Main > Help [How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?]
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support
Administrator
Re:How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?
Thank you. This is more just to bring it out in the open to get some feedback and find any suggestions in how it's developed. The majority of our products came from user suggestions so we try to get the users involved as often as possible.
08/30/2007 18:18:03
GREGORY
User
Re:How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?
May I suggest you PLEASE take your time and think about this one for a while. Once it is developed properly, it will be a valuable addition to your product.
I have had a difficult first 2 weeks on BudgetTracker because I plan ALL my bills in advance. There is no other way that I know of to properly budget.
I get paid on the 8th and the 24th. I allocate half of the 09/01/2007 House payment on 08/08/2007 and the other half on 08/24/2007. I do this for every item in my budget.
I have been struggling (a little bit) to use BudgetTracker and this method of budgeting together. I am slowly getting use to how your software works and like it very, very much.
I have printed out the response you entered before this one. I am going to think about it and see if maybe 30 years of budgeting "ahead of time" might give me some insight to help your program logic. I appreciate all that you have done with this software so far - it is quite impressive.
Thanks, Greg
08/30/2007 14:25:57
support
Administrator
Re:How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?
Thank you for the detailed feedback on this. I agree this feature would be a huge benefit to staying on top of your Budget. Preparing for a Budget before it's due is one of the main reasons people get behind. This is what we've come up with so far:
We can track off months in a budget (budget categories that have a 0 due until the recurrence comes up). What we were thinking is when entering an Income item from the My Income page or recording any depost, you can split the amount or pay in full a certain amount and select your Budget Category which is an expense but record it as a deposit. When any deposit is recorded to that category in the off months, we can treat it as being added to the pool (this would avoid seperate categories). Then on the My Budget page, we can track all deposits associated with that category in the off months and change the orange bar chart to a green bar chart(Pool) until the month you're viewing lands inside a recurrence month. To the side of the pool chart, we can show how much you should have in the Pool(Ex On a 3 month recurrence in the second off month with a budget amount of $100.00, you should have $66.66 by the end of the second month).
These are our concerns/debates so far:
Should the pool bar chart always show how much has been deposited out of the total budget amount due or of how much you should have for the existing month.
Should the Pool bar chart be shown when on the reccurence month. The issue is having enough space to show 2 bar charts.
We would need to change the algorithm so that deposits are not included as part of the calculations for expense Transactions in your budget. This is mainly for people recording deposits to an expense on the month that the recurrence hits (need feedback on this).
By recording your deposits to an expense category, they may throw off your totals when viewing a summary of that category on the My Transactions page(filtering on that category). One solution would be to adjust the filter to amounts less than 0 but we're not sure how intuitive that would be.
There needs to be a way for users to see how much is available for spending in an account, and how much is reserved for budgeting so what we were thinking is creating a graph of each account, possibly on the My Accounts page showing how much has been deposited and allocated towards a budget in the off months and how much is left after all pools are taken care of. One thing we need make sure of is to simulate a real life scenario as close as possible. So what we see happening, is a user records their paycheck and selects a split deposit into their account assigning a portion of that deposit to some budget items. Once this gets recorded as a transaction, you can go to the My Budget page and see that this amount has been added to your Pool for the budget item.
On another note, showing a Pooled chart on the recurrence month due may help take care of weekly budgeting since users can then see how much has been allocated to a budget within the existing month. If there is a due date on the item, it should be recorded as a bill or income and will then show up in the hover menu. We've added the ability to see a due date in the hover menu to our to-do list.
08/30/2007 12:36:14
GREGORY
User
Re:How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?
I am amazed no one has asked for this ability before. Especially with so many people paying insurances every 6 months.
If I could, I suggest you create a category (or type or item) called a "POOL". It would have a DUE DATE like every bill does. Then it would have a flexible Monthly Amount that I would be able to charge to it, like $20 a month for a $240 car tag.
Each month this $20 is treated like a paid transaction, when it is actually being saved to the side in a POOL called "Car Tags" (or whatever).
This would serve as a Reminder to the BudgetTracker User and they would have to be smart enough to know that the money is "saved" in their checking account until needed in the coming months.
The TRANSACTIONS screen would somehow indicate that this money is "spoken for" and not available to spend.
The more I talkl about this, the more I understand why you DO NOT have it. It sounds like some difficult programming. But I know businesses do something like this every day. If you can do it, please do. If you cannot, I certainly understand. Thanks, Greg
08/30/2007 08:11:32
support
Administrator
Re:How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?
Thank you for the post. We currently do not support settings aside money for a Budget item. We will look into ways of adding this in and try to get it out in the September release. We are also looking into weekly budgeting.
08/29/2007 23:30:12
GREGORY
User
How do I set aside Monthly' amounts for bills paid 'Annually'?
I have several things in my budget that are paid annually or quarterly, but I set aside the money (in advance) each month. An example is: Car tags. I budget each month for each car, but only actually pay the bill once a year. What would be the best way to do this using BudgetTracker? Please be as verbose in your response as you can. I have only been a Subscriber for a few days and am trying to figure out how to use your fine product. Thanks. Greg
