When a parent envelope covers overspending

If your groceries sub-envelope runs dry mid-month, you do not have to reach for a transfer and move money around by hand. A parent envelope can be allowed to top up its sub-envelopes for you, right at the moment you save the transaction that pushed one over.

TL;DR

Turn on Fund subenvelopes on a parent envelope once. After that, when you add a new expense and leave Parent covers overspending on, CentBase moves allocation from the parent down to any sub-envelope of that parent that the purchase overdraws. It is a transfer of assigned money inside your budget, not a change to your account balances, and it never spends more than the parent actually has available.

What "Fund subenvelopes" means

This setting lives on the parent envelope, the one that has sub-envelopes nested inside it. Open the parent, tap its menu, then Edit (or Envelope settings), and find Fund subenvelopes. It is an expense-envelope setting: income envelopes do not have it.

This switch is permission, nothing more. Turning it on does not move any money and does not change a single balance. It simply says "this parent is allowed to cover its sub-envelopes' overspending". Nothing acts on that permission until you turn on the cover option on a transaction.

A sub-envelope on its own can never cover anything. Only a parent gives the permission, and only for the sub-envelopes directly under it. There is one level of nesting, so a sub-envelope does not have its own sub-envelopes to cover.

The switch on a new expense

When you add a new expense, look in the Budget section of the transaction form for Parent covers overspending.

You will only see that switch when the transaction could actually use it:

• it is a new expense, not an edit and not income or a transfer, and
• at least one envelope you picked is a sub-envelope whose parent has Fund subenvelopes turned on.

If the parent has no money in it right now, the switch still appears but is turned off with a note that the parent has nothing available. Fill the parent and the option lights up.

What happens when you turn it on

When you save, CentBase checks whether the purchase pushes the sub-envelope below zero. If it does, it moves just enough assigned money from the parent to the sub-envelope to absorb the new overspend.

A few things worth knowing:

• It moves allocation, not cash. Your account balance and the amount you actually spent are unchanged. Only where the money is assigned changes.
• It caps itself at the parent's Available. It will never move more than the parent has.
• If the parent cannot cover the whole shortfall, it covers as much as it can. The sub-envelope keeps whatever is still over, and the amount shown is partial rather than complete.
• The parent ends up with less assigned, the sub-envelope with more. Ready-to-Assign does not change.

When the parent runs low

You do not have to guess whether a cover will work. If the parent cannot fund anything at the moment you open the form, the cover switch is off and the caption tells you the parent has no available funds. After you fill the parent, come back to the transaction and the cover option turns on.

If you flip the cover on and then spend the parent down somewhere else before saving, CentBase quietly drops the cover rather than moving money from an empty envelope.

Draining the parent

Covering an overspend can leave a parent at exactly zero. That is allowed, but because it is easy to do by accident, CentBase warns you first.

When a cover would empty the parent, you get a warning dialog before anything is saved, naming the parent involved. Tap Cancel to go back and adjust, or Save to continue. If you used the cover on a split and more than one parent would be emptied, a single dialog lists them all instead of stopping you once per envelope.

Splits: every envelope is checked on its own

A split transaction divides one purchase across several envelopes. When cover is on, each sub-envelope in the split is checked separately, exactly as if you were spending from it alone.

That means a single split can top up more than one sub-envelope under the same parent. When it does, the children are funded in the order they appear in the split, and each one draws from the same parent. Once the parent is used up, any remaining child gets whatever is left, or nothing, and stays over. The parent is never asked to give more than it has.

Sub-envelopes that belong to different parents are handled independently. Each parent funds only its own children, so one parent running out does not stop a different parent from covering.

Where it shows up afterwards

The cover is a real transfer, so it shows up in the ledger like one. Open the sub-envelope's allocation history and you will see an Auto-funded entry describing what happened:

• Parent covered overspending when the whole shortfall was absorbed.
• Parent covered a smaller amount of the amount needed, when the parent could only partly cover it.

The matching debit appears on the parent side of the same entry, so you can always trace where the money came from.

What it does not do

• It does not cover edits, income, or transfers. Only a new expense.
• It does not touch a transaction you save for a future date. Saving for later turns the transaction into a scheduled transaction, and scheduled transactions fire on their own without a cover. When you save for a future date, the cover switch is hidden.
• It does not cover a sub-envelope whose parent has Fund subenvelopes turned off.
• It does not cover excluded envelopes. If the child or the parent is set to exclude from budget, cover is skipped.
• It does not reach across two levels. Only a direct parent can cover its direct children.

Summary

Situation	What CentBase does
Parent has Fund subenvelopes on, new expense overspends a child	Moves assigned money from parent to child to absorb the overspend
Parent has enough	Full cover, child returns to zero available
Parent is short	Partial cover, the rest stays over
Parent would hit zero	Warning dialog first, then saves if you confirm
Split overspends two children of one parent	Both are checked, funded in split order, never more than the parent has
Cover on an edit, income, transfer, or future-dated save	Not available

Sample use cases

• A big grocery run. Groceries is a sub-envelope under Food with $10 left, and the week's shop is $25. Cover takes $15 from the Food parent and covers the whole thing, so Groceries lands at zero instead of over.
• Dining out late in the month. Dining is under the same Food parent and also over. A split that hits both Groceries and Dining is funded in order from the same Food parent, stopping when Food runs out.
• Two families of envelopes. Transport covers Fuel and Transit, Household covers Repairs. A split touching Fuel and Repairs draws from two different parents, each covering only its own child.

See also: Envelopes, Split transactions, Account and envelope settings, and Saving a transaction for a future date.