Budgets - how does the community want to use them?

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 27 12:16:44 EST 2015


Matt, 
I am a personal user as well, and I long ago abandoned the Gnucash budgets because they were so cumbersome to use. 
I liked being able to have gnuCash fill out budget amounts from past spending, although I think the way the digits are implemented is extremely confusing. Specifying the number of significant digits is counter-intuitive, especially when different accounts can have hugely different values. 4 digits for a large account may show rounded dollars, while for a smaller accounts shows fractions. To me, this would make more sense from the other side--that is, indicating insignificant digits to remove from the right. That way, every account shows me amounts rounded to tens, for example. 
I wish that there were a way for a budget to show only those accounts that I choose to budget. Currently, the window includes everything. Of course, removing them from display means some mechanism would need to be implemented to allow accounts to be added later. But generally speaking, once I have selected the accounts I want to focus on in a budget, I only want to see them. 
Additionally, the reporting for budgets needs a lot of work. Technically, this isn't the budgeting per se, but maybe it should be. 
My biggest complaint with budgeting, though, had to be that there is no option for a budget to cover a named period, like "last year." This to me makes the budget tool more trouble than it's worth. 
I hope others chime in as well.
David
 
 
  On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 16:30, Matt Graham<matt_graham2001 at hotmail.com> wrote:   G'day GNUCash users,

I would like to improve the way Gnucash implements budgets, to make
them more useful in a personal context. However, I want to get feedback
on how people want to use a budget so that this effort can make the
software better for everyone.

Please let me know (by posting to gnucash-user at gnucash.org) how you
think budgets can be improved. For example:
- what information do you want to see on the budget display?
- Should Gnucash pull in your actual expenditure after the period has
passed, Allowing you to see actual vs budgeted?
- what (if anything) should Gnucash do if you don't spend your budgeted
amount - increase the budget for the next period automatically? Or just
drop it off?

Thoughts appreciated - I only use Gnucash for personal finances, so
especially keen to hear what businesses think and would find useful.

Cheers,

Matt G
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