Accurately Reflect Refunds and Reimbursements in Budget

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Durel Hoover

• February 20, 2024 19:36

Currently the budget counts all cash in as income even if the cash in may be a refund or reimbursement for a purchase. This will throw off the 50/30/20 budget for users with refunds/reimbursements. The income total for that month will be inflated by the amount of refunds/reimbursments, and the spending categories will not be reduced by the refunded/reimbursed amounts.

The budget calculations should change to reflect actual category totals so that refunds/reimbursements will reduce the total value within the category they are applied.

For example, say one month I go out to dinner once with a group of friends and I cover the $300 purchase with my credit card. That transaction is automatically added to nerdwallet. I then manually record that I received $250 in cash from my friends as reimbursement, and I catorgize the transaction as dining. My actual spending in the dining category for that month should only be $50, not $300, and the $250 reimbursement should not be counted toward my income that month.

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• Official comment

  

  Victor D

  • February 22, 2024 16:35

  Hi Durel -

   

  Thanks for posting to the NerdWallet Community Forum!

   

  Your NerdWallet account should behave as you indicated. If you spend $300 on dining and and also have a $250 "cash in" transaction categorized as dining rather than income, you should have $50 in dining expenses. The $250 transaction is likely mis-categorized as "income" or an "internal transfer" if it's not registering correctly in your budget. You can make changes to any transaction that is no longer pending by selecting the transaction and clicking on "edit" (web interface) or touching the pencil icon (phone app). 

   

  Refunds and reimbursements are income, but can be placed under other categories instead of income, and will still show as "cash in". Please send us a message at support@nerdwallet.com if you need more help with this.

   

  Best regards,

  Victor

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  Lacey Anderson

  • August 02, 2024 17:24

  The spending totals are correct but the 50/30/20 calculations completely ignore these type of income when they are categorized as anything other then income. Shouldn’t the 50/30/20 calculations be based on the actual spending in each category?

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