How do I keep my budget from resetting every month?

jimredsox

Hello. Im sure there is an obvious answer... im new so i apologize. My first budget ended up being what i believe was created from a 3month average of various categories. This was way off as I purchased a new home... got some equity... bought a ton of things.... so its way off from "normal life." Ive adjusted that budget and what I thought was saved it every month but it continues to revert back to the original. Two months ago I copied the budget called it something else and it still went back.
How can I take what I have created this month and save it for a monthly budget moving forward?

Jim_Harman

When creating and viewing your budget, there are several settings at the top of the page that affect what you see.

At the left is what I would call the budget scenario. You can have several of these and they are completely independent of each other. To avoid confusion, you should not name them with a year like "Budget 2021" because each scenario can run for many years.

When creating a budget, it is best to pick Annual view in the next box. This gives a chart that shows the whole year by month.

Next to that are left and right arrows that let you pick the year to view, so when creating this year's budget, you would pick 2021.

Finally there is a box that controls what is shown in the chart. When creating your budget, I would pick "Budget only" or "Details", which shows your budget along with your actual spending and the balance.

Hopefully when you look at your budget this way, it will give you a better picture of what is going on.

Jim_Harman

When creating and viewing your budget, there are several settings at the top of the page that affect what you see.

At the left is what I would call the budget scenario. You can have several of these and they are completely independent of each other. To avoid confusion, you should not name them with a year like "Budget 2021" because each scenario can run for many years.

When creating a budget, it is best to pick Annual view in the next box. This gives a chart that shows the whole year by month.

Next to that are left and right arrows that let you pick the year to view, so when creating this year's budget, you would pick 2021.

Finally there is a box that controls what is shown in the chart. When creating your budget, I would pick "Budget only" or "Details", which shows your budget along with your actual spending and the balance.

Hopefully when you look at your budget this way, it will give you a better picture of what is going on.

jimredsox

Thanks Jim
I opened up the annual view. I like that view better. However I am still stuck with a monthly view that reflects the categories with the averaged monthly budgeted amounts for each. I had to go into June and change each one in this view as well. Is there a way to change all the months in this annual view?

Jim_Harman

I'm not sure what you mean by averaged monthly budgeted amounts. When setting up a budget, you can either specify an annual amount for each category and have that spread evenly over the months, or you can specify a different amount for each month.

jimredsox

maybe im modifying a bad budget..... When I started some how I have this budget that was automatically created for me based on 3month averages that are all out of whack when we were moving.... like I spent $3k in furniture one month and now it is budgeting averages with those high one time expenses as part of the assumed numbers each month. I have to go in and change that number each month. Even on your view. Do I just need to start over with another budget? Does that make sense?
I dont see where I can take my existing budget (in the annual view) and look at a category (in the existing budget) and go to an editable cell that has an annual number and plug in a number number that will automatically fill in 12 months.

UKR

Let's assume you used the Annual View of the Budget and just fixed up your June Budget numbers for each category.

To easily copy the whole month of June budgeted numbers forward to the rest of 2021, click the June column header and select "Copy Jun budgets to all future months in 2021".

Look at the 2nd and 3rd copy options if you want to apply your Jun budget backwards and/or forwards to other months in this year.