Why does Income category not accrue in Savings Budget?

In my Savings Budget I have a category for Rental Income. I have set a monthly budgeted amount for this category. Each month I receive this income and categorize the funds as Rental Income. However, in the Savings Budget, the Available amount and the Savings amount never increase.

The included screenshots show the Rental Income category in my Savings Budget for March and for April. The screenshots also show the Rental Income category on my Categories tab.

Please help me understand why the Available and Savings amounts are not accruing for this category. Thanks!

Hi @DannyD, it looks like the category is behaving as expected. You are budgeting $595.00 per month in Rental Income, and your actual income is $595.00 each month. For Income category savings, you would only see an accrual if your actual income was less than $595.00 (negative savings) or your rental income exceeded $595.00 (positive savings). Your Rental Income is included in your overall available budget.

In order to have an accumulating savings category, you will need to create an additional Expense category marked as savings and budget $595.00 per month to that category. As there will be no transactions against that category, you will see a monthly rollover of savings. When you plan you use that money, either categorize transactions against that category or transfer savings from that category to the category of the expense using the “ADJUST ±” column (the recommended approach).

If your intention is to accumulate your rental income as savings, I would also recommend going back over your budget history to make sure you have not been mistakenly budgeting/spending that money.

Hi @cculber2. Thanks for these instructions. I tried your suggested solution of creating an additional Expense category marked as savings and budgeting $595.00 per month to that category. The result was still kind of confusing to me, because I ended up with two locations in the budget where I was tracking and spending rental income.

I tried another solution. Instead of creating an additional Expense category for rental income, I just removed the $595 budgeted each month in my existing Rental Income category. Now, the $595 accrues each month, as I intended.

The one drawback I see is that the rental income is no longer reflected in the Budgeted column in the Income section at the top of my Savings Budget. I liked it when that Budgeted column in the Income section reflected the total Income I ‘expected’ to receive each month. But I guess I can’t ‘have it both ways’ (i.e. I can’t budget for the rental income and have the rental income accrue). Am I assessing my options correctly?

That’s right! You can either leave your rental income unbudgeted and let the savings accrue on the income category, or you can budget the income and apply that budgeted income to one or more categories. It doesn’t have to be a single category specifically for Rental Income savings. For example, you could apply that income to various existing categories that go towards maintaining the property, etc. I prefer to follow zero-sum budgeting (every dollar goes somewhere), so since this is expected, consistent income I would budget everything, but you certainly can just leave the income unbudgeted and accruing in your income category if that is your preference. You would then use the “ADJUST ±” column later to move those savings to the category of your choice.

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