If you’ve closed an account, you may want to end its associated budgets, or move them over to a new account. This guide walks you through your options.
If you have closed an account that was connected to a feed, we cover how to unlink the feed and zero the balance in our Dealing with a closed bank account guide. For advice on managing the budgets that were associated with this account, read on!
If you need help with managing a replacement credit or debit card account, see: Dealing with a replacement credit or debit card
Managing budgets for closed accounts
If you’ve closed an account that had budgets assigned to it, those budgets will remain assigned to the closed account in PocketSmith, impacting that account’s forecast after its ‘closed’ date. There are a few options for managing these budgets, depending on whether you’d like to keep them active.
Options for keeping the budgets active
If you’d like to move the budgets from your closed account to a new account, you can:
- Edit each budget individually, assigning it to a new account from a specific date
- Or, move the scenario containing the budgets to a new account’s forecast (including past budgets)
Option for ending the budgets
If you don’t wish to keep the budgets from your now closed account active, you can:
- Add end dates to each budget
Read on to learn more about each option.
Assign each budget to a new account from a specific date
This option may be suitable if you don’t have many budgets to update, or if you want to end some budgets while retaining others. If you’d like to assign each budget to a new account from a specific date, follow the steps below:
- Head to the Calendar, and isolate the closed account
- Navigate to the date you want the budget to switch over to the new account, then click the budget event. This will open the budget edit form.
- Under ‘Which account’s forecast is this budget for?’, select the new account you want to assign the budget to. Then, click SAVE
- When confirming changes, select the option This and future budget events, then click CONFIRM CHANGES
- Repeat these step for all budgets you’d like to change over
Move scenario to a new account
This option may suit you if you’ve closed a bank account but have opened a replacement account and want to move all budgets to the new account. For example, if you’ve switched banks. Each account in PocketSmith has an account and a primary scenario. The ‘account’ holds the balance and transaction information, while the ‘scenario’ holds all of the budgets to generate a forecast for the account. As such, you can move the scenario to assign all budgets associated with the closed account to a new account.
Alert
This option moves all budgets associated with the closed account, including past events, to the new account. This means the budgets will affect the new account’s forecast from their start date, which may result in an inaccurate past forecast, as it may predate the start date of the account. If desired, you can reset the forecast on past dates so that it matches the actual balance of the account.
Step one: Create a new primary scenario for the closed account First, create a new primary scenario for the old account, as it’s not possible to move a primary scenario to another account
- Head to Organize Accounts & Scenarios (Manage > Organize Accounts & Scenarios).
- Hover over Manage on the closed account and select Add scenario.
- Enter a 'dummy' name, such as 'Placeholder'. Then, click Save settings.
- Hover over manage, for this same account and select edit.
- Using the drop-down, change the primary scenario to the ‘Placeholder’ scenario you just created, and hit SAVE This will mean the original scenario (that contains all your budgets) is no longer 'locked' to your old account as the Primary Scenario.
Step two: Move the scenario from the closed account to the new account
Drag and drop the scenario containing the budgets from the closed accounts to the new account.
Step three: Tidying up (optional)
If the new account did not yet have budgets assigned to it’s original primary scenario, you may like to tidy up and remove it from the account. This helps to avoid confusion between scenarios when managing the account on the calendar, or when assigning new budgets to the account.
- Change the scenario containing the budgets to the primary scenario for the new account
- Delete the original ‘primary’ scenario for your new account
Adding end dates to each budget
If you don’t want to keep using the budgets from your closed account, you can add end dates to each budget for your closed account.
- Head to the Calendar, and isolate the closed account in the account selection panel.
- Click on a budget event to open the budget edit form
- Enter an end date for the budget, and click UPDATE
- When confirming how you'd like the changes to apply, select 'All budget events in this series', then click CONFIRM CHANGES
- Repeat this step for each budget you’d like to end.
Note
The end date will not be included in the budget's repeating period.
So, if you want a repeating budget to have its last budget on a particular day, select an end date after the last budget event's date and before the next budget event.
Example: I have a transfer budget for my loan repayment that repeats monthly on the 1st of each month. I want this to end on 1 December 2026, as it will be paid off.
So I select an end date of 2 December 2026 to include the last budget event on 1 December 2026.