I recently started using Emma and so far loving it, a great way of managing finances. A question which may be answered elsewhere but couldn’t find it.
I may be doing this wrong, but wanted to ask the question and hopefully, someone can correct me. I typically do my grocery shopping via a sep credit card which I pay off every month. I also have a number of other cards which are used for shopping and or paying off debt.
Due to the combined nature of showing current and credit accounts, it shows spending on say grocery which I have budgeted for but also paying off those credit cards, all increasing spending (As some of that spending will be paying off credit, how do I reflect that properly). The only thing I could think of was hiding those credit cards which I am paying off but seems a waste as I cant then see the individual transactions on them.
I also created a category and budgeted based on how much I wanted to commit to paying off credit card debt which all adds to spending if there are an addition on those credit cards.
You just need to exclude the paying off credit card transactions. Whenever next time you get confused ask yourself a question is it a real expense/income as that’s the only thing should be part of your budget and not transfer to other accounts, cash withdrawal, payoff credit card etc.
Lot of people set category for saving target, pay off loan/CC, the only issue I see in that is expenses will be recorded twice and it will not give your over all clear picture.
Hi @wacko and welcome. Yes agreed Emma is the bees knees and will help loads. What we did was to simplify things. We have one back account for income and it feeds our budget into a starling bank account for groceries etc. It makes it easy to account and the instant updating helps in shops etc.
Hans
Totally makes sense what you have said and agree it correctly reflects what my expense/income is when I have excluded these transactions.
What I am having trouble getting my head around is say I spent £100 on my credit card, which shows up as an expense correctly. However my credit-card already has debt on it, so at the end of the month when I pay £200 out to clear the balance, that’s an additional £100 outgoing as an expense. If I exclude the transaction how do I track this?
Interesting…How about using split transaction feature? So from that 200 payment you can exclude 100(paying off balance) and put 100(Interest) as an expense.
