Budgeting prototype

[Stewart V. Wright]

Hi Darin,

> Ok, I finally got some screen shots put together for my ideas on the
> budgeting interface in gnucash.  They are really rough but give you an
> idea of the direction I would like to head.  You can find them here:
> 
> http://www.darin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Nice pics.  :)

 
> They don't really show any new ideas which haven't already been covered
> in the discussion so far but I find that laying things out in a (semi)
> concrete way often helps me focus and refine my ideas.  

I think almost everyone would agree.  Explaining what we want is one
thing, but showing it in pictures makes it so much easier.  Truly a
picture is worth a thousand words!


> Although I personally prefer the workbench style approach there might be
> a better way to tackle this.  I personally think that separating the UI
> (as well as the data) would make for a better user experience.  I agree
> with the sentiment that budgets and account trees should be separate
> entities.  One *is* an essentially imaginary, pie in the sky concept
> while the other is concrete (often depressing...) reality.  They are
> definitely linked (categories have related accounts) but are not one and
> the same.

I have to disagree with what you have done unfortunately.  It looks
(and correct me if I am wrong) like you are budgeting for a $200
credit card bill per month.  I (and I get the impression a number of
other users) want a different sort of budgeting.

I want to specify that I will spend $X on groceries each month, but
without specifying that it is done as cash, cheque or on my credit
card.  I want to be able to see that I spent a certain amount on a
subset of expenses, NOT that I have a certain amount to spend on my
credit card.

The point of my virtual accounts idea is that I want to be able to
have multiple budget categories for any expense/asset account.  For
example, I buy a number of books.  I want to specify whether a book
was bought for work purposes, or for fun.  These are two different
budgeting categories in my world that I want GnuCash to handle...



> However my hope is to create a set of data which could be used in other
> parts of the application hopefully enabling a wealth of financial
> planning features down the road.  But for now we have to start
> somewhere.

Exactly.  A laudable goal.  Is your approach for budgeting code
consistent with the other approach I outlined above?

 
> I am hoping to flesh out some ideas for the data structures over the
> next couple days and then get to the business of spewing out code.  I

You should read Linas Vepstas' message from earlier today.  He said:

  "in terms of programmer effort, its usually almost the same amount
   of effort to implement it 'the right way' as it is to implement it
   'any old way'.  The hardest part of programming is figuring out
   what 'the right way' is."

Do we know that we have found 'the right way' yet?


> After that I will be back to part time work on this as I will be
> moving house across the ocean and doing some hard core job hunting!

Ahhh...  Moving across the world.  Been there, done that, doing it
again soon.  Oh, joy!!!


> Thoughts/criticisms/concerns are as always welcome. :)

Damn, and here was I thinking that I would start a flame war!  :-P


Cheers,

S.

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