New Budget Report

Wed Jan 12 16:33:15 EST 2011

Hmmm....  Yeah.  Another useful column for my report might be "same month last 
year" and/or "YTD last year"

Well, given a flexible enough engine, it would be easy to take column values 
from different years or different budgets.

I like the colouring idea.  I think that ultimately, we might want a generic 
report engine which provides various things (columns, rows, totals, colouring).  
Since we now have webkit which supports css and javascript, we can have 
collapsing columns and rows (e.g. expand/collapse the income section).  On top 
of this base engine, build a budget report engine.  On top of that, a budget 
report.

 Phil
---------
I used to be a hypochondriac AND a kleptomaniac. So I took something for it.

________________________________
From: Benjamin Johnsen <ben.johnsen at gmail.com>
To: Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com>
Cc: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
Sent: Wed, January 12, 2011 4:16:25 PM
Subject: Re: New Budget Report

Phil,

The YTD in my report makes the assumption that it is a YTD for current year not 
the year specified in the Start Date.  When I made that assumption I ran into an 
issue where I would want to analyze last years numbers to setup my budget for 
this year and my YTD would be showing me YTD for 2011 instead for 2010.  So 
instead of changing the YTD to be a YTD off of the year in the Start Date I 
create another column that call in called EOY and year can be specified for that 
column.  Mainly I used the EOY this time of the year to go back and analyze last 
year and close out all of my accounts.  I know that GNUCash has a close out end 
of year function but it doesn't close it out in the way that I like so I do it 
by hand.

Sounds like a good idea to abstract away some of the complexity.  Another 
feature I had in my report is it would color every other column and every other 
row so that it was easier to follow a row all the way across the screen.  That 
would be nice to have in the engine.

Thanks,
Ben

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com> wrote:

What does EOY give you?
>
>It sounds as though if you specify:
>   1) Start Date = start of year
>   2) # months = 12
>   3) YTD off and EOY off
>then you get the current basic budget report.  If you specify:
>   1) Start Date = current month
>   2) #months = 1
>   3) YTD on and EOY on
>then you get my report.
>
>One thing I tried to do is build a "budget report engine" which would allow you 
>to specify the accounts (rows) and columns you want and out would come the 
>report.  The columns are specified as a scheme list where each entry is a) a 
>number representing a month (0=Jan, 11=Dec), or b) a list of month numbers in 
>which case that column is the sum of those months.  So, for June (month=5), the  
>column control list is:
>    (5 (0 1 2 3 4 5) (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12))
>
>This would be easily expandible.  (4 5 6 (0 1 2 3 4 5) (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
>11 12)) would have columns for May, June, July, YTD(June) and full year.
>
>The current budget report would be (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12).
>
>Maybe I'll work on formalizing and releasing the engine and then rewriting the 
>current budget report in terms of it.  It would make your report easier too.  
>I'd to move to this kind of report engine so that, for example, we could pass a 
>list of dates to the Balance Sheet report and get a multi-column report showing 
>account balances on a series of dates, or list of date ranges for an Income 
>Statement.  Would allow period comparisons.  I'll look at how your report is 
>generated to see if there are ideas I can adopt.
>
>
> Phil
>---------
>I used to be a hypochondriac AND a  kleptomaniac. So I took something for it.
>
>
>
>
>
________________________________
From: Benjamin Johnsen <ben.johnsen at gmail.com>
>To: Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com>
>Cc: Christian Stimming <stimming at tuhh.de>; gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>Sent: Wed, January 12, 2011 3:31:53 PM
>
>Subject: Re: New Budget Report
>
>
>Phil,
>
>
>I was not aware of the report you sent out.  I agree things could get 
confusing.
>
>
>I  was sending out an update to the report that I sent back in 2008 because I 
>had been getting a number of questions about.
>
>
>The way my report works is it looks for accounts that have a budget value 
>defined and will display those accounts.
>The number of columns is user defined.  In the options they can specify the 
>Start Date and then the number of months to show.  There are also a "Year to 
>Date" and "End of Year" column that can be turn on and off through options. 
> Each column (Month, YTD or EOY) have a budget, actual and difference 
>sub-columns.  Also for each column there are rows that are defined at Income, 
>Expense and Total.
>
>
>It sounds like our reports are very similar.  I will let the team decide how 
>they want to handle it.  If they only want to include one that is fine with me. 
> If they want to include both and want to dictated a naming convention that is 
>also fine with me.
>
>
>Thanks,
>Ben
>
>
>On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com> wrote:
>Ben,
>>
>>what is in your advanced budget report?  I ask because I distributed an advanced 
>>budget report via e-mail recently.  It provided 3 sets of columns:  1) current 
>>month, 2) YTD, 3) full year and for each set of columns, 
>>budget/actual/difference.  I found it to be much more useful than the regular 
>>budget report.  If we are going to have multiple "Advanced Budget" reports, life 
>>will get tricky unless we can find a way to distinguish them.
>>
>> Phil
>>---------
>>I used to be a hypochondriac AND a kleptomaniac. So I took something for it.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
________________________________
From: Christian Stimming <stimming at tuhh.de>
>>To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>>Cc: Benjamin Johnsen <ben.johnsen at gmail.com>
>>Sent: Wed, January 12, 2011 2:47:17 PM
>>Subject: Re: New Budget Report
>>
>>
>>Dear Ben,
>>
>>thanks for the interesting update. I was trying to run your report with the 
>>most recent 2.4.0, but had to change a few lines until it was loaded correctly 

>>at start-up. The changed file is attached.
>>
>>However, when trying to run the report I still run into plenty of Scheme 
>>errors (below). Hence, the report in the current form probably cannot be used 
>>with gnucash-2.4.0. If you feel inclined to fix those bugs, I would happily 
>>include it into SVN so that  it can go into the next release, but currently 
>>this doesn't quite work.
>>
>>Also, I suggest to submit your contributions as "enhancement request" in 
>>bugzilla http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Bugzilla with the file attached, because 

>>that way, your contribution doesn't get lost just as your 2008 email to 
>>gnucash-devel did...
>>
>>Best Regards,
>>
>>Christian
>>
>>
>>Am Mittwoch, 12. Januar 2011 schrieb Benjamin Johnsen:
>>> Here is an update to the budget report that fixes some issues and adds some
>>> new features.
>>> 
>>> See attached file.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ben
>>> 
>>
>