Hi Adrien,
From reviewing the code, I still believe the (b)udget transactions
system works better. The current code calculates all
Reconciled/Cleared/Unreconciled balances on the fly, and it'll be pretty
easy to add one for Budget balances. If I'm right, a book with large
number of transactions over years will require perhaps 20 (b)udget
transactions per year, which will hardly be straining the datafile or
the code.
It is also compatible with the suggestion for "manually triggered SX" or
"transaction templates".
The only feature that the envelope system doesn't support is an 'expiry
date' for the budget -- some people may prefer monthly/quarterly/annual
budgets, and so far I can't think how this would work. The register
would really just need color coding to identify 'balance too close to
budget' situations.
Try opening a register and see View > Filter by... > Status you'll see
all 5 statuses are ticked. If by default the suggested "b" transactions
are disabled then the average user will never see them.
My suggestion also obviates the need for the shadow accounts as your
recommendation.
IMHO Using a separate kvp system will lead to performance issues similar
to current Budget on Windows.
I'm rather tempted to hack the code to calculate the budgeted amounts by
abusing the current (v)oid transactions UI, and it seems very doable :-o
Chris
On 01/02/18 22:05, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
On Jan 31, 2018, at 2:48 PM, Phil Longstaff <phil.longst...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 11:35 AM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.montele...@gmail.com
<mailto:adrien.montele...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Jan 31, 2018, at 10:09 AM, Christopher Lam <christopher....@gmail.com
<mailto:christopher....@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Matt- I thought this should move to the devel list, because of technical
details, and this discussion will be very speculative.
I had a thought about how envelope budgeting could work: "divide your paycheck into
separate envelopes for different purposes".
A solution: *Create another type of transaction.*
There's already u(n)reconciled, (c)leared, (y)reconciled, (v)oid transactions.
And (f)rozen I believe is unused. Let's create a new type - (b)udget. But the
balances are handled differently.
It would require some UI and calculations changes --
1. The account budget balance is always maintained similarly to
Running/Reconciled/Cleared Balances. But it would count all previous
split-values *and* the (b)udget split amounts. However the budget running
balance is not shown in the default register. This means, existing
balances/register are unchanged.
Having transactions in an account register that don’t affect the balance is
going to be very problematic. I think this would really confuse users.
I would think budget levels for each expense account could be exposed in the
properties/preferences for each one.
That's basically how it's done now. It uses the kvp (key-value pair) mechanism
and each account has a kvp per budget per period with the budget amount.
But I see they aren’t exposed in the Account Edit window. The only way to see
what was budgeted is to open the budget module, or to see what’s left is to run
a budget report. And even that part is limited as it’s only a all-or-nothing
figure for the year, not year-to-date.
Regards,
Adrien
The allocation of budget money would have to be handled with a special dialog
on demand, or as part of an income/asset account preferences with
percentages/formulas. (essentially a template transaction that fires when
entries are made in that account)
We already have a budgeting mechanism to set how much we *want* to spend on a
particular expense.
What we’re discussing here is a way to ‘save up’ funds received for each of
those expenses.
If I understand correctly, the budget module uses hidden accounts to keep track
of everything. I would think these same accounts, or other hidden accounts
paired with them, could do the job.
This is incorrect. It uses kvp (key-value pair) structures attached to each
account.
Phil
Thanks for clearing that up. Certainly, that seems the more sane route. I would
think another set of kvp could be implemented to handle the envelope system
then. One set to hold the amount already allocated and another to hold the
allocation formula. The original budget pair could be used as the goal.
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