Budgeting features

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 10:31:41PM +0100, Roberto Hernandez wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I've recently installed GnuCash (on Windows) and started using it for
> home accounting and budgeting. The accounting part is quite
> impressive. However, I have some questions about how to achieve what
> I'm looking for in budgeting.
> 
> My budgeting is done on a monthly basis. Some of my income / expenses
> happen a couple of days before / after the calendar month. For
> example, I usually get my paycheck around the 28th of each month, but
> account for it in the following month's budget. The question is how to
> do this in GnuCash.

I'm not sure what the problem is. If you budget for this month's
paycheck as if it came in next month, then surely next month's
paycheck will be budgeted for the following month. Unless you have a
wildly fluctuating paycheck, I don't see what difference it makes
which month it gets accounted in. Do you follow? If it's one paycheck
per month, it doesn't really matter whether it goes in this month or
next month so long as it's consistent. 

Ignoring the cash flow issues, it shouldn't matter. With budgeting
your concerned about how income and expenses relate to projections and
the net off all those transactions. To a certain extent the timing is
irrelevant.

> 
> One option would be to record the transaction as though it happened at
> the beginning of the following month, but that would get pretty messy
> for reconciling bank statements.

Actually, this is not a bad solution and it probably wouldn't matter
for reconciling. Pushing the date up a few days doesn't magically make
it unreconcilable. You can reconcile any transaction that's been
entered past or future.

A
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