One of the biggest questions that comes up with BudgetSimple, is how do you handle savings, especially for items that are periodic, such as your insurance bill or property taxes.
Introducing “Savings Funds”. First, you create a Fund under “Tools->Savings Funds”
Next, give it a name, like “Vacation Fund” or “Property Taxes”, the amount you already have saved (or zero), and optionally the amount you want to save and the goal date.
Now, we’ll automatically add a new budget category with the same name. Budget for the amount you want to save each month (we plan to do this for you automatically in the next version):
Now when you log “spending” against this fund (really money put into savings)
It will automatically track towards the fund itself:
This approach may be a little confusing at first, because the funds are “virtual”, and the amounts won’t line up with any specific Savings account balance. When you spend the money, simply make a negative expense against the category, and it will deduct the money from the fund, and cancel out the real money you spent. This feature is new and a little raw, we’ll keep improving it, so give us your feedback!
