Budget questions. (wordy)

[Chris Shoemaker]

[Tim, this is just a quick reply.]

On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 11:38:55PM -0500, Tim Wunder wrote:
> Hi, 
> I recently developed a paper personal expense budget. It involved reviewing 
> past expenses utilizing gnucash 1.8.11 reports, some cumulative 
> categorization, and a monthly estimate of expenditures, including those 
> expenditures that do not occur monthly.
> I figured this was as good a time as any to give the new budgeting code in 
> G2/trunk a little test drive.
> I'm using SVN sources from 11/7/2005
> $ svn info|grep Rev
> Revision: 11877
> Last Changed Rev: 11877
> 
> So... to start...
> The first thing I eventually found was under the File menu: File-Open-Open 
> Budget. I kinda expected that access to the budget would be under Actions 
> (cuz that's where the SX stuff is), or Tools (cuz budgeting is kinda like a 
> tool), but I eventually found it under File.
> 
> So I opened a budget. The screen displays a duplicate of my account tree, that 
> was good to see. And there were three very obvious buttons:
> Budget Options -- which I presumed to be self explanatory.
> Estimate Budget -- which I thought I understood to be a tool for, well, 
> estimating a budget.
> Delete Budget -- again, very obvious purpose for that button.
> 
> I decided to try each of the buttons out to see what they did.
> Budget Options:
> This button presents me with a window with two tabs, "Budget" and "Budget 
> View". 
> 
> Under the "Budget", I'm presented with settings where I can Name the budget, 
> and give it a description. OK, I guess that's useful. I assume you'll be able 
> to create and maintain several budgets, and it'd be good to name them, and 
> describe them.
> 
> It also presents what I guess are the options for Budget Periods. The dialog 
> here is a little unlear, but intuitive enough, I suppose. Might wanna throw 
> in a separator between the budget name and description section at the top, 
> and the Period section of the Budget Options or lay it out in the same way as 
> the GnuCash Preferences dialog -- tabs on the left, sections separated by 
> titles in bold. But it was easy enough to figure out. 
> 
> The Periods default to Every 1 month(s), beginning today. And it's obvious 
> enough to figure out how to change that. So I change mine to be the beginning 
> of the month rather than today's date.
> 
> There's a check box for "same week & day" but I have no idea what it's for.
> And finally a Number of periods setting that defaults to 12. Good, an annual 
> budget. I think I'm OK so far.
> 
> Under the "Budget View" tab, I'm given a list of Account Types to Show. Nice. 
> I like that. I proceed to Ctrl-Click to select multiple Account Types because 
> I'm looking to just budget Expenses (and Liabilities). So I proceed to select 
> Liability and Expense account types, and click OK. I'm then presented with a 
> subset of my account tree, listing only the Expense and Liability accounts.
> 
> This is looking pretty good so far. On to the next button, the Estimate 
> Button. And this is where I'm sure I don't understand what's supposed to 
> happen. The tooltip says the button is used to "Estimate a value for the 
> selected cells." OK, I guess that makes sense. I decided to select an account 
> I wanted to budget and give the button a try.
> 
> First on the list was a Liabilities:Credit Cards:Citi Mastercard, I 
> highlighted it, and selected the Estimate Budget button. It proceeded to fill 
> in an amount of -200.00 for the month of November 2005. OK. that makes sense, 
> I guess, $200.00 is what I paid on the Citi Mastercard this month. So I guess 
> that's where it's getting the number. I then selected December 2005 and 
> clicked the button again. Nothing happened. I was expecting that it'd 
> estimate the value to be the same as the previous month, or maybe the value 
> from the same month a year ago (or 12 periods ago, since I did configure the 
> options for monthly budget period and 12 periods to budget).
> 
> Well, I figured I just didn't understand what the Estimate button was suposed 
> to do, so I carried on with trying to enter a budget.
> Hmmm... Now, why did it only list my Citi Mastercard? I have other Credit 
> Cards... OK, I see, There's a Credit Card account type that my other Credit 
> Cards are using. No problem, I went to Budget Options, and added Credit Cards 
> to the list of accounts to view, and my other credit cards displayed. I 
> selected another for budgeting, my Bank of America Visa card. I highlighted 
> it, and clicked the Estimate button. Nothing happened. So now I'm starting to 
> think that maybe my expectations of what the Estimate Budget button is going 
> to do and what it is, in fact, designed to do are different things.
> 
> So this is where I stop testing to seek clarification. How's this Estimate 
> thing supposed to work? 
> 
> Heck, a quick overview of how the budgeting stuff is nteded to work wouldn't 
> hurt either. It'd help me in testing it out in a semi real life scenario.

Yes, this is high on my priority list.  I'll see if I can whip
something up by the end of the week, but to get you going again...
'Estimate Budget' just fills in the *actuals* for that account and
period(s).  It's not smart enough to go back to any previous time-period.

Try this.  Temporarily set the budget period to begin one year
ago, then hit estimate, then set it back to this year.  That's
equivalent to saying "let's use the last year's actuals as the
starting point for this coming year's budget."

I know it needs tooltips and "Help".  Thanks for your feedback; it
will guide what goes in those.

-chris

> 
> Regards, 
> Tim
> 
> 
> -- 
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