Envelopes are used to categorize your expenses. Setting budgeted expenses requires two pieces of information, the amount of the expense and how often it is due. With these two pieces of information Budget Touch will calculate how much needs to be taken from each pay deposit to meet the expense. The calculated amounts (called allocations) are shown in the pay details screen for each envelope.
Note: Setting expense allocations does not change the current balance of an envelope.
When you record a pay transaction Budget Touch will distribute the money to each envelope based on the allocations set in that envelope and update the envelope balance. To setup your income for distribution see the Pay Sources screen.
From the Envelope screen touch the "Edit" button, then touch the account you want to use for the pay source.
Touch the Info button (i) in the upper right of the envelope you want to use for the pay source.
Set the budgeted expense amount and how often the amount is needed. At the bottom of the envelope edit screen touch the "Pay Details" button to display the allocation details screen.
The first section of the screen shows your expense amount and how much you actually have allocated to this envelope.
The next section determines which pay sources are used to fund this expense. You can turn them "On" or "Off". As you change the switch Budget Touch will recalculate the amount used from that pay source and will display the specific amounts in the last section.
If you have more than one pay source turned on you can determine how Budget Touch will compute your pay allocations from those multiple pay sources.
The bottom section shows each pay for each pay source. The number of pays shown is based on the pay frequency, see the list below. Budget Touch will automatically determine the amount for each pay based on the expense and how often it is needed, see the list below.
You can override any allocation amount by touching it and changing it to the desired amount.
For each expense, Budget determines the amount needed each month and divides it by the number of pays in the month, except for the following rule:
When a pay is defined as either Weekly or Bi-Weekly, Budget does not take allocations from the "extra" pays that occur every 3 months for Weekly or 6 months for Bi-Weekly, EXCEPT when the expense is also defined as either Weekly or Bi-Weekly.
Why? In the case of monthly expenses like rent or the phone bill, the extra pay received some months is really "extra" and not usually needed to pay the monthly expense. The extra pay can be used to pay bills that occur semi-annually or annually or placed in savings. However, for ongoing expenses that occur weekly or biweekly a portion of each pay is needed each time for these expenses.
The Pay Source System (Pay Sources, Pay Details, and Pay Entry) is an additional add-on. See the Add-Ons section for more details.