Budgeting - Let's decide what we want!

[Matthew Vanecek]

On Sat, 2003-08-30 at 17:44, Jon Lapham wrote:
> Matthew Vanecek wrote:
> > I think too many people are trying to tie a budget too closely to
> > existing Gnucash accounts.  That's a mistake.  Budgets categories and
> > Accounts really have very little in common.  
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > In short, budgets are planning and compliance tools.  Accounts are
> > tracking tools.  You don't need accounts to create a budget; conversely,
> > you don't need a budget to use accounts.  When you have both available,
> > and can compare your actual to your planned (reports), you can really
> > take control of your finances.  However, they *are* separate.
> 
> Yeah, what Matthew said.  I agree 100%.
> 
> *If* there is budgetting in GnuCash, I think (for what it is worth) it 
> absolutely needs to be something completely separate from the existing 
> functional system (I mean both in terms of code base and UI).
> 

I don't necessarily agree with the code comment.  I think there is some
good code in the Accounts hierarchy that could be reused.  There would,
of course, have to be different dialogs for creating and maintaining a
budget.

But the above is an implementation decision, and really implementation
decisions cannot/should not be made until the requirements and design
have been completed.  Once the requirements and design are finished,
then the implementor can see what is available for reuse in the existing
code.  Probably a thread better discussed in -devel, once a specific
method is agreed upon.

-- 
Matthew Vanecek
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
********************************************************************************
For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me.
I'm always getting in the way of something...