"Income" and "Expenses" are confusing

[sergei1152]

I've been using the software for a few months now and whilst its good for tracking how much I'm spending on average in every bucket type, I struggle to find the answer to the question: How much of my income did I save, and how much did I spend.

For example, imagine I invest $1000. The investment account is an off-budget account. I have an "investment" bucket. I categorize my $1000 transfer from my checking account into the "Investment" bucket.

Now my "Expense" for that month has increased by $1000, even though it's not really an expense.

Similarly, imagine I'm paying for a restaurant where I'll split the bill with a friend. The bill was $100 where $50 was my portion. I categorize the transaction into two buckets, a "Restaurant" bucket and a "Split Bill" bucket. My total expense for that month increases by $100. A month later, I'll receive $50 from my friend, but that $50 will count as "Income". In effect, this over-inflates my total "Expense" for that month, and over-inflates my "Income" for whenever I receive my friends payment, since I didn't actually spend or earn that extra amount of cash.

I was thinking it would be correct to "exclude" transactions in certain buckets from being categorized as "Income" or "Expense". For example, only transactions I mark as "Income" should be included in my "Income". Similarily, if I could configure certain buckets like "Investing" and "Split Bill" to not count as my own expense or income.

[coldwell]

hey @sergei1152, just wanted to point out that you can put a positive transaction against a bucket, which reduces the overall expense. So in your restaurant example, once your friend sends money for their part, you can add that +50 to your restaurants bucket, and the final expense would show 50. Hope that helps!

[sergei1152]

I guess the main issue is that additions to a bucket, regardless of what bucket, are counted as income, when its not really income.

if i receive the 50 from the friend and add it to the restaurant bucket, Buckets will show the total expense for the month as $100, and total income for the month as $50. In reality, I'd like it show Income as 0 (since the $50 isn't really an income source), and the expense as -$50.

To get around this, it would be great if we could "eliminate" buckets from being counted in the top "Income/Expense" fields, or exclude them in some way.

This would also support the investment usecase.

[pippil]

For example, imagine I invest $1000. The investment account is an off-budget account. I have an "investment" bucket. I categorize my $1000 transfer from my checking account into the "Investment" bucket.

Now my "Expense" for that month has increased by $1000, even though it's not really an expense.

I mean, yeah, it kinda is an expense. That money is now parked in an off-budget investment instrument, not cash with a purpose in your buckets budget. So in that sense, yes, the money is expended from your budget. It's not an expense in that it did not lower your net worth, but you gave those dollars the job of "growing more dollars" in an investment, so they are not doing other jobs like filling your restaurant bucket or paying the rent.

How else would you recommend classifying money that leaves your active budget if not as an expense?

I agree there should be different ways to classify money coming into the buckets - not all additions are "income" in the legal / tax implications of the word, so being able to clarify what type of addition it is would be helpful. (There are tickets on this part already.)

[sergei1152]

I've actually switched over to Ynab (for various reasons including this), and the way they do it is you have a report page where you can filter out various "buckets" from the final numbers. This lets you dial in on, exactly how much you made vs how much you really spent, which is what I'm actually looking for when using these budgeting apps.

I think adding this type of functionality to the reporting page in buckets may also be helpful.