I am having a strange issue when attempting to transfer between budget categories. Firstly, the available balance that shows up on the transfer screen is the same regardless of which category I choose. It always shows $142.77 as the available funds. Lastly, if I ignore the the available funds and enter the amount that I want to transfer, which is greater than what the available funds shows but is less than the actual balance of the budget category I'm attempting to transfer from, I get an error that says "Subcategory has insufficient balance".
Anyone come across this before or have any idea of how to resolve this?
Strange Issue with Transfers
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eblood66
- Senior Member
- Posts: 3995
- Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:17 am
- Location: Cumming, GA, USA
Re: Strange Issue with Transfers
The tricky thing about the budget category is that there are two different 'balances'. One balance is the amount of your estimated yearly budget amount that has not yet been used. This is the balance show on the Budget Summary page under the Budget menu item. The other balance is related to the actual quarterly budget deposits. It shows how much of those deposits has not been spent. This balance is shown on the Income and Expense Summary page under the Overview menu item as the End Balance of the Budget category.
In most cases you only need to worry about the first balance. BUT you are not allowed to let the second balance become negative. Or in other words, you aren't allowed to spend more than you have actually received at that point in the year. This can become a problem if you need to spend a good part of the your budget early in the year.
So the Available Funds on the transfer screen is the amount of the second balance. If the amount you are trying to transfer is more than this amount then it disallows it to prevent the total budget from going negative. Now, since you're trying to transfer from one budget category to another this is kind of wrong because it won't actually reduce the total budget balance. But the transfer screen doesn't take that into account.
So one option is to make multiple transfers where each is less than the currently available amount. Another option is to wait until you get your next quarterly deposit in October. However, if you need to pay expenses before your next deposit you won't be able to. So you may need to ask the stake to 'lend' you some funds until you get the next quarterly deposit by transferring budget funds to your ward. I'll email you about what we can do (for other readers, gcoddington is in my stake).
In most cases you only need to worry about the first balance. BUT you are not allowed to let the second balance become negative. Or in other words, you aren't allowed to spend more than you have actually received at that point in the year. This can become a problem if you need to spend a good part of the your budget early in the year.
So the Available Funds on the transfer screen is the amount of the second balance. If the amount you are trying to transfer is more than this amount then it disallows it to prevent the total budget from going negative. Now, since you're trying to transfer from one budget category to another this is kind of wrong because it won't actually reduce the total budget balance. But the transfer screen doesn't take that into account.
So one option is to make multiple transfers where each is less than the currently available amount. Another option is to wait until you get your next quarterly deposit in October. However, if you need to pay expenses before your next deposit you won't be able to. So you may need to ask the stake to 'lend' you some funds until you get the next quarterly deposit by transferring budget funds to your ward. I'll email you about what we can do (for other readers, gcoddington is in my stake).