May 27

Unbudgeted from Categories - strange behaviour

I quite often move money between categories to cover overspending. I have a contingency (rainy day) category specifically for this which is also funded from income.The Budget Calculation now shows a line “Unbudgeted from Categories” to cover situations where users budget from a holding or reserve category rather than directly from income. My understanding was that if money was returned from here, to RTB, it would be shown as “Unbudgeted from Categories”.However my testing indicates that simple WAM (Whack a Mole) movements between categories, to cover overspends, somehow also get caught up in some way in this, which makes it very busy and relatively complex calculation. For example I just moved 63.55 between categories, to cover an overspend, and for some mysterious reason my “Unbudgeted from Categories” increased by 13.75 (!) and my “Budgeted to Categories” line increased by the same amount. And I have no idea why!Thanks.

Closed

changed status toClosed·2 days ago

last week

Hi Paul. Thanks, your three tests actually nailed it between them. Not a bug, but the labels are misleading. "Budgeted to / Unbudgeted from categories" aren't a log of moves you made, they're a snapshot of each category's net Assigned for the month, bucketed by sign. A move is just "subtract X from A, add X to B", and it only shows on those lines if a category crosses zero. Your 63.55 case: the source had 49.80 budgeted before the move, so moving 63.55 out pushed it to −13.75. That overshoot is what surfaces on both lines. Te other 49.80 just shifted from one positive bucket to another and stays invisible. Same reason your other two tests behaved differently: June: both categories started at 0, so the full 63.55 shows up. 10 from Contingencies: Contingencies stayed positive, so the move was invisible — just a shuffle inside the positive bucket. So it's working as defined, but the labels do imply a flow log when it's really a state snapshot. I'll look at adding a tooltip or tweaking the labels to make that clearer.

last week

Glad it makes sense! In my little world I’m just wondering if this data summary actually adds any value for me as user? Especially when I was just WAM(ming)? I had understood that you were trying to meet the needs of a user who funded his RTB from the capital held in a reserves category. So I could understand if this was simply to meet that scenario. And in my June example the ceding category had a large brought forward balance I’ll wait for you to get back but thanks so much for checking through in such detail.

2 days ago

I've added some tooltips to better explain. But the data is essentially a snapshot of what's currently budgeted. If you have no negative categories, you should ever see the "Unbudgeted from categories" btw.

2 days ago

Thanks - I’ll leave it there and get out of your hair! I was only looking at it in some detail to try and fully understand it 🤔🧐 For my normal usuage, I don’t find this to be valuable information at all, when all I have done is moved money, within the same month, between categories, in the normal way. I just worry that it will give rise to a lot of support questions for you in the future.

last week

HOWEVER If I go into June and cover my category overspend there (directly and not via RTB) I get a correct and matching number on both sides “Budgeted to Categories “ and “Unbudgeted from Categories”. I am wondering why when I have not returned any money to RTB?

last week

PS I tried moving 10, in May, from Contingencies to an empty category and my “Unbudgeted from Categories” remained unchanged. Which is what I expected. So I am a bit confused as to what is going on. Possibly specific to my set up??