[Gnucash-changes] r13109 - gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C - Add a
first-draft of a chapter on Budgets to the guide.
Chris Shoemaker
chris at cvs.gnucash.org
Sat Feb 4 23:20:43 EST 2006
Author: chris
Date: 2006-02-04 23:20:43 -0500 (Sat, 04 Feb 2006)
New Revision: 13109
Trac: http://svn.gnucash.org/trac/changeset/13109
Added:
gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/ch_budgets.xml
Modified:
gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/Makefile.am
gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/gnucash-guide.xml
Log:
Add a first-draft of a chapter on Budgets to the guide.
Modified: gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/Makefile.am
===================================================================
--- gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/Makefile.am 2006-02-05 03:17:28 UTC (rev 13108)
+++ gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/Makefile.am 2006-02-05 04:20:43 UTC (rev 13109)
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
ch_bus_ar.xml \
ch_bus_ap.xml \
ch_bus_pay.xml \
+ ch_budgets.xml \
appendixa.xml \
appendixb.xml \
appendixc.xml
Added: gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/ch_budgets.xml
===================================================================
--- gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/ch_budgets.xml 2006-02-05 03:17:28 UTC (rev 13108)
+++ gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/ch_budgets.xml 2006-02-05 04:20:43 UTC (rev 13109)
@@ -0,0 +1,182 @@
+<!--
+ (Do not remove this comment block.)
+ Version: 1.9.0
+ Last modified: February 4th 2006
+ Maintainers:
+ Chris Shoemaker <c.shoemaker at cox.net>
+ Author:
+ Chris Shoemaker <c.shoemaker at cox.net>
+ Translators:
+ (translators put your name and email here)
+-->
+ <chapter id="chapter15">
+ <title>Budgets</title>
+ <para>
+ This chapter explains how to create and use budgets with GnuCash.
+ </para>
+ <sect1 id="budget_concepts1">
+ <title>Basic Concepts</title>
+
+ <para>A budget is a tool for estimating expected income and expenses.
+ You can use it to help you plan how you intend for your finances to
+ change over a period of time, and to examine how your actual
+ financial transactions for the period compare to your planned
+ transactions.</para>
+
+ <para>The budgeting concept is quite general, so GnuCash offers a
+budgeting tool that is both simple and flexible. You, the user, have
+to decide how complex or simple you want to make your budget. This
+guide will help you make some of those decisions.</para>
+
+ <sect2 id="budget_conceptsterms2">
+ <title>Terminology</title> <para>There are a few helpful terms listed
+ below that will be used to discuss budgeting.</para>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para><emphasis>Budget</emphasis> - A financial plan describing
+ the expected revenues and/or disbursements for a particular time
+ period</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para><emphasis>Cash Budget</emphasis> - A budget planning for
+ expected cash receipts and cash disbursements. This type of
+ budget tracks cash flow -- where your money comes from, where it
+ goes, and, of course, how much.</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+
+ <para><emphasis>Expense Budget</emphasis> - A budget chiefly for
+ planning what you spend your money on. This type of budget tracks
+ your expenses. It is typically not concerned with things like
+ appreciation or repayment of liabilities. However, it would
+ account for interest charges. For example, if you buy $100 worth
+ of groceries with your credit card, you incur an $100 expense for
+ groceries, and a $100 liability to your credit card company. When
+ you pay the credit card bill for $110, you are incurring an
+ additional interest expense of $10. An expense budget plans for
+ the transaction of buying the groceries and paying the interest,
+ but not the transaction of repaying the credit card
+ company.</para>
+
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para><emphasis>Capital Budget</emphasis> - A budget that
+ describes a plan for paying for a large future expense, often
+ through a combination of saving and borrowing money. Note:
+ Capital budgets can sometimes get quite complex because they can
+ try to answer the question "Can we afford to do such-and-such?" by
+ exploring various hypothetical scenarios that can involve
+ hypothetical accounts. </para>
+
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para><emphasis>Budget Period</emphasis> - The period of time
+ during which the plan is expected to take place. The most common
+ budget periods are annual and monthly. Sometimes, you may budget
+ for several consecutive periods at once, for convenience or for
+ finer-grained planning. For example, an annual budget may include
+ 12 monthly budget periods.</para> </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ </sect2>
+ </sect1>
+
+ <sect1 id="budget_creation1">
+ <title>Creating a Budget</title>
+ <para>Even before you begin to make a budget, it's important to
+ have given some thought to your account hierarchy. For example, if
+ you want to budget a certain amount for your electric bill and a
+ certain amount for your water bill, you can't have only an
+ Expenses:Utilities account. Your accounts must be at least as
+ specific as your budget. </para>
+
+
+ <sect2 id="budget_creation2">
+ <title>Choose Which Accounts To Budget For</title>
+ <para>The first step in creating a budget is to decide what it is
+ you want to plan for. This decision will affect which accounts
+ you include in your budget. For example, if you are only
+ interested in tracking your expenses, you may create an expense
+ budget by only entering amounts for expense accounts. On the
+ other hand, if you want to track all of your cash flow, you may
+ create a cash flow budget by entering amounts for asset,
+ liability, income and expense accounts.</para>
+
+ <para>Before you begin to create your budget, you need to make
+ two decisions: What accounts do I want to budget for? and When
+ do I want my budget to be for? You can always change your mind
+ later, after you've created a budget, but you need to start with
+ something.</para>
+
+ <tip><para>As a rule of thumb, if you mostly care about
+ <emphasis>what</emphasis> you spend your money on, you may want
+ to make an expense report. If you're also concerned about having
+ enough money in the right places at the right times, you may want
+ to use a cash-flow budget.</para></tip>
+
+ </sect2>
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Choosing a Budget Period</title>
+ <para>Before creating a budget you must also decide what period of
+ time you want to plan for. The most common budget periods are
+ monthly and annual. If you want your budget to plan for changes
+ in financial patterns over time, then you should include multiple
+ budget periods in your budget. For example, if you want to plan
+ on having higher utility expenses in the winter than in the
+ summer, then you might break your annual budget into 4 quarters or
+ even 12 months, and budget a higher value for the winter periods
+ than for the summer periods.</para>
+ </sect2>
+
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Getting Started</title>
+ <para>To create your first budget click on <guimenu>File</guimenu> ->
+ <guimenu>New</guimenu> -> <guimenu>New Budget</guimenu>. You will
+ immediately see a new budget with the default settings and no entries.
+ Then click on the "Options" button. The most important options are
+ the budget period and the number of periods. For the budget period,
+ choose the beginning date and the smallest period of time that you
+ want to plan for. Then, for the number of periods, choose how many
+ periods you want to plan for.</para>
+
+ <para>The budget page now shows a list of accounts with a column
+ for each budget period. The date shown in the title of each
+ column is the beginning of that budget period.</para>
+
+ </sect2>
+ <sect2>
+ <title>Entering Budget Values</title>
+ <para>Now, you must enter the budget values - the amounts that you
+ expect the account balances to change during the budget period.
+ There are two ways to enter budget values. The first way is to
+ simply click on the cell and enter an amount.</para>
+
+ <para>If you have past transactions recorded in GnuCash, the
+ second way is to let GnuCash estimate the budget values by looking
+ at those transactions. First, select the accounts you want
+ GnuCash to estimate. Then click on the 'Estimate' toolbar button.
+ In the Estimate Budget Values dialog, select the date past which
+ GnuCash should look for past transactions. GnuCash will start at
+ that date and look forward for the duration of your budget. For
+ example, if you are making an annual budget, and you select
+ Jan. 1, 2005, GnuCash will look at all the transactions in that
+ account from Jan. 1, 2005 through Dec. 31, 2005.</para>
+ </sect2>
+ </sect1>
+
+ <sect1 id="budget_reporting1">
+ <title>Budget Reporting</title>
+ <para>You've already done the hardest part - creating your budget.
+ But now you want to know how your actual financial transactions
+ compare to your plan. You need to run the Budget Report.</para>
+ <para>Click on <guimenu>Reports</guimenu> -> <guimenu>Income and
+ Expense</guimenu> -> <guimenu>Budget Report</guimenu>. For each
+ account, the Budget Report will show the budgeted and the actual
+ amounts in two adjacent columns for each period in the budget. If
+ you have created multiple budgets, you can use the Budget Report
+ Options to select which budget to use in the report.
+ </para>
+ </sect1>
+ </chapter>
Modified: gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/gnucash-guide.xml
===================================================================
--- gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/gnucash-guide.xml 2006-02-05 03:17:28 UTC (rev 13108)
+++ gnucash-docs/trunk/guide/C/gnucash-guide.xml 2006-02-05 04:20:43 UTC (rev 13109)
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
<!ENTITY chapter12 SYSTEM "ch_bus_ar.xml">
<!ENTITY chapter13 SYSTEM "ch_bus_ap.xml">
<!ENTITY chapter14 SYSTEM "ch_bus_pay.xml">
+<!ENTITY chapter15 SYSTEM "ch_budgets.xml">
<!ENTITY appendixa SYSTEM "appendixa.xml">
<!ENTITY appendixb SYSTEM "appendixb.xml">
<!ENTITY appendixc SYSTEM "appendixc.xml">
@@ -225,6 +226,7 @@
&chapter12;
&chapter13;
&chapter14;
+&chapter15;
&appendixa;
&appendixb;
&appendixc;
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