Stephen Cuppett wrote:
In terms of definition, a budget is a separate entity from financial
records used for comparison purposes and tracking at different intervals
through a particular time period. It's representation in GNUCash should
be no different.
I envision the program keeping track of a budget or multiple budgets (by name) separate of the defined Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue and Expense accounts comprising the actual financial data of the user.
I agree that this seems to be the right way to go. For me at least, it's much more intuitive that the budget should be outside the actual account tree and reference back to it instead of using sub/virtual accounts right in the tree. I know some people are using that method now, and I don't mean to insult them, but using sub accounts seems more like a hack than a real solution. One of the things I've always liked about Gnucash was that it accurately described my financial situation. Virtual subaccounts aren't what I really have at the bank, so that would break the description.
However, I think it would be nice if we could add a column to some of the account ledgers that relates to the budget (having multiple budgets might be tricky -- can more than one apply at the same time?). This column would tell how much money is left in the budget for that account for a given period (month, week, year). So for example, if you have $100 a month budgeted for food, your Expenses:Food account may look like this:
Date Num Description Transfer R Expense Rebate Balance Budget 1/1/03 Walmart A:Cash n $15.00 $15.00 $85.00 1/2/03 Bakery A:Cash n $9.00 $24.00 $76.00 2/1/03 Walmart A:Cash n $23.00 $47.00 $153.00
and so on. This way people could more immediately see what's left in the budget for each account without having to run a report.
> ...
Each individual budget would consist of all account types such as Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue and Expense.
Wouldn't the budget be composed of only money coming in and going out? Even if it the money going out was going to an asset like savings, I don't think it should necessairly be called an asset. It seems that's more like an outflow of money that happens to go to an Asset account.
-- Scott Minster
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