Caution statement - "You have some over budget categories"

johnharnly

I seem to go thru this every year with no satisfactory resolution. I spend a fair amount of time determining what my budget categories will be and how much to assign to them. Every time, when I'm finished I have this "over budget categories" message. If I hover over the green spending bar, there is a red section that provides more detail " X categories are over budget totaling $X in unplanned spending" but, for the life of me, I can't figure out what categories it is referring to or where these values are coming from. Has anyone solved this mystery?

Chris_QPW

Well the first thing I suggest you do to find the categories is to turn off the option for including the reminders.  Then go to the annual view select balance only, and look at the expense categories for negative numbers.  Since you should only have "actuals" in January, this will restrict looking for the problem categories to just January.  The number of these should line up with exactly what is reported in the bar graph at the top.

Now that you have a feel for this you can turn reminders back on if you want and look for any expense category what has a negative number any where in the year.

johnharnly

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to "turn off the option for including the reminders". I've looked thru all the options in the menu items and none of them seem to apply. Can you provide some clarification?

Chris_QPW

Sorry I should have given that information.

Budget Actions -> View options -> deselect Include reminders

johnharnly

Got it! That helps a bunch. With the reminders off it's clear what is over budget but I'm still struggling to explain the numbers with the reminders on. I'm beginning to think that the problem might be that some of the reminders don't have a category that is included in my budget list. All of my budget items consist of a subcategory (for example - Development:Books) but browsing through my Reminder list, some of the reminders are classified differently. For example my Social Security deposit is listed as "Paycheck", my mortgage and car loans are assigned to "Loan" and one of my credit cards is assigned to "transfer". So I'm wondering if my life would be less complicated if I just turned off the reminders. Do I lose access to any important features if I do that?

Chris_QPW

The reason for including reminders in a budget is only using them as "stand ins" for future actual amounts.

If you are looking at the balances for future months (or even the current month) and have the reminders off there will of course be no "future actuals" and your balances will look like you have "extra money/not zeroed".

So for the people that want to "balance their budget" including the future days, months including the reminders can help with that.  On the other hand if you don't have accurate reminders for all of your spending, it can give you the wrong impression of what "will happen".

Having "accurate" reminders for everything is pretty hard to do, so only you can decide what is best for you.  One suggestion I have about "variable expenses" would be to setup a reminder that is a split with these say on a weekly basis with your best guess (looking at past expenses in a report can help), and then just skip that reminder every week as the real expenses come in.

johnharnly

Okay, still struggling with this budget issue. I still have some overbudget items for which I can't identify the category but the total value is small enough that I'm not going to chase that dog anymore.

However, I do have another question regarding the budget results - I've meticulously entered all the reminder items into the budget in the correct months etc. and I've added money for non-reminder items that should make up the entire spending budget for the year. I've also added my income information and, thankfully, it's greater than the total spending by a comfortable amount. All looks good EXCEPT when I look at the total budget value listed at the right end of the spending bar, it shows a value that is WAY over my income (I'm talking thousands of dollars over my income total). Where is that number coming from?

Chris_QPW

The number at the end of the bar (SAVINGS) is budget Total Income minus the budget Total Expenses.
Here shown with a very simple example:

johnharnly

I actually have something above the bar on the right end that says:
Budget: $XXX,XXX and there is a small, orange triangle with an exclamation point in it and when you hover over it states that I have some over budget categories. My settings are identical to yours - Annual View, 2021, Budget Only.
That is what I was referring to.
Is it possible that this is a carry over from the previous budget?

Chris_QPW

This number:


Is your total budgeted expenses.

Note doesn't change no matter what you have selected like Budget only, or reminders, or rollovers or such.  If you are in Budget only, and you deselect your income categories this should be the total at the bottom right.