If you have recurring bills or expenses that you pay quarterly, semi-annually or annually that you need to save up for throughout the year, we recommend creating Funds for those items. This helps ensure you’re prepared when those expenses come around. The steps to create a Fund are outlined at this link:
How to Use Funds
When your Fund is created in EveryDollar with the Current Balance already set, and you want to add money to it, you will simply update the Planned column to add or deposit to it. The "Planned" column acts as the deposit amount for funds. For example, if you are adding $100 to your Auto Insurance Fund (or any other fund you create), you will add $100 to the "Planned" column for the fund, and that's it!
You will not add a positive transaction at all. As long as your balance and "Planned" amounts are correct, your numbers should all line up by the end of the month.
You can delete any transfer transactions that may come through from your bank account if you transfer money from one account to another, as you will not need those.
If your Carryover Balance is not correct for a Fund, you can manually adjust the Current Balance field.
To do this on everydollar.com: click the Fund, then click "Fund Details" on the right side of the screen.
To do this on the mobile app: tap the Fund line, then tap "Fund" in the middle of the next screen.
For the most part, you will mainly be adding transactions to Fund items when you are spending money from the funds, and so you will mostly be adding expense transactions to the fund. When you do this, the "Remaining" column will decrease, and the "Spent" column will increase for the fund.
Pro Tip: If you have bills or expenses that you pay every other month, or once or twice per year, and you do not need to save for them throughout the year, then we would recommend just making them a regular budget item (not a Fund) and setting the Planned column amount to $0 if you are in a month where you do not have to pay the bill. Then just update the Planned column amount when you are in a month when you do have to pay the bill.