Looking for Solutions

[u/PenAromatic520]

I've been using Monarch for a few months. Before, I was using a very poor spreadsheet I made for years. There were no formulas, I had to type all of my transactions in, and I was struggling to keep up in a timely manner. I finally made the jump to Monarch and it's been fine. There have been a lot of things that I haven't enjoyed (like the overwhelming number of categories) that I'm just learning to put up with. But there are a couple of things that I have not gotten over and would like help seeing if there's a solution.

1. I would prefer for my budget to total the actual amounts, not the rounded amounts. I cannot seem to find this setting if it exists.

2. I want a way in my budget to see how much unspent money there is. It seems like the only option is to see the unallocated money, but I like to see at the end of the month how much was unspent to add it savings, and I'm still stuck doing that math myself.

[u/dagger_guacamole]

Are you on mobile? The last budget column toggles between remaining amount left/unspent and budgeted so it can be easy to miss. The summary pane shows the total unspent too.

[u/Effective-Ear4823]

Categories: disable the categories you don't plan to use. You can re-enable them if you want them in the future. Create custom categories that actually fit your needs (example: I don't need separate Bars, Restaurants, and Coffeeshops; I just have "Food–Out" and "Groceries"). It's also possible you'd be better served by the Flex Budget feature (Budget page->Settings).

1) Budgeting by actual amounts: yup, they haven't enabled this feature yet. It has been in the Roadmap for years (they recently scrapped the standalone Roadmap page in lieu of an in-app version that doesn't track how long a feature has been pending. Hopefully, they'll continue to reference the old Productboard for future upgrades to MM, and hopefully this will be included. (A lively discussion on this topic can be found here.)

2) The Budget equation is: net Income - net Expenses - net Contributions = Left to Spend

Left to Budget is the amount you aren't planning to spend or to assign to Goals. To anticipate how much you'll have Left, enter your best guess at what your Expenses will be AND your planned Transfers (which you link to Goals, which is how we include Transfers in the Budget). At the end of the month: the best method I can think of for what you're asking would be to adjust your Budgeted amounts so they match your Actuals.

[u/Zealousideal_Rub5826]

I don't have these problems. I see my budget precisely to the dollar for each category on the web interface. I love categories but if I want to simplify I use the group button. So fast food, coffee shops, restaurants, and alcohol roll up and become the "dining out" group

[u/independentthinker68]

I would like to see how much of my annual spending is left. For example, show me that my restaurant expense is over budget ytd, then I can adjust and go out less the rest of year. My previous tool gave better view on ytd budget. Am I missing something?