I have been using this sheet for a while now and the saving & goals work but I have never been able to get the balance on the Debt Payoff Goals section to work. Neither the period’s & required budget remaining, It pulls all my credit accounts and after filling out my Int Rate and Deadline the only thing that populates is the budgeted.
@MidnightPrzm have you tried restoring from the Tiller Community Solutions add-on? It could also be an issue with your Accounts sheet, which you may want to try restoring before restoring this one.
I recommend choosing the archive option during the restore operation to make sure that you don’t lose any customizations you’ve made. After the restore you can copy/paste from the archive to the new version.
I have had this issue since I started using this solution like a year or so ago. That side has never populated, and I have created new sheets several times to fix other solutions or to refresh my sheet with a complete new set up due to it being slow or not filling in efficiently and other reasons. Then I just copy and paste values only to not migrate any errors. Any of the times that I have done a full reset all my other issues have resolved except this one. So, I don’t think restoring the sheet will help. In fact, I have restored the sheet before for this issue with no resolution. Any other ideas?
EDIT: I did a completely new install of the savings budget as well as the savings & debt solution and it’s still not working correctly. My accounts sheet doesn’t have any discrepancies as it works with everything else just fine and looks to be accurate.
I use this solution as well. I’m going to check my version and see if I get the same behavior. If so, I’ll dive in to see what’s causing it.
I believe the issue is that you are entering in numeric values for Deadline, where it expects a date value.
My copy of the template is working. However, if I change Deadline to 1 or 20 like you have, I get the same behavior where Periods, Req’d Budget, and Remaining $ were all blanking out. Please change these to a date, and the issue should hopefully resolve. Also, when you put in a date, it should default to just a month/year format.
My balance was still present for the debt account (column O), though. So there might be something else causing that in your sheet. I’ll see what the most likely culprits could be here shortly.
So the Deadline mismatch is only part of why it’s not showing up. The Balance also needs to be there in order for it to show the rest of the columns, as well.
The balance is being pulled in via a Vlookup pointing to 2 columns in the hidden section of the sheet, columns AM and AR.
Basically what the formula is doing is matching the account name you selected in column L with the account from the list in column AM, and returning the value in column AR for that same row. Can you go to column AM, find the accounts selected, and see if there is a “period balance” for them in column AR?
ok so I went ahead and inputed a date but I used a formula to give the current month and year for future proofing.
=DATE(YEAR(TODAY()), MONTH(TODAY()), DAY(1))
=DATE(YEAR(TODAY()), MONTH(TODAY()), 1)
The second formula is to make sure the day of the months are constant
That did give me the July 2024 like you stated. Yet I am still not seeing anything populate. I do believe that I found the issue. It seems the accounts I pull down on the dropdown on Column L are named differently than the accounts on Column AM.
I edited the names of my accounts in the Tiller Dashboard and forgot to update the corresponding category names for all my credit accounts on the category sheet although I had for all my other bank accounts which is why I didn’t notice as the credit account names on both were similar. I only made that edit on the balance history. I went ahead and edited the categories chose them correctly on this sheet and everything populated correctly. I kept the date format like above with the formula and its all working. Thank you for your help.
I have another issue with the same solution, which I’ve been trying to figure out. The Savings Budget allocated funds do not align with the savings & debt sheet. For example, my emergency fund is grouped into 2 different accounts. One of the balances is at zero as I am not using it at the moment. The main account that I am using says it has let’s say 10k in it. When I go into the savings & budget sheet the row that has that expense (I’m also considering changing it to a transfer category but haven’t decided yet) has like 23k allocated. Now I have my transactions set to inflow & outflow into and out of the particular savings account the same way I have it set up for my credit card accounts. So when I have transferred money out of my savings accounts into my checking accounts in the past to spend and vice versa to save, those transactions are accounted for within my transactions sheet which translates further into my budget as I am using the Budget Plan Solution.
Even when I go and try and edit the amounts within the budget & savings the numbers never align with what’s allocated on the Savings & Debt Sheet. So I went ahead and did a fresh install on both solutions. So now my Budget Journal was blank. When I chose my Emergency account, it showed the correct allocation which was the same amount as the available balance. The other account is at zero, so that wouldn’t be a factor. But when I go on the Savings Budget sheet the allocated/available balance for my emergency fund is significantly higher. Even when I attempt to edit it within that sheet that is then reflected in the Savings & Debt sheet to the opposite. Like if I subtract 10k from the Savings Budget sheet, the Savings & Debt sheet goes from perfectly being allocated with the balance to now being -10k unallocated. I can’t get these sheets to sync up.
I tried to go back in my history because my categories sheet has historical data since 2022 when I started using Tiller, but then I ran into the issue where if I had 600 as a monthly budgeted amount to go into my emergency fund and then I had actuals that were added that month, the total allocated savings are more than I budgeted for. For example, my budget was 600 in Jan but I didn’t put anything in that month in February my budget was 600 but I only saved like 200. It counted 800 instead of the 200. Even later on in the year when I started saving the exact amount that I budgeted (600), it counted double (1200) for that month. I tried to change the budget for those months that I didn’t use the exact budget to reflect my actual or just put zero as a budget but I am just confused as to how this is supposed to work with these 2 solutions. Any idea what I am doing wrong? Many solutions do use the Savings Budget data so I figured I should make sure that info is accurate. And this is just the first account I am trying to troubleshoot. Some of the other accounts are off so I am trying to do this one account at a time and since my emergency fund is technically only one account then it should have been the easiest to fix. I did migrate my emergency funds as well as my other savings into other accounts for banks giving way higher interest rates this past year but that shouldn’t have created any discrepancies as the transfers are all under the same umbrella-specific category.
So this issue seems to also be multi-faceted. What I believe is going on from your description is that:
Savings & Debt sheet worksIn the Categories sheet, you set up an Expense account (We’ll say Emergency Fund), set the Track to Savings, and enter a budget for each month.
The Savings & Debt sheet then keeps track of how much you should have by:
Categories sheet for the prior months together ('Savings & Debt'!AC column)Transactions tagged with Emergency Fund that have occurred since the first month present in the Categories sheet ('Savings & Debt'!AD column)Budget Journal for the Emergency Fund ('Savings & Debt'!AE column)Since money spent should always be negative, it’s really A + -B + C. This calculation works as a balancing act: (money budgeted) - (money spent) + (modifiers).
If so, this is the first problem. If you transfer $500 to a savings account, and categorize it as Emergency Fund, then part B of the formula above will take that positive amount into account, when it’s already being accounted for in part A, essentially double counting what you have available.
Any movement of funds between accounts should be categorized as a Transfer. I personally have two transfer categories: Transfer In and Transfer Out. They are marked as hidden so they don’t show up on reports. Any movement of funds between accounts get categorized under one of those.
The only thing that should be categorized as Emergency Fund on the Transactions sheet are transactions where you purchased something using the money you allocated toward that expense. So if your toilet broke and you needed another one, you go to Lowes and buy another one using your Chase card. The transaction that comes in from Lowes would get the Emergency Fund category. If you transfer money out of your savings to your checking to cover the Chase bill, those transactions get categorized as Transfers.
The first thing to do is make sure that you are not categorizing transfers between accounts under the category in question, and only expenses you wanted paid using those funds.
Once that’s done, you will need to get your historical budgets in order. You can try to finesse the data to give you the right number in the end, but it’s hard to do.
What I would suggest is to:
Savings & Debt.
Savings Budget sheet, starting at the first month, and entering the actual amount reported as the budget for that month in the Categories sheet, then moving on until every month has been done.Budget Journal for the current amount you have set aside for that category.
Savings Budget sheet, change column I4 to Savings, enter the amount that should be showing as available in the green box to the right of the Emergency Fund, then click on Extensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings Budget.
Budget Journal, if you know what it should look like.This will enter a record in the Budget Journal that will basically be your “seed value” going forward.
It sounds like you’re using @jpfieber’s Budget Plan. If that’s the case, I wanted to point out that using the Update Savings Budget functionality when I4 is set to Budget will break his solution, as it writes to the Categories sheet, and conflicts with formulas he placed there. It is perfectly fine to use if set to Savings like described above.
If you ever remove past budget columns from your Categories sheet, it will affect the amount available in Savings & Debt. This is because it’s removing data from parts A (prior budgets) and B (prior transactions against those budgets) of the calculation, causing the picture to be incomplete. If you ever want to do this, remember you will need to “reseed” these balances by re-adding what fell out of the equation into part C, the Budget Journal balances.
Budget Journal giving the account +$2,000.Budget Journal giving the account -$3,000.I see what you mean. I have multiple categories set up for savings such as vacation, emergency fund, soft savings (which I use to withdraw more than an emergency fund due to some banks limiting savings account withdrawals as I have had a savings account converted into a checking account for Chase in the past). These inflows and outflows have been categorized as transfers in the past due to me not knowing the best way to go about categorizing them and I had put it off while focusing on setting Tiller up for the best automation possible. I just recently switched them to expenses as I was thinking that maybe I would treat them as expenses as I figure this all out.
I do not however categorize any of my transactional expenses as an emergency fund expenditure or similar savings account like you mentioned above due to the fact that each type of transaction is categorized under its specific category. Buying a toilet would go into the Home Improvements category, for example. When I pull out a large sum of money from my savings, I end up just dropping it into my checking as a surplus of cash when I am short on regular cash that month for whatever reason. Like if I was to go traveling then I would pull that money out of my vacation fund then spend it all on airfare, excursions, lodging, etc.
Each of those has their own category so in this manner what would you propose that I do?
Since I already fundamentally use the method of categorizing each transaction independently then changing this would mean I would have to change my whole budget for most things and that would just be time consuming. And I like being able to know what I am spending on each subcategory.
So, I went ahead and changed all the previous months budgets to the actuals. I had to keep them as expenses in the category sheet while I did this as the categories disappear when I change them to transfers. While doing this it got me to thinking that if I keep them categorized as expenses, I could just change the budgeted amounts to negatives. So, if I had previously budgeted 600 for my emergency fund then I input -600 in the categories sheet instead of 600 and then if the actuals are equal then they would zero out that month but if they were more or less than I would get the difference. The main reason is that I want to know if I am budgeting enough for that account but then again that is what the Savings & Debt sheet will be doing for me whether they are categorized as transfers or expenses. Right?
As far as this year is concerned, I am using the Budget Plan solution and so the categories for 2024 are populating automatically and I can’t change any of those values without breaking that formula.
The thing is, although I am budgeting a certain amount for each individual savings account, I don’t always hit those numbers if I have other more important expenses like paying down credit card balances. Or let’s say I end up hitting my max save goal for my emergency fund then I would start putting higher amounts on those other budgets, but I don’t want to create an entire new row in the Budget Plan to account for the change in amount from one month to another month especially long-term like I have to do for any recurring transactions for actual expenses like monthly subscriptions that either increase or get paused, etc.
As far as credit card balances go, how could I budget them in a way that shows what I spent paying them back? If in the transactions sheet each payment is an outflow from my checking and an inflow into the credit card, then that in essence is an account transfer. Do you categorize that as a transfer too? I would think that would be an expense. Or do you only consider the interest you pay an expense? So, if you spend 7k on a credit card then you make your payments, and any interest payment transactions are separate monthly transactions that your bank charges you and that would be an expense but all the other payments would be 7k out and 7k in so they would zero out. I do already have all my credit card debt categorized transfers. I have categories like loans or car leases categorized as expenses though, although I don’t have any current ones at this time.
I could keep these savings categories as expenses and only categorize transactions in the transactions sheet when I withdraw for expense purposes. Then recategorize past and future inflows as savings transfers and any outflows that are for transferring from one savings account to another. I would like to make the savings transfers a new completely different transfer category separate from my regular transfers between my spending accounts.
I already have a separate transfer category for my investment transfer inflows from my checking to brokers accounts which are categorized as Investment: Deposit. One for outflows from my brokers to my checking categorized as Investment: Withdrawal. And one for the actual transactions reported by my brokers accounts whether negative or positive, categorized as Investment: Balance. These are all categorized as transfers while the actual buy/sells, reported as separate transactions by the brokers are categorized as actual expenses/incomes.
Doing this probably would duplicate the expenses as the actual expenses would be reported as individual expenses also. I didn’t think budgeting would be so complicated but maybe I am overthinking this lol.
Any goal or savings fund you want to have should be set up in the Categories sheet as an expense, and the Track should be set to Savings. So I would have the Vacation, Emergency Fund, and Soft Savings categories set up like this. Then, you set the budget for each goal to the amount you plan to save monthly.
As long as you do not categorize any transactions with those categories, the amount you have saved will match what you have entered in the Budget Plan, and will show up in the Savings column on the Savings Budget sheet for the subsequent months (column D).
If you fall short one month and can’t save the full amount you expected, the solution is to create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amount, and pass in a negative number. No need to touch what you have entered in the Budget Plan sheet at all!
If you realize you can’t save $50 you initially budgeted toward vacation this month because of credit card debt, you would:
cell I4 is set to SavingsI next to Vacation (should be colored green)Extensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings BudgetThis will create a record for -$50 in the Budget Journal sheet, which will lower your available amount by $50 to keep you in line with reality.
I fully agree that it is not optimal to categorize the transaction for buying the toilet under “Emergency Fund”, and this is also not what I do. It’s just what the documentation for the solution/responses from Tiller suggested. The solution I found that works best (and what will solve probably 99% of your problems) is to do what I outlined above and create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amount down, but also simultaneously transfer the funds to the categories in which you use them.
Note: this requires those categories to also have their Track set to Savings.
Say you have $3,000 saved in your Vacation expense, and you spent $1,600 of it on vacation recently.
You would just transfer the funds between the savings buckets using the Budget Journal.
cell I4 is set to Savingscolumn I next to Vacationcolumn I next to Airfarecolumn I next to LodgingExtensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings BudgetNow, on the Savings Budget sheet, Vacation should have $1,400 instead of $3,000 (what you didn’t spend). Airfare should have +$1,053 and Lodging should have +$547 (provided they both started out at a $0 balance). Then, when the airfare purchase hits the Transactions sheet, you categorize it as Airfare. The +$1,053 amount for the Airfare category will decrease by the amount of the transaction. The same for when the Lodging purchase comes through.
I believe this is a limitation to the Budget Plan solution interacting with the Savings & Debt solution. Remember, the savings calculation is:
(what’s in Categories) - (what’s in Transactions) +/- (what’s in Budget Journal).
Normally, you would set the budgets on the Categories sheet up in a way where you allocate each month’s budget individually. Since Budget Plan calculates everything using a formula, you can’t really change anything mid year for a line item without messing up prior month budgets. This effectively locks you out of making changes to the Categories sheet, which is the first part of the calculation.
You can do one of two things to get around this:
On the Budget Plan sheet, set the budgets for these goals up manually using the ExternalSource feature. I haven’t done this (I don’t use Budget Plan personally, but have plans to integrate it into my solution soon), so I can’t really guide you on that path. There’s a little info on it in the documentation.
The other option is to, again, create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amounts retroactively.
Currently, the Vacation fund has $800 in it ($200 x 4 months). If you adjust the budget in the Budget Plan to instead be $600 a month, this goes up erroneously to $2,400 ($600 x 4 months). It gives you the correct monthly goal going forward, but now your total available is out of alignment with reality because you wasn’t saving that much for the first 4 months. To fix this, create a record in the Budget Journal to adjust the available amount down to where it should be.
cell I4 is set to SavingsI next to Vacation ($2,400 - $800)Extensions>Tiller Community Solutions>Tools>Update Savings BudgetAfterward, the available amount should show correctly as $800 again, and you will be allocating $600 to it going forward. This same concept applies to expenses that are not savings goals, like monthly subscriptions that raise or are paused, etc…
Your last part there is correct. I only consider interest that I pay as an actual expense in terms of credit card balances. Otherwise, you’re essentially double-counting your expenses. When you buy lunch for $20, you categorize it as Dining (or whatever), which is an expense category. That $20 goes on your credit card to be paid later. When you go to pay the $20 off, there will be two transactions pulled into the Transactions sheet:
If you categorize the -$20 coming from the Checking Account as a category set up as an expense, you would be double-counting that lunch expense: once under Dining and another under 5/3 Outbound (or whatever). Any payments made to/from a credit card should be treated as transfers between accounts, and use categories that are transfer types. The initial transactions are what should be categorized under expense types.
If you wanted to see how much money you spent paying off cards, I would look into other solutions that report off of the Transactions sheet and groups by account. All you would need is something that queries the transaction sheet for the sum of all transactions that have a positive value (payments to the card, as opposed to expenses against the card). I’m not sure of a solution off the top of my head, but there’s likely one out there.
I have been trying to get this right unsuccessfully for the past few days. I did everything that you mentioned above. I changed all my transactions to Transfer: Savings. A transfer category I created so I can differentiate all my different transfer categories. I then backdated all my past budgets for these savings categories up until Jan 2024 for this year, I went and manually input the savings deposits and withdrawals made from and to my respective savings accounts. This made the savings & debt sheet accurate as it is showing the available balance for my emergency fund (the one I am focusing on correcting first) but on the saving budget sheet the numbers are not aligning.
Savings & Debt:
Savings Budget:
And for an example of my vacation budget which is correct on the Savings Budget but different than the Savings & Debt
I don’t know where I am messing up at.
I also encountered the problem that when I budget for any expense, it is double counting the budgets and the actuals.
I may go back and do this on an individual transaction level at a later time once I can figure out how to fix the savings categories. I did do it for the vacation’s transactions in the past. When I subtracted like 18k from my previous vacations savings and then just added a positive for the total for each travel expense category that I totaled monthly for this year and for the past couple years I just added everything up per expense category for each individual year and did the conversion in Dec of the respective year. I dont have them categorized the same as the savings categories. For example, I have a travel airfare, food, hotel, etc. as opposed to my vacations savings account.
The budgets are all set to zero.
Again, thanks for taking the time with all your responses.
I haven’t forgotten about ya. Sorry I haven’t replied to this in awhile. I’ve had a lot of things come up at home that has had my full attention.
I’m not exactly sure what could be causing this issue without actually looking at your workbook. One thing I can try to suggest to correct the emergency fund balance would be to adjust that number down to what it should be using the savings journal.
So if that should be reading $7,105.83, then you should enter -13,490 in the green cell next to the Available balance in the screenshot above, then go to Extensions > Tiller Community Solutions > Tools > Update Savings Budget.
Thank you. I have also been away doing various things. I appreciate you taking the time to assist me. [quote=“1Email2RuleThemAll, post:14, topic:26119, full:true”]
One thing I can try to suggest to correct the emergency fund balance would be to adjust that number down to what it should be using the savings journal.
So if that should be reading $7,105.83, then you should enter -13,490 in the green cell next to the Available balance in the screenshot above, then go to Extensions > Tiller Community Solutions > Tools > Update Savings Budget.
[/quote]
I have done this and when it corrects the amount in the Savings Budget Sheet the amount in the Savings & Debt Sheet becomes inaccurate for the amount I add/subtract from the Savings Budget Sheet. I can’t get them to sync. In the past I would add random numbers to zero out certain categories, and both sheets would sync. Now for some reason one will be accurate based on the account balance while the other one would be off. If the Savings Budget Sheet is accurate then the Savings & Debt Sheet will show the difference as unallocated funds within certain categories as negative numbers. I’m at the point of giving up if I’m being honest.
I sent a DM so we can dig into it further 
