On Jun 2, 2009, at 1:36 AM, CarmineM wrote: > On 31 Mag, 21:41, Terry Norton <[email protected]> wrote: >> On May 31, 2009, at 1:30 PM, CarmineM wrote: >> >>> Am I supposed to drag'n'drop from Salary bucket to destination >>> buckets >>> for every spending transactions recorded in the checking account, or >>> am I doing something wrong? >> >> That's exactly the type of action that defines the bucket/envelope >> method. > > I was perplexed because I started Importing my transactions from > iBank3 > and I ended up with all my buckets with negative values, and the > income > bucket with a lot of money which, sadly, is not true at all :D > I thought that since the filling of the income bucket happens > automagically > also its voiding should have happened the same way, that is, once the > spending plan and the allocations has been set up. >
Depending on the date you set for tracking cash flow (Edit > Change Cash Flow Start Date), your buckets will show totals of all transactions from that date. If you have it set to March 1, 2009 (you have to choose the first of the month) and you have three months of deposits and withdrawals history from that date forward, your buckets could have large positive or negative balances. I recommend you start tracking your cash flow at a more recent date, say June 1, 2009. How do I tell MoneyWell how much money I have to spend at the start? >> Now for your unexpected bucket behavior: >> >>> The behaviour I expect is that, upon recording a transaction that >>> moves $20 from the checking account to the "Fuel" bucket, this >>> bucket >>> should show a "-$20". Indeed, it does. >>> I also expect that the Salary bucket goes from 1223,85 to 1203,85 >>> as a >>> "side effect" of the above mentioned transacion. Instead, it remains >>> steadily anchored to its original value. >> >> You did not put any money into your "Fuel" bucket before you did the >> transaction. What happened is you spent money from the bucket that >> wasn't there, so the bucket ended up with negative amount in it of >> -20. > > So far so good, and I understand this. > >> The Salary didn't decline by 20 because you hadn't taken $20 from it >> and put it into the Fuel bucket. You did do it after you recorded >> that transaction by the drag'n'drop. >> >> That's why you are suppose to allocate(distribute) your Salary into >> your expense buckets before you pay your expenses, so that you know >> before hand how much you have to spend for each expense. Then, when >> you record the transaction, like your Fuel, the bucket amount will go >> from $20 to zero. > > Ok, this makes perfect sense! Thanks! > > I believe the "problem" is that I expect that, upon setting up the > spending plan and the allocations, as well as > the cash flow start date, the application should consider that I have > allocated money for each month in the > range ["cash flow start date", "today"] while it only allocates for > the current month! > It happens that the incoming transactions fill the income bucket > correctly, even though they belong to the past. > While the spending transactions quickly will bring spending buckets > below 0 because the have money allocated > only for the month being! > Please understand that your spending plan is equivalent to drawing "fill to here" lines on your buckets. It doesn't allocate any money and it won't drive automatic allocations. When you use Allocate Income, it will respect your spending plan lines and only fill to those amounts in each bucket but you have to click Allocate Income each time you have newly deposited money to spend. > An example perhaps works better. > > I have only my checking account with a starting balance as of > 31/12/2009 of 1000. > The cash flow starting date is set to 01/01/2009 and the amount to > 1000. > The income bucket is therefore set to 1000. > > I set up the incoming transactions from January to June which will > update the incoming bucket up to 7000. > Now I go define the allocation plan for my only expense bucket and > allocate 100/month. > > I expect that since I've set the cash flow to 01/01/2009 the > allocation should consider that date and work its way > through the current date. Thus, allocating 100 for each month from the > cash flow start date to today, leading > the expense bucket to have an amount of 600. > > At this point the income bucket should be of 7000 - 600 -> 6400, which > doesn't happens because the application > only allocates money for the current month and, thus, the income > bucket gets reduced only by the current month allocation (100). So, > its value is set to 7000 - 100 -> 6900. > No, this is not how MoneyWell works. It only allocates when you click Allocate Income. Check our our videos for more details and really consider your cash flow layer as a virtual layer on top of the banking layer. You don't have to start tracking cash flow as of January 1 just to have a clean cash flow system. > The fact is that, to me, the application expects that you start > keeping track of your expenses on the very first day > you start using it. This could work if you are willing to loose a > year, or more, of statistical data. > > Of course, it could be just me doing something terribly wrong but, > what is it? You can have months or years of bank statement history and still just start tracking cash flow this month. It's totally separate from the register functionality in MoneyWell. > > More I found that adding scheduled transactions that starts from > 01/01/2009 only adds the first and the ones ranging > from June to the end of the recurring period (I recorded the scheduled > transaction on 31/05/09). Perhaps this is a bug. > No, it's just part of the misconception that MoneyWell is going to create an allocation/money flow history automatically. > > One more question. How am I supposed to track the expenses for which I > can't (and don't want to) allocate any money? > As of now, I have a bucket for each one of them which, of course, > always goes negative. I can't drag'n'drop from the income bucket > because I am not allocating money for them. Again, this will lead to > an inconsistent income bucket amount... First start over with your cash flow tracking by using Edit > Change Cash Flow Start Date to the first of this month and then go from there. Check out our FAQs and video tutorials to help with this concept. I think you'll find it's more simple than what you are trying to do with this scenario. Thanks. Peace, Kevin Hoctor [email protected] No Thirst Software LLC http://nothirst.com http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. 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