Future allocated money, aka Envelope Budgeting

Thu Feb 1 09:45:54 EST 2018

> On Feb 1, 2018, at 8:22 AM, Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Adrien,
> 
> From reviewing the code, I still believe the (b)udget transactions system works better. The current code calculates all Reconciled/Cleared/Unreconciled balances on the fly, and it'll be pretty easy to add one for Budget balances. If I'm right, a book with large number of transactions over years will require perhaps 20 (b)udget transactions per year, which will hardly be straining the datafile or the code.
> 
> It is also compatible with the suggestion for "manually triggered SX" or "transaction templates”.

That enhancement was only for an actual transaction that moves money from a parent to sub-accounts. I didn’t intend that as a separate layer ‘virtual’ transaction. But yes, I see it could work for both.

> 
> The only feature that the envelope system doesn't support is an 'expiry date' for the budget -- some people may prefer monthly/quarterly/annual budgets, and so far I can't think how this would work. The register would really just need color coding to identify 'balance too close to budget' situations.

My understanding is that the envelopes don’t expire, it’s a retained ‘savings’ so I get they don’t have a date. That doesn’t preclude budgeting by period though. Say you set a spending budget of $100/$300/$1200 for dining out (monthly, quarterly, yearly) then you use that as your envelope goal. As you allocate, you can see if you have hit your goal. (if so, the allocation stops) If you end up spending under budget, that money remains allocated. (unless you flow it somewhere else) You’ll just have a head start in your savings plan when the next period cycles around. An additional calculation would be needed here. At any point in time, you’d need to see the remaining goal to be saved for. 

There should also be a mechanism for letting the user decide how to control the allocation or flow of money to the envelopes. This could be a ‘stop’ situation based on if either the monthly, quarterly, or yearly goals are reached. Someone might want to set a high % to be allocated until perhaps one or two quarters are saved up, then back off a bit. Or they might want to leave it high until the goal is reached, but keep saving at a lower level. (that part is good for emergency funds or debt retirement) Or they might want to only allocate each month until the goal is reached (which might be the first pay check) and then stop until the month rolls over.

I know this is sounding more complicated, but if the user can’t control their savings rate and plan, they probably aren’t going to use the feature much.

By the way, I do like the idea of some sort of color warning with respect to hitting budget limits.
> 
> Try opening a register and see View > Filter by... > Status you'll see all 5 statuses are ticked. If by default the suggested "b" transactions are disabled then the average user will never see them.

That changes things entirely. I see no UX issues then.
> 
> My suggestion also obviates the need for the shadow accounts as your recommendation.
> 
> IMHO Using a separate kvp system will lead to performance issues similar to current Budget on Windows.
I’ve heard there was some problems there but didn’t realize that was the cause. I wonder why that is. Since the user doesn’t have to be exposed to the budget transactions by default, I don’t see an issue changing to that method then. Whatever is most efficient.

On that note you might need two status levels. A ‘b’ for ‘budget’ to handle the current functionality and an ‘e/s’ for ‘envelopes/savings’ to handle savings toward those budget goals.
> 
> I'm rather tempted to hack the code to calculate the budgeted amounts by abusing the current (v)oid transactions UI, and it seems very doable :-o

Let me know when you do. I’d be interested in seeing the work and in testing. And I’ll be happy to help where I can.

Regards,
Adrien

> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> On 01/02/18 22:05, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
>>> On Jan 31, 2018, at 2:48 PM, Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 11:35 AM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com <mailto:adrien.monteleone at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jan 31, 2018, at 10:09 AM, Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com <mailto:christopher.lck at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Matt- I thought this should move to the devel list, because of technical details, and this discussion will be very speculative.
>>>> 
>>>> I had a thought about how envelope budgeting could work: "divide your paycheck into separate envelopes for different purposes".
>>>> 
>>>> A solution: *Create another type of transaction.*
>>>> 
>>>> There's already u(n)reconciled, (c)leared, (y)reconciled, (v)oid transactions. And (f)rozen I believe is unused. Let's create a new type - (b)udget. But the balances are handled differently.
>>>> 
>>>> It would require some UI and calculations changes --
>>>> 
>>>> 1. The account budget balance is always maintained similarly to Running/Reconciled/Cleared Balances. But it would count all previous split-values *and* the (b)udget split amounts. However the budget running balance is not shown in the default register. This means, existing balances/register are unchanged.
>>> Having transactions in an account register that don’t affect the balance is going to be very problematic. I think this would really confuse users.
>>> 
>>> I would think budget levels for each expense account could be exposed in the properties/preferences for each one.
>>> 
>>> That's basically how it's done now. It uses the kvp (key-value pair) mechanism and each account has a kvp per budget per period with the budget amount.
>> But I see they aren’t exposed in the Account Edit window. The only way to see what was budgeted is to open the budget module, or to see what’s left is to run a budget report. And even that part is limited as it’s only a all-or-nothing figure for the year, not year-to-date.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
>>>  
>>> The allocation of budget money would have to be handled with a special dialog on demand, or as part of an income/asset account preferences with percentages/formulas. (essentially a template transaction that fires when entries are made in that account)
>>> 
>>> We already have a budgeting mechanism to set how much we *want* to spend on a particular expense.
>>> 
>>> What we’re discussing here is a way to ‘save up’ funds received for each of those expenses.
>>> 
>>> If I understand correctly, the budget module uses hidden accounts to keep track of everything. I would think these same accounts, or other hidden accounts paired with them, could do the job.
>>> 
>>> This is incorrect. It uses kvp (key-value pair) structures attached to each account.
>>>  Phil
>> Thanks for clearing that up. Certainly, that seems the more sane route. I would think another set of kvp could be implemented to handle the envelope system then. One set to hold the amount already allocated and another to hold the allocation formula. The original budget pair could be used as the goal.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnucash-devel mailing list
>> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-devel mailing list
> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel