Budgets - how does the community want to use them?

[Matt Graham]

Thanks Mike!

You are right – I missed your fundamental point regarding the difference between being constrained to a budget vs it being a general plan. I’m not 100% sure I have completely caught up, but hopefully am getting close (and hopefully you aren’t getting sick of me yet!).

In addition to some people being constrained by their budget amounts (whilst some are not), there is also a separate (but similar) matter that some entities are constrained by their cash flow – i.e. that they need to wait for the income before they can make the expenses. On the wiki I’ve tried to summarise all of this by separating matters into “fundamentals” that could apply to any/all types of budgets people use, and “types of budgets” which look at the different ways people set up budgets to be useful. 

Any chance you would be willing to check it out to confirm I have understood you correctly? http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Budgets

The reason I think I’m not 100% understanding is your comment regarding 4 way matrix. Do you have a website or something I can read to understand where this comes into things? I am an electronic engineer by trade, so happy to get into some maths if needed!

Cheers,

Matt