question about budgetting

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 05:07:30PM +0100, Ralph van Etten wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using GnuCash for a while now and I was pleased there is
> budgetting in there now.
> 
> Only, I have a problem with it. It is possible the problem I have is
> just me not understanding the budgetting option.
> 
> I guessed the budgetting is for saying 'I have this amount of money
> every month for clothes.' and the gnucash shows how much of the budget
> is left. I figured out how to do this with GnuCash so thats not the
> problem. The problem is this: If I don't spend my enitre budgets for
> clothes this month, I expect to see next month having more money in the
> clothes budget because last month I didn't spend it all.
> 
> How can I do that ? Is budgetting the right thing to use ? Or is
> budgetting something else than what I think it does ?

In general, spending less than you planned in one month doesn't always
mean you have that much more to spend in the next month.

If you want to treat the money you haven't spent yet as if it is
already committed for a particular purpose, then that warrants
transfering it into another account.

For example, you could create an asset sub-account of your checking
account, schedule a monthly transaction that moves $X from your
checking account into the sub-account, and then pay clothing expenses
from that sub-account.  (Just to be clear, this involves only your
books, not your bank.)

GnuCash doesn't know how you want to adjust your plan for spending in
the future based on past expenses.  If you want to adjust the budget
up (assuming you'll spend it later) or down (considering you might
have budgeted too high), either way, you have to do it yourself.

-chris