How to change bar to show red in one month budget view if spent money on a $0 budget catagory

meganinja110712

I am hoping there is a setting to change this and it isn't just a lack of feature. When I am in the one month budget view: If I have spent money in a category that I don't have a budget amount for it will still be a gray bar, but says "$198 over". I would like this bar to turn red as I have spent "too much money". I don't want to just add money to the category however. For instance, I don't want to budget for a dental filling as I have no idea when/if it will happen but I want to see red in that category to know that I did spend that money this month which was not budgeted for. I hope this makes sense! Thanks!

jacobs

First, there is no preference setting to change the display of the one-month budget screen.

The bars are a progress indicator of how far you are towards your budgeted amount (from zero to one hundred percent of your budgeted amount). The bars turn red if you have a budgeted amount for a category and if you are under budget for an income category or over budget for an expense category.

If you have nothing budgeted for a category, the bars won't show anything because there was nothing budgeted. That is, if you have zero budgeted for medical expenses and you spent $198 at the dentist, the bar doesn't show red because it can't show your progress in percentage towards your budgeted amount of zero. 

The text to the right shows in red that you are $198 over. Bottom line: you want to be looking at the text on the right more than the bars if you want to see how you're doing. The bars for individual categories will only help you see whether you're over/under budgeted income and expenses. (The bars for total income and expenses are still useful for seeing how you're doing overall.)

I don't think this bar graph interface is the most intuitive way to show a visual representation of actual versus budget, for the reason you mention, but that's an explanation of why it works the way it does.

jacobs

First, there is no preference setting to change the display of the one-month budget screen.

The bars are a progress indicator of how far you are towards your budgeted amount (from zero to one hundred percent of your budgeted amount). The bars turn red if you have a budgeted amount for a category and if you are under budget for an income category or over budget for an expense category.

If you have nothing budgeted for a category, the bars won't show anything because there was nothing budgeted. That is, if you have zero budgeted for medical expenses and you spent $198 at the dentist, the bar doesn't show red because it can't show your progress in percentage towards your budgeted amount of zero. 

The text to the right shows in red that you are $198 over. Bottom line: you want to be looking at the text on the right more than the bars if you want to see how you're doing. The bars for individual categories will only help you see whether you're over/under budgeted income and expenses. (The bars for total income and expenses are still useful for seeing how you're doing overall.)

I don't think this bar graph interface is the most intuitive way to show a visual representation of actual versus budget, for the reason you mention, but that's an explanation of why it works the way it does.