What causes this issue?
If you have a budget that is showing as persistently overspent (or over-earned), but you’re sure it isn’t, it may be that your budget has been assigned to an asset or debt, instead of the account that the transaction occurs within.
When a budget is linked to an asset or debt under ’Which account’s forecast is this budget for?’, it instantly shows as fully spent or earned when the budget repeats or starts. This is because assets and debts don’t contain transactions, so the budget is shown as fully spent or earned right away.
Then, when you assign transactions to the category with this budget, the transaction amount is added to the ‘spent’ (or ‘earned’) amount, causing the budget to show as overspent (or over-earned) all the time.
Steps to resolve the issue
To resolve the issue, edit the affected budget and instead select the account where you expect the spending or earnings to occur.
- Head to the Budget page, and navigate to the affected budget
- Hover over the three-dot-menu and select ‘Edit or delete this budget’
- Under ‘Which account’s forecast is this budget for?’, select the bank account the transaction is likely to occur in, and click UPDATE
- In the confirmation modal, choose ‘All budget events in this series’
- Click CONFIRM CHANGES to save
For more details on how to edit a budget, see: Repeating budgets and how to delete or make changes to them