[Bug]: cleanup local groups not working for income categories

[yauyenching]

Verified issue does not already exist?

• I have searched and found no existing issue
• I will be providing steps how to reproduce the bug (in most cases this will also mean uploading a demo budget file)

What happened?

Hello, when using income categories as sources for End of Month cleanup, I find that it budgets all income funds, rather than just the income categories I defined with #cleanup source.

Steps to reproduce

1. Have remaining funds to be budgeted across different income categories
2. Define one income category with #cleanup source
3. Define another budget category with #cleanup sink
4. Run End of Month cleanup
5. Observe all remaining funds budgeted disappeared, not just funds from income category with #cleanup source

Thanks so much in advance!

Where are you hosting Actual?

Pikapods

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

Desktop application

Operating System

Windows 11

[youngcw]

Im confused on why you would be trying to use the cleanup script for income categories. Those categories don't use "to budget" funds.

Are you using the tracking budget? If so there isn't much reason to use the cleanup script in the first place since the cleanup is meant to approximate the tracking budget inside an envelope budget.

[youngcw]

Lacking info. Closing

[yauyenching]

@youngcw hi! here to provide more info on my use case! i often get interest/cashback/misc income credit in the middle/end of the month, and i'd love to automate allocating whatever in these categories into my savings + vacation fund. i realized i could do the same with templates -- but using "#template 50% of Cashback" x3 is tedious (3 different income categories: Interest, Cashback, Income (Misc)) and using "#template remainder" also wouldn't work for me considering that I like to manually allocate the majority of my main income.

[youngcw]

Have you looked into the end of month cleanup? It probably could do this for you all at once at the end of the month. Its part of the template feature, but is used a little differently

[yauyenching]

yes i'd like to use end of month cleanup! but like I mentioned in the above bug, it doesn't work very well for income categories. i tried it again just now, and it cleaned up from ALL my income categories (including my 'Paycheck' category that I had yet to budget the funds from and does not have #cleanup source defined, rather than just the 3 income categories i had written #cleanup source in.

[youngcw]

Hah, thats right! I forgot.

Can you just let the funds sit in the to budget and let end of month cleanup pull from there instead of trying to pull directly from income? Since you dont budget income, the end of month cleanup doesn't have anything to grab from when added to the income category. It does however pull from the to budget and the income is dumped into the to budget already.

So you could just have a regular #cleanup sink in the categories that you want to put the extra late income go into. (and add weights to them as desired)

[yauyenching]

ah, so you're saying i should budget all my main income first and then let #cleanup sink do as desired? makes sense! it may not work the best for my use case since i tend to get my Paycheck and savings account interest around the same time... I might stick to #template 50% of ... -- but i greatly appreciate you engaging with me on this! 😄

[youngcw]

The templates work really well if you are using the month ahead process. I use the #template X% of prev <income cat> templates for things and other general templates. That way I know exactly the funds Im working with right from the get go.

That said, they don't work as well if you are trying to use new funds in the middle of the month. Using template priorities can help where you can re-run the templates and build up budgets as funds are available.

I wrote this up a while back about my template process. Maybe it will have something useful to you if you haven't read it already https://actualbudget.org/blog/2023-12-15-automate-your-budget-with-goal-templates

[yauyenching]

that's a great read! 💯 thanks for linking it -- and again really appreciate your responsiveness on my various issues (lol)! migrated from YNAB4 and i really love Actual's Budget open-source nature with the capacity for complex budgets. looking forward to maybe contributing someday! 🤗