Money in Money Out not valuable due to Transfers

Hi Sven, a noob here who joined 22seven last night. I do a lot of transfers between Cheque/Credit/Bond/Investment accounts, all of which is linked to my 22Seven profile.  So I started revisiting all my transactions the last 3 months to see how useful the graphs would be.  Turns out, because I mark all the transfers as 'transfers', my home loan repayments and investments/savings don't reflect in my budget, neither on my money in/out.  Is there a better way of doing this to make the reports more useful?  Thank you in advance

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  • Hi Adrian,

    Thanks for getting in touch with us. Since 22seven is geared towards providing insight into personal spending habits, you are 100% correct in marking any inter-account transfers as Transfer.

    However, by default, your bond & investment accounts will not appear in your Budget. The Budget page will only display data from your transactional accounts - cheque, savings & credit card accounts

    Where you are transferring funds from a current account to another linked account (like a savings account or a home-loan), you can make an argument for using either Invest-Save-Repay, Recurring or even Transfer.

    It all depends on what works best for you really and how you wish to track your spending.

    Do take note though that there may also be specific filters applied on your Transactions page which will effect how the Money Out/Money In bars display. As it stands now, the default filter on the Transactions page will display the transactions from your current Budget, so this could explain why any Transfers or transactions from your home-loan/investments are not currently displaying.

    I hope that this helps, but I have misunderstood the nature of your feedback OR if you have any further questions regarding how to best sort your data for your needs, feel free to send us an email at thesvens@22seven.com as well. We'll be happy to assist where we can.

    Thanks again for the feedback!

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  • Thanks Sven, lets make an example. Say I purchased something on my credit card for R10 000 #TransactionA

    I transfer R10 000 from my Cheque back into my Credit card at the end of the month.  On my Cheque account money will be leaving #TransactionB and on my Credit Card money will be coming in # TransactionC.

    #TransactionA would be an expense from my Credit Card point of view

    #TransactionB would be an expense from my Cheque Card point of view

    #TransactionC would be an income from my Credit Card point of view.

    So based on your response, there's an argument for tagging #TransactionB and #TransactionC as Transfer, like how I did it OR tagging #TransactionB as Invest-Save-Repay and #TransactionC as Transfer (The only other option for #TransferC is income, but I can't do this as it's money that was part of my salary that's already tagged as income)  In the latter however, both #TransactionA and #TransactionB would be leaving my portfolio, essentially double expenditure.  Won't this skew the graphs?

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  • Hi Adrian,

    This is a good example to use. The issue with the double expenditure is because both your cheque accounts and credit cards are included in your Budget page.

    I would recommend the following (although feel free to provide your feedback here):

    TransactionA - this is the actual expenditure you are making (day-to-day, exceptions, etc)

    TransactionB - this is not expenditure, but a Transfer from your cheque to your credit card to pay it off (the actual expense is on the credit card, so you are moving cash from one 'pocket' that holds your money to another 'pocket' that you are paying from)

    TransactionC - this would also be a Transfer, since it is definitely not Income (NB. Income refers to funds from outside of your own personal financial 'ecosystem'). This is simply a inter-account deposit transferred from your cheque account.

    The end result is that only the expenses you made on your credit card will be displayed your Budget. Double-counting expenditure in any given month suggests a problem.

    Of course, this thinking applies specifically to your cheque/credit card. Other situations have different nuances.

    Does this perhaps clear up the confusion, or have I muddied the waters a bit?

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  • Thanks Sven,

    Need to wrap my head around what I want out of this tool, as there as so many ways you can set it up.  One option is that I maybe remove my Bond and investment accounts because I see those as expenses from a month-to-month cash flow perspective.

    Though the Credit Card can be tricky, as the repayment is seen as expenses, but I solely use it for day-to-day transactions #ebucks.  So I cannot omit Credit Card account from my 22seven portfolio.

    Thanks for your help.  It's a nifty tool - I like :) 

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  • Hi There, I am also a bit confused as to what I should use in my personal case scenario. 

    I only use my credit card for card purchases. I barely use my cheque card. I earn better points that way.

    So what I do is just spend on my credit card and then as I need and when, I transfer cash from my cheque account into my credit card. 

    The only transactions that come off my cheque account are debit orders. 

    Should I be using Transfer or Invest-Save-Repay when "paying money back into my credit card" ?

     

    Thanks

    Nicola 

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  • Hi Nicola,

    Thanks so much for reaching out.

    In this specific scenario, it would be best to mark it as a Transfer when transferring back into your credit card. This is the way I do mine also as I use my credit card for all purchases as well :)

    I hope that helps. If you have any further questions please shout.

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  • Hi,

    Thanks - this thread has been helpful. I have one last question, can an example of an invest-save-repay transaction be detailed in a similar way to the above credit card repayment? I want to understand how an ISR payment is different from a transfer in a savings&investment sense i.e. when I move money from my current account to my savings account I understand that this should be marked as a Transfer, and not ISR because moving money to savings is not adding to 'money in'. But this is where I don't understand the I-S-R category, is it money sent to an RA or Unit trust or bond repayment deducted from salary before you receive the salary?

    Thanks!

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  • Hi Hannah,

    Invest-save-repay. We like to call this "Good spend" :) Any money being spent today that leads to bigger balance in the future, e.g. investments, retirement annuities.

    Transferring monies from your cheque to savings account can also go into Invest-save-repay. But mark the incoming transaction on the savings account as a Transfer. This way you can track only what you transferred out of your cheque account as ISP.

    Many people use 22seven in many different ways. There is no absolutely right or wrong way to use it. So if you would like to track any of your "Good spend" that goes into a savings/investments/RAs, then you can allocate it to ISR.

    Please shout if you have any further questions.

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