Why Spending Plan doesn't match actuals at month-end
It's April now and March budget is closed. I'm trying to understand why my Spending Plan for March still shows $2,700 available and my Net Income report shows negative $162. I exported all March transactions and reconciled to the spending plan - all Income, Bills, Subscriptions, Planned Spending and Other Spending. Everything lines up except for Planned Spending - the report is right and the spending plan is wrong. Does this have to do with carryover amounts? I reviewed all the 'exclude from reports' and 'exclude from spending plan' flags and they are all 'no'. Why don't the two totals match? I went category-by-category in the Spending Plan and the amount spent for each category matches to actuals but the total does not add up. I can't figure out how the total Planned Spending amount is calculated.
Answers
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I took a look at April (we're only 3 days into the month) thinking it would be easier to understand the total Planned Spending calculation. Manually adding up the budgeted amounts come to $39.57 less than what shows in the Total Planned Spending amount which is the amount over spent in one of the categories. So that means the total includes the budgeted amount plus over spent amounts. But the categories with negative carry over amount are not included which means those overages were included in the Planned Spending total in the month in which they were incurred?
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Hello @John Dressel,
Thanks for reaching out! The Spending Plan is a simple budget that accounts for your monthly bills, income, Savings Goal contributions, and other planned expenses while also tracking any additional spending throughout the month. This support article goes into more detail on this feature here:
If you can provide some screenshots showing the discrepancies, we can further assist you in verifying if there is incorrect information within your Spending Plan and troubleshoot. Feel free to redact any personal information!
-Coach Jon
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I think I understand now - Planned Spend is total budgeted plus the over spent amount for categories with no carry over. If you over spend in a category with a carry over, that overage is spread out over future months and not considered for that month. The Net Income report simply reports what was spent that month, regardless of budget carry over. I've talked myself through it :-)
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