (Also, the balance rolls over correctly to the next month without doing that.)
But, the offset number won’t balance without “actuals”!
When I tried to add in actuals it was just balancing my budget and actuals and then the offset number was still wrong. I hope this is making sense to someone. Thank you!!!
Hmmm. I use the Savings Budget on a daily basis, and I don’t pay any attention to the offset number. I also don’t think of the Savings Budget as a place to track actual account balances, but rather for budgeting. If the transactions in your checking account are duplicative of the transactions in the other categories, like Tutoring or Gifts Received, then it’s going to be a challenge to make everything balance, I think.
Curious if your available or budget columns balance to zero each month? (income-expenses). Ideally I would like for the “savings budget” to just be a plug number which would be equal to the difference in my prior available cash - available cash at the end of the month. There aren’t any “real” transactions in the checking or savings categories listed in my transactions. (When I transfer between accounts I record transfer on both sides.) i.e. Tutoring $100 credit; transfer $100 debit, transfer $100 credit to the other account. I am probably thinking too much into the offset number but I guess I am convinced I am doing something wrong if it doesn’t cancel out!
Yes, at the end of each month, I ensure that Actual Income equals Budgeted Expenses. If Actual Income exceeds Actual Expenses, then I budget the excess Actual Income to a Savings category in order to get things to balance out. Hope that makes sense.
Frankly, I do not pay attention to the Offset Number but that’s only because I don’t understand it. I would say it’s not necessary to use the Savings Budget. I’ve used it for over a year now with no issues. If my income exceeds expenses, then I budget/send excess income into one of my savings accounts like dmetiller. If I’ve spent more than my income for the month, then I roll negative in the next month to make it up in following month, or I get balanced by moving money out of my Cash Buffer line item to offset being in the red for any given month.
Thanks for commenting! I did see that post but it confused me more… I ended up changing some formulas in the rollover section so that “net actuals - savings” comes from my prior month “savings” budgets, and not actuals, because my budgets zero out each month but the actuals do not. (I don’t put an actual transaction on the transaction sheet to zero out the savings account every month.)
I understand it is more tedious and probably not worth it to most people to zero out every month but I am a CPA and crazy and I like being able to check that I didn’t miss anything. THANK YOU for working on tiller, seriously… I used to do it via mint and spreadsheets and quit because it was such a pain, and no other budget apps had the customization I wanted. I’m obsessed.
Now the only thing I am wishing for is prior period averages to compare on the savings budget - I did that manually for now but it’s not pretty. Ha! Probably too much info for the average user to want on one sheet.
