New Budget Report

[Benjamin Johnsen]

Here is an update to the budget report that fixes some issues and adds some
new features.

See attached file.

Thanks,
Ben

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Benjamin Johnsen <ben.johnsen at gmail.com>wrote:

> Derek,
>
> The thought for this budget was that I didn't want to have to select
> accounts from an account list for the report after I had already gone
> through the effort of creating the budget and adding a value to each
> account I was interested in keeping track of in the budget.  The
> information already exists in the budget, a report just needed to be
> created using that information.  This also eliminates the problem of
> accidentally closing the tab for the report and then needing to
> reselect all of the accounts again when you want to regenerate the
> report.
>
> There are a few issues with the report.
> Issue One: I don't include ASSET or LIABILITY accounts in the budget
> report even if there is a budget value for them.  It would be easy
> enough to add them in to the report but I couldn't figure out how to
> deal with them in the TOTALs section.  Do I subtract them from the
> income?  Do I add the ASSETS and subtract the LIABILITIES? How do you
> deal with it when you remove money from the ASSET account to pay for
> something?  These are the types of questions I couldn't come up with a
> good answer to. I have tried to find literature talking about how to
> deal with ASSET and LIABILITY accounts from a budget perspective but I
> haven't found anything.  If you have any information or reading that
> would be helpful let me know.
>
> Issue Two:  I ran into an issue when subtracting two different values
> using the commodity collector.  In the Diff column in the report I
> would get "empty" values.  I tracked it down to the denom in the
> gnc-numeric being different and when the subtraction happened this
> resulted in an "empty" value.  Nothing was there in the report it
> would just print a "$" sign and nothing else.  The denom seem to be
> incorrect on some of the values I pulled from the budget.  I tried all
> sorts of things like retyping the number into the budget.  It seemed
> to be connected to number that had no cents (ie $300.00).  Even though
> I typed the .00 it would still give the an incorrect denom.  As a
> result I hard coded the denom to be 1/100.  So if there is a currency
> that doesn't have two decimal places then this will probably cause an
> issue.  If you are actually interest in seeing the issue I can try and
> recreate it and send in all the information.
>
> Issue Three:  On the row and column coloring I have a saturation and
> color mixing issues.  You will notice that in the Options you can set
> the colors for the rows and columns.  Well if you choose anything
> other than gray it doesn't work real well.  Also if you set the gray
> value too dark then it will saturate and turn the interesting area
> white instead of black.  I didn't consider this a big issue since it
> looked good for the default colors and people don't have to change it.
>
> Issue Four: I don't do currency conversions during the summing process
> for the TOTALs row so if someone tries a mixed currency budget then
> the TOTALs row will be wrong.
>
> There are also some feature I would like the add but I don't know when
> I will get around to it.
> Feature One:  I would like to add a black line above the TOTALs row at
> the bottom of each section but I haven't been about to get anything to
> work the way I want it too.
>
> Feature Two: I want to put a disclaimer at the bottom of the report
> that says the budget doesn't include ASSET and LIABILITY accounts if
> the report finds that budget values were set on the ASSET and
> LIABILITY accounts.  This changes if I figure out how to treat ASSETS
> and LIABILITIES in a budget.
>
> Feature Three: Be able to select accounts from a list instead of the
> auto-find feature if someone truly desired to do it that way.
>
> Feature Four: Have an option that if set would report on all
> unbudgeted INCOME and EXPENSE activity.  Separate sections in the
> report would be created for them.  This way if you forgot to add a
> value in your budget for an account you would be able to notice it
> fast because it would show in the unbudgeted section or for those
> random expenses (ie Parking Tickets, Commission on Stock Transactions,
> etc.) that you don't budget for but that you might want to look at
> every now and then in the context of the budget. I haven't decided if
> this belongs in the budget report or if I am starting to describe some
> other report.
>
> Anyway, that is probably far more information than you wanted.  I have
> attached the report.  I have put the budget report in the same menu as
> the other budget report and named "Advanced Budget".
>
> Let me know if you have any questions or if something doesn't work.
>
> Thanks,
> Ben
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 4:27 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > "Benjamin Johnsen" <ben.johnsen at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> I haven't done a lot of testing on it.  It works for me and my friend
> >> but we are both working in USD.  So I haven't tested it with other
> >> currencies and with mixed currencies.  I have a feeling that mixed
> >> currencies won't work at this time since the summing that I budget
> >> performs doesn't do currency conversion.
> >>
> >> So I guess my question is how do I submit it to you all for testing
> >> and inclusion in the project?
> >
> > Send it here?
> >
> >> Thanks,
> >> Ben
> >
> > -derek
> >
> > --
> >       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
> >       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
> >       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
> >       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
> >
>
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