Budgeting prototype

[Derek Neighbors]

Darin Willits said:
> On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 11:03, Stewart V. Wright wrote:
>>
>> Another point or two of clarification:  (For this I am using [B] to
>> specify a budget category, as apposed to a regular account)
>>  * Would I be able to link Expenses:Dining and Expenses:Groceries to
>>    the same [B]Expenses:Food category?
>>    I guess so, from figure 5 on your page.
>>  * Will I be able to see all the transactions for a particular budget
>>    category?
>
> Maybe another window could handle this.  Some sort of customised account
> register with transactions for a period for all the accounts in that
> catagory.  A right click menu option could bring up this register for
> the selected category.  Come to think of it this might go hand in hand
> with the suggestion for a planned/actual view of the budgeting
> information.  If you see that you were over budget in a certain category
> for a period you could bring up this window to see the transactions
> which contributed to that situation.

Maybe I'm psycho but why wouldn't you just make your accounts:

Expenses:Food
Expenses:Food:Dining
Expenses:Food:Groceries

Then you choose to budget at the "Food" level and expend at the "sub"
level.  This is how most budgets work.  You have a chart of accounts with
each element having different "levels".  Often you budget at a higher
level than you expend.  I see where you are trying to be flexible, but I
think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. In order to
have some resemblance to committment control you really need your budget
accounts to mirror your expense accounts even if the budget is placed at a
different level in the hierarchy tree than the expense.

-Derek Neighbors