Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Ian X Waddington]

Hi

I have been following this debate with some interest, I fully understand the
need to know which money I am spending, was it the generous gift from my
long lost uncle,  and the need to know how I'm doing against how I have
allocated my regular income.

I have been achieving both of these with ease in MS-Money using two features
which are missing from gnucash, let me explain.

* Tracking Source Income
I have been using the 'classification and sub-classification' feature to
track source income against spending.

The generous gift is added to my savings account but classed as
Source:UncleTom

Whenever I buy something using this money, usually something as a treat I
would not normally buy, I classify it against Source:UncleTom.  It does not
matter what money I actually spend, whether it be credit or debit card or
good old fashion cash if I run a report of Source:UncleTom I can see exactly
how much I received and how much I have left and most importantly I get a
list of each transaction so I can see exactly what I've purchased and where
and when. I've been doing this for years to track Source Income, DIY
projects, holiday spending, Christmas spending and even business expenses.

The ability to add additional reportable information to a transaction is
just invaluable.

* How am I doing against my planned expenditure?
In MS-Money the account register, budget planner, bill planner (Scheduled
transactions) and Forward Fore Cast tool all work together to help me manage
my money.  Currently, right now, I can tell you the planned future balance
of any one or any combination of my accounts based on existing data in my
file for any date in the future.

I can see that if I spend something today that might have been unplanned the
exact impact on my current account and whether or not I will have to make a
withdrawal from savings to pay the credit card bill.

Each month I try to save for that rainy day. I have a scheduled transaction
for the 1st of each month for my target savings amount and each month I can
adjust this amount to ensure I save as much as possible yet ensure my
current account will not go overdrawn before payday at the end of the month.

I love the way gnucash works and implements true double-entry book keeping,
however, I do feel it would benefit from these additions to make it a true
personal finance manager.

I have previously offered to help produce the specifications and do the
testing but unfortunately I am unable to write the code.

Regards

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces at gnucash.org] On Behalf Of Wayne Bird
Sent: 17 December 2010 03:13
To: adardis at gmail.com; derek at ihtfp.com; fireflys_98 at yahoo.com
Cc: warlord at mit.edu; Gnucash User
Subject: RE: Tracking Money in Savings Account


Perfect.  I'm getting the hang of it!

> To: derek at ihtfp.com; fireflys_98 at yahoo.com; wrbird at hotmail.com
> CC: warlord at mit.edu; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account
> Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:03:43 -0500
> From: adardis at gmail.com
> 
> Right. (Actually, I transfer it to my son's account: 
> Assets:Current:Son's account, and he spends it from there.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:26:03 -0500, Wayne Bird <wrbird at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > OK, your subaccount might look something like this:  
> > Assets:Savings:College Fund.  Now when you spend money from it on 
> > something like books, does your transfer look something like this:
> > Assets:Savings:College Fund -> Expenses:College:Books ?
 		 	   		  
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