Budgets ... again

[Wm Tarr]

I know GnuCash and budgeting is a perennial issue.  I haven't seen what 
I suggest below covered before and welcome pointers if that is not the case.

1.  GnuCash's current budgeting tools are dismal; they are hard to work 
out how to use and even when you know how to use them they don't do what 
you expect. [1]

[1] I had to look at the tables to work out where the various bits of a 
budget were stored.  Who had the bright idea of putting stuff in the 
recurrences table that should be somewhere else?  The design is broken 
for starters.

2. Given that there has been considerable discussion about GnuCash and 
budgets in the past and that a number of people have argued one way or 
another isn't it time for budgeting to be independent of GnuCash?

3. I have been pulling data out of GnuCash for years now (hand written 
scripts for XML and now SQL) in order to get it into a form suitable for 
use in a spreadsheet so I can ... yes, you guessed it ... do some budgeting.

4. My scripts have (and do) served me well but I want a better interface 
to them so I have started writing an application or tool (call it what 
you will) that allows for more.

5. Say hello to gncb (that is what I have named my project) it is a 
webapp (no reason why it couldn't use a more conventional UI but I 
wanted to play with that and found some handy tools).

6. Before you ask ... Q: Will you write back to the GnuCash db?  A: I 
can but don't see the point as GnuCash doesn't really do anything useful 
with budgets so there is little point, much more useful to export and 
import into a prog or tool that allows you to do what you want ... or 
you can pick up on my idea and help me with that.

7. Some philosophy: GnuCash isn't what 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnucash says any more, it is no longer a 
Quicken wannabe.  That doesn't mean that people that want to have YNAB, 
MS Money, etc. type budgeting shouldn't be allowed that.  I differ from 
some other people in thinking that the budgeting need not be part of 
GnuCash because whatever GnuCash does wrt budgeting won't be to 
someone's liking.so why start doing something that will upset someone else?

8. An external budgeting system allows for adaptation and enhancement by 
anyone while maintaining the core goodness of GnuCash.

9. A comment on tools used so far: SQLite (if you use a modern browser 
you are using SQLite whether you know it or not so that isn't a surprise 
requirement, can't really think why GnuCash should be in MySQL or PG to 
be honest); perl (but there is no reason why any other language couldn't 
be used or even something compiled once we have a working model (I have 
that already, I just don't know if other people are interested or 
not).); a web browser like FireFox or any of its relations and you're done.

10. Comment: my background is in business rather than personal money 
matters.  I don't see why good principles can't be transferred from one 
domain to another.

11. Comments, critisism, etc. welcomed.
-- 
Wm ...