[GNC-dev] About budgets in 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10

[Christopher Lam]

Would anyone object to the following (last) amendment to budget totals:
separate the account types, and add 'Remaining to budget' line which
implements the budget-to-zero facility, and *will* replicate the 3.7
behaviour.
(Note the totals *will* be renamed to "Total Assets" "Total Expense" etc.)

[image: budget-view.png]


On Sun, 19 Apr 2020 at 05:07, Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thank you for trying Adrien. This budget bug is proving to be a major
> headache. I really need more beta testers, especially with ability to build
> from my branch.
>
> Of note:
> * previous methodology was: in a period, budgeted income, minus budgeted
> expense and any asset/liability transfers, must result in zero. This
> assumes credit-accounts sign reversal.
> * future methodology is: in a period, all natural budget amounts must
> equal zero. i.e. incomes being negative, will be balanced by positive
> expenses etc.
>
> My plan to try fix this for good is to *remove* all totals except the
> "Remaining to Budget"; from my understanding this is the only total of any
> use.
>
> Alternatively, another plan is to switch to future methodology and forego
> backward compatibility in existing budgets, for use in 4.x or 5.x.
>
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 at 17:59, Adrien Monteleone <
> adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>
>> I just posted my first result and impression to the bug report, though
>> I’m sure you saw that already. (this is more for the benefit of list
>> readers not following the bug)
>>
>> The signs aren’t making sense, and the amounts aren’t adding up correctly.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
>>
>> > On Apr 10, 2020 w15d101, at 5:59 AM, Christopher Lam <
>> christopher.lck at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Next addendum: your existing budget data will behave well when reverse
>> > balances=credit accounts, but the *featured* data will be stable with
>> *any*
>> > reverse balances global preference option.
>> >
>> > On Fri, 10 Apr 2020, 11:28 am Christopher Lam, <
>> christopher.lck at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020, 10:20 am Christopher Lam, <
>> christopher.lck at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Deadline is 11 April at noon GMT, so, about 34 hours from now.
>> >>>
>> >>> For both: *existing* datafile and especially *4.x-featured *datafile
>> (in
>> >>> bug report).
>> >>>
>> >>> Please test:
>> >>> - creation of budget amounts
>> >>> - use estimate to prefill cells
>> >>> - all totals in all 5 account types A/L/Inc/Exp/Eq behave
>> appropriately
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> Addendum this is not simply an arithmetic test; it *****must**** also
>> >> confirm that the totals and signs are sensible for the purpose of
>> >> budgeting. Hence the difficulty of a one person coder to make it work.
>> For
>> >> example, we can budget a liability account regularly until we have
>> enough
>> >> deposit for a huge loan, or we can budget a liability account
>> regularly for
>> >> the loan repayments. IIUC both approaches are "valid" but the signs
>> will be
>> >> opposite. Other counter examples likely exist.
>> >>
>> >> - budget.scm report (optionally other budget reports but these are
>> lower
>> >>> priority) and especially difference column.
>> >>>
>> >>> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 at 02:16, Adrien Monteleone <
>> >>> adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> Thank You! This makes it so much easier to test. I’ll give the
>> flatpak a
>> >>>> spin and see what I find. I still haven’t set up a build environment
>> for
>> >>>> Mac yet. (and watching a recent thread on the subject makes it look
>> >>>> daunting compared to Linux)
>> >>>>
>> >>>> This is a busy weekend for me though. What kind of time frame do you
>> >>>> have and is there something in particular you’re looking to find.
>> (other
>> >>>> than just loosely that the totals appear to work)
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Regards,
>> >>>> Adrien
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> On Apr 9, 2020 w15d100, at 9:10 PM, Christopher Lam <
>> >>>> christopher.lck at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> 2020-04-07 nightly available at
>> >>>> https://code.gnucash.org/builds/win32/maint/
>> >>>>> flatpaks available at
>> https://code.gnucash.org/builds/flatpak/maint/
>> >>>> - use
>> >>>>> between 2020-04-04 and 2020-04-10
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 at 01:38, Christopher Lam <
>> >>>> christopher.lck at gmail.com>
>> >>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>> This topic is about budgets.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> We now know that budgets are currently inherently flawed: they
>> >>>> *assume*
>> >>>>>> that sign-reversal = credit-accounts, and do not work well at all
>> >>>> with any
>> >>>>>> other sign-reversal option. In addition, there was a feature
>> request
>> >>>> (bug
>> >>>>>> 781345) that introduced budget equity into the equation, and I
>> still
>> >>>> do not
>> >>>>>> know whether a budget equity amount is a correct approach.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> In 4.x series there is a planned *fix* which will scan budget
>> amounts,
>> >>>>>> use heuristics to determine the most likely sign-reversal approach
>> >>>> used
>> >>>>>> during budget creation, internally unreverse the amounts, and
>> upgrade
>> >>>> the
>> >>>>>> datafile so that it cannot be damaged by 3.7 or earlier.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Therefore 3.8 was the first release which could handle both old and
>> >>>> fixed
>> >>>>>> budget amounts. Unfortunately, the interpretation of budget signs
>> >>>> was/is
>> >>>>>> very difficult, which explained the switch to
>> >>>>>> asset/liability/equity/income/expense totals, which are impervious
>> to
>> >>>>>> budget signs. Unfortunately users missed the "Remaining to Budget"
>> >>>> facility.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Therefore 3.9 was, during development, tested with
>> >>>>>> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/630 and was deemed "good
>> >>>> enough"
>> >>>>>> to fix to restore the remaining to budget total. Unfortunately the
>> >>>>>> liability budget amount issue was tested incorrectly.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> For a week, the git-maint contained a candidate fix, discussed in
>> >>>>>> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797659 -- but there is
>> >>>>>> insufficient beta testing on the budgets for now. So, 3.10 will
>> >>>> retain 3.9
>> >>>>>> behaviour unless the fix is fully tested.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Conclusion: this is a call for beta testers, using the 2020-04-07
>> >>>> nightly
>> >>>>>> (the only one with the fix), to test both their datafiles and the
>> >>>>>> *4.x-featured* datafile attached in the bug report. Please
>> >>>> *especially*
>> >>>>>> test the liability and equity totals, both with existing datafile
>> and
>> >>>>>> featured datafile.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Flame away. I will try to be available throughout the day for
>> testing.
>> >>>>>> Win32 users have only 1 build to test, Linux users may also build
>> from
>> >>>>>> 882fd22ca rather than git-maint which has returned to 3.9
>> behaviour.
>> >>>> I'm
>> >>>>>> not sure how MacOS users can test.
>> >>>>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnucash-devel mailing list
>> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>>
>
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