Categorise Transfers

[FrankPudding]

Describe the feature

I only discovered this project a couple of weeks ago and it looks so good, I really appreciate everything you devs do. Here's my suggestion for better supporting sinking funds:

In an ideal world, this is actually four new features where only the first is truly necessary and the fourth has already been requested by someone else but I do think all of them are required for full support of sinking funds.

1. I would like to be able to make transfers that are also put into an expense category when made to an account that is not counting towards my net worth. Some people may also find it useful to be able to do this regardless of that condition.
2. I would like to be able to split a single asset into multiple parts like savings pots. For example, I would like to have one savings account with £1,000 where £500 is earmarked for a holiday and £500 is earmarked for my next car service and then when I pay for my holiday, say with £600, I can reimburse myself from my savings account with £600 and have an asset with £400 where £500 is earmarked for my service and -£100 for a holiday which I gradually pay into each month.
3. Label an account as not contributing to my net worth without closing it.
4. Split transactions into multiple categories

Why is this feature important?

Like many people, I put money away each month for annual costs like holidays, car servicing and insurance. Similarly, (and this may be less common) I have some payments that I save for every month that I pay for at irregular times such as buying clothes, or gifts for people.
Being able to categorise transfers almost completely fixes monthly budgeting for these non-monthly expenses because you pay for it each month and then pay yourself back at the actual time of purchase without counting it towards your budget because you pay yourself back from an account that doesn't contribute to your net worth.
Adding the ability to treat one asset as several savings pots allows you to have one account with all of your savings pots in at once and be able to judge how much you have to spend on a particular large item like a holiday or house renovation without having to get messy with large numbers of assets.
Some accounts like an emergency fund or a sinking fund ought not contribute to net worth because the idea is that you have already "spent" the money by putting it there. There are probably other use cases I haven't thought of for having open accounts that don't contribute to net worth.
Splitting transfers into multiple categories would allow making one transfer to a savings account to correctly attribute itself to my true monthly budget spending.

Additional context, screenshots, and relevant links

No response

[andreibrindas]

I second this:

1. I would like to be able to make transfers that are also put into an expense category when made to an account that is not counting towards my net worth. Some people may also find it useful to be able to do this regardless of that condition.

For example, I've opened a Debt account for a credit card.
I want to track the payments there from my main checking account & I want to keep track in my budget for these payments.

The only workaround I found is adding the two transactions manually: one transaction as an expense categorized as 'Credit Card Payment', and another income transaction in the Debt account for the credit card.

[sokie]

A few points here:
I think this is a really nice feature, but you're trying to force the existing concepts of "accounts," "transfers," and "net worth" to solve a problem that needs its own, dedicated feature.

The core problem is simple: you want to follow the envelope/sinking fund system.
​This means:
​Saving: Putting money aside monthly for a non-monthly expense (like "Car Insurance" or "Holiday").
​Budgeting: Having that saving act like a monthly expense in their budget.
​Spending: When you actually buy the item (e.g., pay a flight 3 months from now ), you want to use the money you've set aside, not have it destroy your budget for that one month.

A Better Workflow: Using "Virtual Funds"

​A "Fund" is a virtual envelope. It's not a real account. It's a way for you to earmark money that is still sitting in your real-world checking or savings accounts.

​Here is the step-by-step process:
​1. Setup: You Create a Fund
​First, you would go to a new "Funds" section in the app.
​You click "Create New Fund."
​You name it (e.g., "Holiday" or "Car Service").
​This is the key: You link this Fund to an expense category. For example, your "Holiday" Fund is linked to your "Travel: Holiday" expense category.

​2. Funding: You "Spend" Money Into Your Fund
​This completely replaces your request to "categorize a transfer."
​You go to your main Budget screen for the month (say, March).
​You see your "Holiday" expense category, just like "Groceries."
​You assign 100 bucks to the "Holiday" category budget.
​Here's the magic: Because the app knows that category is linked to a Fund, two things happen automatically:
​In your Budget: Your "Available to Budget" money for March goes down by 100. It feels exactly like you've spent it, which is what you want.
​In your "Funds" tab: Your "Holiday" Fund balance instantly increases to 100 bucks.
​Your actual 100 bucks is still in your real bank account, but the app now knows it's reserved.
​This solves two of your requests at once:
​Request 1 (Categorize transfers): You get the same result—your monthly budget shows the money as "spent"—but in a much more direct way.
​Request 4 (Split transactions): You no longer need to split a transfer. To fund both your holiday and car service, you simply assign 100 to the "Holiday" budget category and 50 to the "Car Service" budget category. The app will route the money to the correct virtual Funds automatically.

​3. Spending: You Spend From Your Fund
​Now it's August, and you buy a 600 flight on your credit card. You categorize this transaction as "Travel: Holiday."
​More magic: The app sees the "Holiday" category and instantly checks its linked Fund.
​Let's say you've saved for 5 months, so your "Holiday Fund" has 500 in it.
​The app automatically uses the Fund to cover the expense. The "Holiday Fund" balance is drawn down by 500 (from 500 to 0).
​This solves your "negative pot" request (Request 2): The flight was 600, but your Fund only had 500. The app uses the 500, and the remaining 100 simply shows up as a "Holiday" expense in your August budget.
​The result: Your August budget is not destroyed by a massive 600 expense. It only shows the 100 you overspent, which is exactly the real-world outcome you wanted to track.

​4. How This Solves Your Last Request
​Request 3 (Label account as non-net-worth): You don't need this workaround anymore! The reason you wanted this was to "spend" money into a sinking fund account without it really leaving your net worth, but while having it leave your budget.

​With the "Funds" system, the money stays in your real "Savings Account," where it correctly counts toward your net worth (it's still your cash, after all). The "Funds" feature just removes it from your available budget, which was your true goal all along.

​This "Virtual Fund" system directly models the envelope budgeting you're doing, lets you split your savings into "pots," and handles both saving and spending exactly as you've described.

YNAB handles it the same way and has the concept of sinking funds

[jjmata]

How much of this could be accomplished through smart use of tags? They are currently under-utilized and I feel that category is orthogonal to the use case described here.

A lot of what I read above in my old Quicken workflow was accomplished via tags usage (and better reporting, which we would need to build here).

[FrankPudding]

Could you elaborate a bit more? I haven't used tags yet because I only thought of them as extra categorisation options so I'm not really sure how they could solve this use case

[jjmata]

I get the sense that what you are trying to do would basically amount to "another ontology to categorize things by" which is easily done by applying tags. Because we don't have good reporting support this is actually quite limited and I just realized that the main thing you mention is splits, which I've used heavily in Quicken and are not available here yet.

[FrankPudding]

So I've had a look at tags and I think my title is actually a bit misleading. What I really want to do is transfer money to a savings account for the purpose of a future purchase (e.g. a holiday or car service) and have it count as spending at the moment of transfer to the savings account rather than the moment of purchase. That way I can consistently "spend" £100 a month on a holiday into a savings account and not have it count as a £1000 expense when I actually pay for the holiday