• How do budgeting accounts withdrawing from savings count towards the limit?

New to bunq, and not sure if i'm overlooking any features or details right now.

I would like to have several budgeting sub-accounts that all fill up their budget from my savings account at the first of the month. This seems like an obvious use case for the "Easy Budgeting" feature… but i'm not sure if it is even possible? Are these withdrawals are treated as separate withdrawals so would run into my monthly withdrawal limit if multiple budgeting accounts are set up this way? Or will bunq group them together as one withdrawal that is distributed towards the different savings accounts?

Alternatively, is there a smarter way of doing this? I have thought about making an intermediate account that gets a monthly payout from the savings account and then distributes it to the budget account… however, that is not possible due to multiple reasons:

  • It seems like that intermediate account would need to be an "Easy Budget" account since those are the only accounts that can get automated monthly transfers from a savings account.
  • Budget accoutns can't draw their budget from another budget account.
  • So i would have to schedule transfers myself… which means i can't use most features of a budgeting account on the other accounts, they can't just top up as much as needed and they also can't transfer the remainder of the budget at the end of the month.

I realize that there's also a feature to divide up your salary in smart ways. However, i'm not sure how bunq even recognizes salary payment. I'm a freelancer, i don't get a salary, i just pay out funds from my business bank account.

So… how do i do this? Can i just have a bunch of "Easy budget" accounts all drawing from the savings on the same day of the month, or is there some smarter way of doing this?

    @New-Ivory-Ewe-349325650#284100 I'm not a 100% sure, but my guess is that filling you budgets from a savings account counts towards the limit of two withdrawals a month.

    The solution: don't fill your budgets from a savings account, but from a regular sub-account! To me it makes no sense to first add the money to a savings account, and then withdraw it to use for payments. Savings are for saving 🤷🏼‍♂️

    I don't think the Auto split feature will work for you as a freelancer. It only works if you regularly get your salary from the same company.

      Hey @New-Ivory-Ewe-349325650#284100, you found the limits of the current designs.
      , at least some of them.

      I think you should know this:

      1. A regular sub account can have the budgeting feature enabled or disabled via its settings.
      2. Adding a budgeting sub account is just a regular sub account with this feature enabled in its setting as far as I know.
      3. (You can turn a savings sub account into a regular one. You cannot turn a regular sub account into a savings account (yet).)
      4. Auto sort is limited in a similar way as budget top up. It does not do this intelligently. You cannot configure to top up or sort on the current state of its destination. (Like you describe!)
      5. However, you can use auto sort on most incoming payments. Open a transaction of your business account and tell me if you see auto-sort.
      6. Auto-sort will not help you as you will be forced to configure exact amounts or percentages, but not mixed and no conditional intelligence.
      7. Auto-sort integrates with Easy budgeting when choosing “from my Salary”.
      8. If you choose Easy-budgeting\“monthly”, you can choose any other subaccount.

      So… only use features that bring you joy and save you time.

      You stated that you want your budgets to be filled monthly from your savings account. You should not do that. You will go over your monthly limit. I am assuming this will be an acceptable alternative for you:

      Use an inbox sub for income, could be “main”.
      Divide to savings and “Next month” sub (or whatever name). The latter is total of all budgets. Use periodic payments or manual.
      Charge / fill up your budgets from Next Month with easy budgeting or periodic transfer.

      Does this help?
      9.-The power of easy budgeting in my opinion is not the charging of sub accounts per se (because it is functionally incomplete) but the linked card’s Auto-select feature that automatically detects in-physical shop payments to the proper sub-account via transfer categories. (Sorry for the info overload, it’s a lot.)

        Write a Reply...