What users complain about in Goodbudget Budget Planner

Envelopes LOST!

Updated the app and all my envelopes got deleted!

Originally worked, but now is busted

I’ve been using this app and product for years. At some point in the last 2-3 years they have destroyed the reconciliation process. They indicated the implemented a feature some users wanted that is causing this. It took my hours and hours to finally figure out what the heck was going on with a bank I was using… DUE to the fact that GB screwed up the normal process for reconciliation and downloading “cleared” transactions. My bank was screwing customers by hiding deposits and refunds in statements and downloads. With proper reconciliation, which I finally had to do MANUALLY over 8 months of data to figure out where the errors were being injected. Never trust a bank, and never trust a broken reconciliation process. No longer a user…

No iPad Support

This app is old and near unusable if like me you use an iPad in the Magic Keyboard. This program looks like it may possibly have some cool features, but if they are too cumbersome to get to, do these features really matter?

App not syncing

App and desktop are not correctly syncing across multiple devices, please fix.

dont know how this is a 5 star app

ashamed to say I wasted about an hour trying to make a budget. this application cant even do basic math. seems the math got worse when i added more envelopes. youre better off putting your budget in a note, I would never pay a monthly sub for this.

Ridiculously Complicated

It is more complicated than it needs to be I’m not going to be on for something that is forcing me to budget weekly monthly bi monthly tri yearly

Buggy

I’m assuming there was an update to the app recently because now I cannot enter in my debt payments. Please fix.

Scam

Paid for the subscription and my bank won’t even link. If you have Family Security don’t waste your time purchasing. The free version is also entirely wrong.

Not paying for everything

It would be better if they charged for the service not the envelope dumb

Better ones out there

This has become one of the most ineffective ways to track our budget. While the idea seems great it’s finicky and glitchy. Sometimes you have to log onto the site to do stuff when it should all be handled with the app. Because it requires the site it doesn’t always sync and there are connection issues when out and about trying to record expenses.

No free syncing

You have to pay for a subscription to link / auto sync bank accounts. Otherwise you’re manually inputting every transaction.

Bug

There is a bug. If you don’t have envelopes but just income, the app crashes when you click on the income.

Potential

I really like how straight-forward the app is, however, the initial setup is insane. My credit cards unlink as soon as I select "I'm paying it off" instead of "pay in full each month" and the lightning bolt goes away. When I set this up halfway through the month it's impossible to match what's been paid already.

It’s not good

I’ve used a lot of budget apps and this app really is not good. I can’t even figure out how to fill envelopes from the app. The how-to videos only show it done from desktop—what? Are you kidding me! OMG! No. I don’t want to use my laptop—that’s ridiculous! No. I don’t want to use a tiny screen in Safari because your app software can’t do what should be a simple task.—ridiculous! No. I don’t want to auto-fill!—that would defeat the whole purpose of a budget. It should evolve every month because every month your income and spending changes.—ridiculous! There is NO support to be found other than forum, what? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe you have any good reviews? You don’t even deserve a single star.

Not user friendly unless you are debt free already

Paid for it and had to switch to something else because so many issues trying to sink with accounts that have a balance. Horrible interface

Use to love but can’t anymore

I use to love this app. I used it for years for budgeting. However, I recently got a new phone and there for the newer version of the app? It’s horrible now. It doesn’t feel user friendly anymore. At first I thought I just needed to get use to the new but it’s been a couple months and I find myself not tracking my budget because I don’t want to fight with the app. I am know on the hunt for better one.

Used to be good

Been a long standing user. App was always buggy, but now I just downloaded latest versionand my envelopes and transactions were wiped out. It’s no longer synching. Trash. Not happy!

Not user friendly

There is no intro to the app. It’s not user friendly. Has a rudimentary interface. I paid for premium so that I could sync my bank account and see transactions however it looks like a jumbled hot mess. I knew within the same day this was absolutely it going to work for me, but there is no option for a refund on the Apple support site. So it was a complete waste of time and money. I’m excited to cancel my subscription and delete the app and try something else after doing some more research.

Missing a key feature

While this app is really good at dividing up how much to allocate toward each bill or “envelope”, one key feature that would help this app meet my needs is the ability to rank each bill according to priority. Like a 4 tier system because there’s an average of 4 weeks per month. The bills in tier 1 are highest priority and the app can calculate how much to set aside to pay the tier 1 bills by their due date. Tiers 2-4 can be considered respectively once each tier before it has been accounted for. This method frees up funds per week towards something else. An alternative is to implement the ability to disable certain bills so that only active ones are budgeted. This is a manual version of the tier idea that would just require going in weekly and enabling/ disabling bills as needed. Can be useful if a bill has been paid for the month already (maybe the user got a bonus at work or received a gift or something) they’ll have the option of getting ahead on the bill or reallocating those funds elsewhere. Right now, the only way to do anything similar is to delete the entire envelope, which is not ideal. I’m not sure if it’s common for people to budget for every single bill, every week, all throughout the month, with every check. But if there are people that, for example, budget on the 3rd week of this month for bills due in the 1st week of next month, in a staggered fashion, this feature would LITERALLY be a life saver. I really hope something like this could be implemented because I like this app.

Good app but confusing

I used this app for a year but finally had to switch due to setup issues. I'm someone who wants to manually input every transaction so I know exactly where my money is going. if bank account integration is what you're looking for this is not the review for you. Pros: I love how the app remembers how certain transactions belong to certain categories. That saves a lot of entry time. it's pretty easy to dive into expenses per envelope or look at the pie chart for the current month or past month (more than 1 month previous requires you to input specific dates.) Cons: the app is primarily set up by expense envelopes. They're "filled" every month with your budgeted amount and rollover excess or unspent dollars. I've never loved this feature but have been able to deal with it until today. I tried making a new budget for this year and for the life of me cannot figure out how to make each month reset with no rollover. I looked through my categories after I tried to change my budget and all of my expenses were completely wrong and didnt add up to the transactions within the folder. This could easily be user error on my part but if I'm not easily able to change monthly budgets with accurate expense tracking then I'm not able to use this app.