Budgeting features

[Derrick Hudson]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 12:29:03AM +0100, Roberto Hernandez wrote:
| On Jan 19, 2008 11:18 PM, Andrew Sackville-West
| <andrew at swclan.homelinux.org> wrote:
| > On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 10:31:41PM +0100, Roberto Hernandez wrote:
| > 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.
| 
| The paycheck is just one example of the transactions I mentioned that
| happen just before/after the budget month. Doing it that way has
| worked for me so far. I guess the question boils down to whether I
| need to adapt my budgeting to the software or vice-versa.

I don't see the significance.  The budget, when considered on a
monthly basis, considers all events in the month to have occurred at
the same time.  That is, in your budget there is no unit of time
smaller than one month.

So, if you get a paycheck in the month, it doesn't matter if it was
on the first, the last, or any time in between.  That paycheck will
still count as the income for that month.  If you make an expense in
the month, it also doesn't matter if it was on the first or the last
or whenever during the month, it counts as an expense for the month.

When you say you consider your paycheck, received at the end of the
month, as funds for the following month you are really talking about
cash flow.  That is, your bank won't honor checks you write at the
beginning of the month if you don't have any money in the account
until the end of the month.  However, budgeting is only concerned with
the net:  add up everything in the month and see if the totals are
good ignoring the order and which days the events occurred.

HTH,
-D

-- 
The righteous hate what is false,
but the wicked bring shame and disgrace.
        Proverbs 13:5
 
www: http://dman13.dyndns.org/~dman/            jabber: dman at dman13.dyndns.org
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