Budgeting - Let's decide what we want!

[Phil]

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 19:44:34 -0300, Jon Lapham <lapham at extracta.com.br> 
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'm also not entirely convinced that budgetting couldn't be done better 
> as a separate app that "ties in" with GnuCash (ie: read-only access to 
> the XML file, or read-only access to the database backend).
>

I would like to see actual, budget, and variance on the Accounts view.  I 
would like to see it all at-a-glance, immediately.  Is that realistic?

Phil