Budget Shows SSA Benefit as a Negative

pearcebj

I have an income reminder for Social Security Benefit Spouse, It reflects as a negative number in Budgets for future months. Once the payment is made, it does reflect as a positive number. How can this future month number be corrected? I also have a line for my own Social Security Benefit and it works as intended. Thank you in advance for all suggestions.

Bob_L

You should be able to enter the correct budget amount in January on the budget tab and then apply that same amount to all the months going forward. Are you saying you were unable to do that? Or are you talking about showing future months actuals based upon the reminder?

edit. Assuming it is the later, I suggest you delete and re-enter the reminder for your spouse.

Bob_L

Does your wife have a reminder and you do not? If so, are you including reminders in your budget?

pearcebj

I have deleted and re-entered the SSA payment from Bill no change. I entered it as a reminder from the register, no change. All future payments are negative.
Separately my SSA payment is entered as a reminder and it correctly shows as a positive number in Budgets.

Bob_L

".It reflects as a negative number in Budgets for future months"

To be clear, with budget set to show "details", are these negative number showing under the heading "budget", "actual", or "balance"?

pearcebj

The "budget" is positive, the "actual" is negative for future months. Past month "actual" is positive.

Bob_L

Under budget actions, is View set to include reminders?

pearcebj

Yes, I have many reminders in the Budget which show up correctly, including my SSA payment.

Bob_L

Have you tried validating your file under file operations? Unfortunately there have been problems with budgets though they typically involved disappearances of an entire budget.

pearcebj

It found a damaged schedule reminder and removed it. But not this one.

pearcebj

I have been playing around with it and entered an amount for May as if an actual payment. It records correctly, but still doesn't show the reminder amount.

Bob_L

Clearly both your and your spouses reminders should be working the same way. If you delete the spouse reminder. Do the future actuals go to zero?

pearcebj

Yes, they do.

pearcebj

I changed the category from "Social Security Benefit Spouse" to "Social Security Benefit" and it correctly reflects future payments for both me and my spouse.

Bob_L

It seems as if the reminder "thinks" it is a negative expense rather than income.

Maybe others will stop by; I am out of ideas

pearcebj

I really appreciate your trying to solve this.

pearcebj

For the time being I am putting both SSA Deposits in on budget category.

Bob_L

Good! so create a new category: say, SSI-SPOUSE . assign it tax line to same as original spouse category and then try using that.

pearcebj

That's a good idea!