Do you count returns as income on budget?

[Wendy99]

Ok so this pay period I'm doing a budget and so far its working great!! Just curious .. we had to make a return tonight (it was a gift) and we were given a $28 gift card. We purchased a couple bike helmets for the kids with the money. Do I add the gift card to my income and then put the expenses of the helmets on my budget ... and there is $6 left on the gift card .. how do I show that .. i mean its a gift card ... Would I even put that on my budget to show my true purchases etc ?

[elphie]

I wouldn't count gift returns in my budget... If you had kept the original gift it would not make an appearance in your budget and IMHO the bike helmets are a gift, even if not the original one given. I wouldn't count the six dollars either but if you make a purchase that exceeds the six dollars then the amount above that will have to come from a line in your budget.

If I made a return of something that I had purchased I would put it back into my budget in the same place it was orginally taken out with a special note. HTH!

[Greebo]

Agree with Elphie. Just use the gift card and consider it like a $6.00 coupon.

[Momto2Boyz]

We track just about every penny spent in our house, so I keep the incoming and outgoing sections even. If they end up lopsided, then I know something is wrong!

I guess it all depends on if you want to track what you spend on the gift card. For me, we have a category of misc. income for extras on our budget. Any extra money that comes in goes there. The only time I've added a gift card in, is when we used it for groceries and I wanted to put it towards my grocery money. So since I put it in the expense side, I had to put the gift card under misc on the income side.

[monkeywrangler71]

I track gift cards the same way as any account. Returns are normally put in as negative expenditures not income, but in this case I'd put it under misc income (actually 'gifts' in mine) because you didn't make the original purchase.

[Wendy99]

Thank you! We did it as Elphie suggested because we didnt make the original purchase and it would have been considered a gift anyway. Makes sense to me

[FrugalMomof3]

I wouldnt use any gift cards as income nor would I add it to the budget, it's not everyday you get one of these nor every month, I would assume so it shouldnt be counted. JMHO.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I'd put it as a miscellaneous expense/income amount and make a note next to it. Our budget is like this:

March 6 2009 Miscellaneous Tisha's Chequing $28 Gift Card (from return)
March 6 2009 Tisha's Chequing Miscellaneous $20 Kids' Helmets