Bottom "buckets balance" does not change

[Brian H. Mayo]

I have selected an account and an expense bucket. I have past
transactions and a pending (future) transaction.
When I select a past transactions, I see the account balance, the
reconciled balance and the buckets balance. When I select the pending
transaction (future), I see the balance decreases (as it should), but
the bucket balance does not. Shouldn't the bucket balance decrease by
the amount of the pending transaction?

Also, I selected the account and "All Transactions" from the SMART
bucket. I have a few pending transactions on different dates. When I
select the most in the future pending transaction, I see the balance
decreases as it should but again the bucket balance does not change.

My feeling is that the bucket balance should go down since on the date
that transactions switches from pending to active (open, cleared,
etc.) and the physical decrease from the bucket will be realized.

[Kevin Hoctor]

Brian,

That total does not change because you always have the same amount of
"cash flow" available in your buckets no matter what you have selected
or filtered. This is your total amount of cash you have to spend
currently.

Peace,

Kevin Hoctor
ke...@nothirst.com
No Thirst Software LLC
http://nothirst.com
http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com

[Brian H. Mayo]

I do not follow your answer.

The footer line that lists the totals changes as different
transactions are selected, which is a great feature to understand,
over time (in the future) what the totals (and buckets) will look
like. As I mentioned in the original post, the bank balances decrease
reflecting the money being taken from the bank account to satisfy the
transactions (like the paying of a bill). But, my problem is that the
bucket that is listed in the transaction is not changed.

Take this example, let us say we have 1 bank account, one income
bucket, and one expense bucket. I put $100 in the bank account.
First, the income bucket has $100 and I then flow that into a "water
utility" expense bucket. Let us say I create a future transaction (I
did an online billpay) to pay $100. I would highlight the transaction
and in the footer it would show the bank account at $0 (reflecting the
payment of the bill from that account), but the buckets balance would
show $100.

In your answer you mentioned the notion of "currently", but when you
highlight a future transactions, you are altering the footer totals
and (should be) buckets balance as well. You are changing the point
in time reference from now to then in the future.

[Kevin Hoctor]

On Feb 21, 2009, at 8:18 PM, Brian H. Mayo wrote:

I do not follow your answer.

The footer line that lists the totals changes as different
transactions are selected, which is a great feature to understand,
over time (in the future) what the totals (and buckets) will look
like.  As I mentioned in the original post, the bank balances decrease
reflecting the money being taken from the bank account to satisfy the
transactions (like the paying of a bill).  But, my problem is that the
bucket that is listed in the transaction is not changed.

Take this example, let us say we have 1 bank account, one income
bucket, and one expense bucket.  I put $100 in the bank account.
First, the income bucket has $100 and I then flow that into a "water
utility" expense bucket.  Let us say I create a future transaction (I
did an online billpay) to pay $100.  I would highlight the transaction
and in the footer it would show the bank account at $0 (reflecting the
payment of the bill from that account), but the buckets balance would
show $100.

In your answer you mentioned the notion of "currently", but when you
highlight a future transactions, you are altering the footer totals
and (should be) buckets balance as well.  You are changing the point
in time reference from now to then in the future.

Brian,

The difference is that the daily balances and sums (when you select more than one transaction) are all at the bank register level. This is the concrete layer in MoneyWell that lets you manage your accounts at the transaction level to make sure you are tracking every single activity.

The buckets are on a different level. The cash flow level is less concrete and is designed to show you how much is being spent and is left to spend based on the envelope budgeting method. Your bucket balances for current activity (when you don't have the view filtered down to a specific month) only are affected by your spending plan and the transactions you've assigned to that bucket. You can see projected spending for your envelope method by showing pending transactions or ignore those by hiding them but filters don't affect the available bucket balances because changing those would skew your decision to spend or not to spend.

You either have money left to spend in your Dining bucket or you don't. It shouldn't change based on what day of the month you are reviewing. I hope this helps. Our "Understanding MoneyWell" video tries to point out this difference as well.

Peace,

Kevin Hoctor

ke...@nothirst.com

[Brian H. Mayo]

I hate to beat this point, but I want to make sure I understand this
and possible request a feature change.

Let us says again we have one physical account, one income bucket (but
that really does not matter for this example), and one expense bucket.

Let us put $100 in the physical account, then into the income bucket,
and then into the expense bucket.

In the footer at the bottom it should say "1 transaction; 2/24/09
balance is $100.00; reconciled balance is [whatever]; buckets balance
is $100.00"

Let us do these different actions
1) If I make a transaction today for $100 expense against the expense
bucket, the footer line now says, "2 transactions; 2/24/09 balance is
$0.00; reconciled balance is [whatever]; buckets balance is $0.00
I tried this and it works.

That is correct; it should be an accurate picture of the physical
account and the bucket balances

2) If I make a future transaction (dated 2/28/09) for $100. If I am
highlighting the initial transaction (that put money in the account
dated 2/24/09), the footer will say, "1 transaction; 2/24/09 balance
is $100.00; reconciled balance is [whatever]; buckets balance is
$100.00". Now, I highlight the future transaction (dated 2/28/09),
the footer now says, "2 transaction; 2/28/09 balance is $0.00;
reconciled balance is [whatever]; buckets balance is $100.00"
I tried this and this is what happens.

Here is my point, in the #1 action, when I made a current transaction
(same day), the footer correctly decremented the amount from the
physical account and the bucket balances. But, when I made a future
transaction and highlighted it, the footer only decremented the
physical account but did not decrement the bucket balances.

If you are saying that the footer value for the bucket balance is not
effected by the selected transaction date like other data in the
footer, that is a bit misleading and makes that value a bit useless.
I would much rather have the bucket balance value change just like the
date balance value changes. That way, as I input future transactions,
like bill pays, I can make sure my bucket balances (in total) will not
go negative. That is an easy way for me to see the effect of future
transactions.

[Kevin Hoctor]

Brian,

The simple answer to this is that the bucket balance is equal to the
sum of all the bucket totals currently available in the Buckets List.
If it changed for each transaction you selected, then it wouldn't be
equal to this sum.

Here's the rule on bucket balances when not filtered to a specific
month:

1. Buckets show the available cash based on cash flow from the cash
flow start date to the current date
2. Future pending transactions beyond the current month are never
included in these sums because that would cause some very negative
buckets
3. Future pending transactions in the current month are only
included if the View menu is set to Show Future Pending Transactions

The bucket balance on the bottom of the window is just a quick way to
see the total sum of all these buckets based on these rules. It's a
gauge of how much you have left to spend in general for this month.

Peace,

Kevin Hoctor
ke...@nothirst.com

[Druzyne]

> Here's the rule on bucket balances when not filtered to a specific
> month:
>
> 1. Buckets show the available cash based on cash flow from the cash
> flow start date to the current date
> 2. Future pending transactions beyond the current month are never
> included in these sums because that would cause some very negative
> buckets
> 3. Future pending transactions in the current month are only
> included if the View menu is set to Show Future Pending Transactions

Kevin,

I'm curious about Rule #3. Let me tell you about my use:

I set up my car payment as a scheduled transaction, and had it repeat
for all the car payments I have left, to save myself some effort. This
caused all 40+ pending transactions to be shown in the register. I
didn't care to be reminded daily of how many are remaining, so I set
the "future" period as 30 days, and had MW hide Future Pending
Transactions. That way, I only see one car payment at a time, and
still see other upcoming transactions, so I know when I need to move
money from savings to checking.

However, I noticed that now my buckets don't show the "forecasted"
totals that include pending transactions for the month. This was very
handy in allowing me to proactively flow money around because, for
example, my Utilities bucket was in the red once I entered the bills
that are coming up. Now that I'm hiding the future payments, the
Utilities bucket looks deceptively full, because the electricity bill
isn't due yet.

Is there a way to get the best of both worlds?

Thanks!
//Drew

[Kevin Hoctor]

On Mar 27, 2009, at 7:10 AM, Druzyne wrote:

> Is there a way to get the best of both worlds?

Not at this time Drew. I'm working on better ways of managing future
cash flow in 2.x.