Budgeting prototype

[Derek Neighbors]

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Derek Atkins wrote:

|Phil <sublime78ska at comcast.net> writes:
|
|>>True often you
|>>budget at some roll up higher than where you spend, but why budget for
|>>somewhere you can't spend.
|>
|>Why indeed!
|
|
|Because perhaps you want to see how a potential purchase would affect
|your budget?  For example, I might not yet have purchased that truck,
|so I dont have an account for Liabilities:Loans:Truck...

For something as simple as GNUCash can you tell me how it's any harder
to add that Liabilities:Loans:Truck to your ledger instead of your
budget?  (i.e. if you use same accounts for both, it's semantics where
you enter it)

For businesses (larger especially) I understand the need for Analytics
(which is different than budgeting).  That is scenario or driver based
forecasting, which then would load into a budget.  However, OLAP
datastores are much better because of their time scalar nature.

|Also, sometimes it's useful to have different "views" of your budget
|depending on what exactly you're looking for...  (In a similar vein it
|would be nice to have different views of the account hierarchy, but
|that might be more challenging to implement).

This is reporting trick only.  When it comes to commitment control
(which maybe is not an end user feature, but a business feature) you
can have it fly 50 different ways if you wish to control it
reasonably.  Please note because you CAN do something doesn't mean you
necessarily should.  Remember in Accounting "flexibility" is not
always good.  Please ask Enron, Arthur Anderson and others what
happens when you do "creative" accounting. :)

I just think for most accountants it will seem insane to have to
"rekey" your chart of accounts to do a budget.  If it is deemed a
must, please add a "copy" or "mirror" chart of accounts method.

- -Derek Neighbors

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