Advanced Budget Report Question

[Forest Bond]

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 07:33:08PM -0500, Andre Powell wrote:
> I think that it would be fair to say that if I would decrease an asset in my
> budget it would be an expense (towards something) and if I increased it would
> go towards income. Regarding a liability much the same if I decreased it would
> be an expense, and increased it would be "income", although obviously debt.
> Although, I am no CPA I do not have an "official" answer, but it makes sense
> to me. In a more simplified way, and the way I think that most people would do
> a budget count the payments to a liability as an addition to your expenses and
> the math will roll on from there. 
>
> With all of that said, what are the odds of you adding Liabilities to the
> report with them impacting expenses. :-) 

I would very much prefer assets and liabilities to not be handled this way.

It is not consistent with current handling in the Budget Income Statement (BIS)
and Budget Balance Sheet (BBS) reports.  BIS only looks at income and expense
accounts.  BBS assumes that positive values entered for assets are savings and
therefore increase the value of those assets and that positive values entered
for liabilities represent liability repayments and therefore decrease the
liability.

If this interpretation needs to change, so be it, but I would really like to see
some discussion and consensus before the behavior gets less consistent than it
is now.

In any case, I think asset/liability values being somehow interpreted as
income/expenses is wrong.

Thanks,
Forest
-- 
Forest Bond
http://www.alittletooquiet.net
http://www.pytagsfs.org
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