FAQ & troubleshooting
FAQ & troubleshooting: An IOU I marked as settled came back after reload: Why is my reconciliation drift not zero?
An IOU I marked as settled came back after reload
This was a known bug and is now fixed: the UI only confirms success if the database actually updated. If it still happens, take note of the transaction id and check whether the row is reachable for your user (RLS / scope).
Why is my reconciliation drift not zero?
Drift means the sum of account balances doesn’t match the sum of savings buckets + unswept money. Usual causes: a transfer recorded on only one side, a transaction in a savings category that wasn’t swept, or a category mis-typed as savings. Walk back through recent transactions in the affected accounts.
Where do skipped recurring occurrences go?
Nowhere — they are simply not posted. The recurring rule continues with the next scheduled date. You can always post an occurrence later from the Upcoming card.
Do reallocations affect a category’s monthly budget?
No. A reallocation only moves money between savings category balances (their running totals). The monthly envelope view (Envelopes / budget summary) is computed purely from real transactions rows — it ignores category_reallocations entirely.
What this means in practice:
- Moving CHF 100 from Holiday Savings → Emergency Fund changes both savings balances. No monthly envelope is touched.
- Closing a scope inserts a reallocation from the funding category → the scope’s own category. For that reallocation to actually move a balance, the funding category must be a savings category (running balance). If the funding category is a regular monthly envelope, the reallocation row is still written, but the funding envelope’s spent this month total will not change — the original transactions you booked during the scope still hit whichever categories you picked at booking time.
- Rule of thumb: treat scopes as a savings → savings movement. Fund them from a savings envelope (e.g. Fun Money Pot, Travel Pot), and the scope’s own category will receive the final reallocated total.
Could reallocations be made to affect monthly budgets too?
Technically yes, but it would change the meaning of an envelope. Today an envelope answers “how much did I actually spend in this category this month?” — purely from transactions, which keeps it auditable against a bank statement.
If reallocations were folded in, an envelope would instead answer “how much budget did this category end up with after manual adjustments?” That introduces three side-effects to weigh:
- Double counting risk. A scope close already redistributes via a reallocation; if envelopes also reacted to it, the same CHF would appear twice in reports unless every aggregation explicitly subtracts the reallocation leg.
- Historical drift. Editing a reallocation would silently rewrite past months’ budget figures.
- Insights & projection. Trends, projections and the budget-balance card would all need to choose between cash-flow truth (transactions only) and planned-vs-adjusted truth (transactions + reallocations).
For now Cashflow deliberately keeps the two layers separate: transactions drive monthly envelopes, reallocations drive savings balances and scope closing.