Budgeting prototype

[Derek Neighbors]

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Darin Willits wrote:

|
|Although I personally prefer the workbench style approach there might be
|a better way to tackle this.  I personally think that separating the UI
|(as well as the data) would make for a better user experience.  I agree
|with the sentiment that budgets and account trees should be separate
|entities.  One *is* an essentially imaginary, pie in the sky concept
|while the other is concrete (often depressing...) reality.  They are
|definitely linked (categories have related accounts) but are not one and
|the same.

I think separating them is a good thing.  Also, having the workbench
type layout opposed to a ledger layout is much more how one thinks
when budgeting.  There could be at somepoint value to laying actuals
w/ variance in the workbench, but for now this would be enough with
good reports behind it.

|However my hope is to create a set of data which could be used in other
|parts of the application hopefully enabling a wealth of financial
|planning features down the road.  But for now we have to start
|somewhere.

I guess doing government accounting for the last 5 years has me jaded,
but I can't for the life of me see why people are wanting "virtual"
budget accounts.  This makes no sense.  You shouldn't be able to
budget to a category in which you can't post actuals.  True often you
budget at some roll up higher than where you spend, but why budget for
somewhere you can't spend.   Maintaining a second set of categories
seems silly.  I can see it during enterprise planning and analytics,
but I think that sort of thinig is well outside of the scope of
GNUCash and more suited for OLAP type technology where drivers can be
reasonable applied.
- -Derek Neighbors
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