Savings Budget & Savings and Debt workflow question

Google Sheets
1

I am struggling with actually getting the Savings Budget and Saving / Debt to work accurately together…

I am trying to use the “Savings Budget” and the “Savings & Debt” (just the savings feature currently).

  1. I enter a transfer from a checking account to a savings account.
  2. I want to track one of those as a “credit” to my “Savings & Debt”.

But if I choose the deposit to savings it shows as a negative Expense (so credits expenses on the Savings Budget). But if I choose the expense from the Checking as the savings category, then is deducts from the Savings and Debt tab (instead of increasing my savings). Does that make sense.

Normally we are adding money to our checking and them moving some to a savings account and applying that to our Savings & Debt Goal. What is the right workflow and category settings for this? (I did watch the video). THANKS

2

It’s been a while since I thought about this, @TPDiver. The Savings & Debt sheet is about funding (virtual) categories as proxies for savings goals. Savings goals are funded by budgeting for them and accruing the unspent money in your Savings Budget. The accounts and balances are just in the Savings & Debt sheet to confirm there is enough real-world money to fund the virtual categories you have saved to. Most of the magic happens in the Transactions sheet via budgets and payments… so balance-affecting transfers between accounts don’t really matter much other than for the sufficient-funding confirmation piece.

It sounds like your workflow is more about funding savings via transfers to a standalone account. This is a great approach for accruing the savings. If you want to use the Savings & Debt sheet, I’d think of accruing the savings more through the budgeting method :point_up: (i.e. the transfer isn’t where the savings is recognized, it is through the budget) and then the transfer just as a net-zero formalization of the money you saved via budgeting.