Budget report

[Colin Law]

2009/8/4 Chris Shoemaker <c.shoemaker at cox.net>:
> On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 11:43:32PM -0400, Forest Bond wrote:
>> Hi Phil,
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 12:02:07PM -0400, Phil Longstaff wrote:
>> > The budget report is my current itch, so I've been upgrading it.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> I'd like to see the budget reporting improved as much as anyone else, and I'm
>> glad that you are looking at it.  However, the semantics of budget data have not
>> been clearly established, as I highlighted in a comment on bug #570895:
>>
>>   My current understanding of budget numbers is that if A and B are expense
>>   accounts and B is a child account of A and both A and B have numbers entered
>>   for a given period in the budget, the total expenses for that period is
>>   A[period] + B[period].  In other words, A[period] doesn't *override*
>>   B[period].  This is how things are handled in BIS, anyway.  I don't think the
>>   correct behavior is documented anywhere.  This may be part of a larger design
>>   discussion, so feel free to move it to the ML if you think it is appropriate.
>>
>> I'd really like to see some agreement on this before the budget reports get much
>> further.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> What you describe is correct.  It's important to remember that:
>  a. A and B may use different currencies.
>  b. Budget values for an account are always in the same currency as the account.
>  c. There *may* be no reasonable way to convert from one currency to the other.
>

Where parent and children accounts are in the same currency a useful
feature (for me at least) would be to show the budgeted, actual and
diff values for the sum of parent + children as well as the individual
parent and children account values.

Colin Law