Budgeting Summary 1 - Notification

[Kaaren Shalom & Richard Gilligan]

I put this together last night and Stewart's thread seems like a fine  
place to hang it so...

There's no reason why identification of user requirements can't  
continue just because a prototype is on the table.  And we have not had  
  _explicit_ statements of user requirements in the discussion so far.   
So let me kick it off with this chestnut.

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Proposed User Requirement #1 - First, Do No Harm.

The addition of budgeting features into gnucash must not make the  
accounting features slower or more difficult to use.
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Is it a requirement?

The rest I have paraphrased from some posts or made up for dramatic  
effect.  There must be more.  Can Stewart find them all? Or is it time  
for people distill and restate what they need?


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Proposed User Requirement #2  - Complex Things Should Be Possible.

You must be able to model several different scenarios by creating  
different Budgets for the same period.
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Proposed User Requirement #3  - My dream is a truck.

You must be able to add Budget items that don't have representation in  
the accounts hierarchy.
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Proposed User Requirement #4  - Simple Things Should Be Easy.

You must be able to generate a Budget hierarchy from the existing  
accounts hierarchy.
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Proposed User Requirement #5  - One Chicken In two pots

A gnucash account must be able to participate in more than one budget  
category in the same budget.
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Proposed User Requirement #6  - Heads Up!

There must be a series of progressively more sever warnings as bugets  
limits are approached.
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Proposed User Requirement #6  - Accounts != Budgets

Once set, a budget should not be "broken" (i.e. rendered useless) by  
changes to the account hierarchy (i.e renaming, reparenting, deleting.)
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Proposed User Requirement #7  - The fundamental things apply...as time  
goes by.

Budgets need to obey the rules of double entry accounting and the  
fundamental accounting equations.
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Cheers,

Richard