closing entries throw off estimated budget values

[Michael Hendry]

> On 4 Feb 2015, at 16:33, Edward Doolittle <edward.doolittle at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It's probably too late for this suggestion, but you could estimate your
> budget before closing your books. Maybe it's possible to do a budget for 11
> months?
> 
> But I agree, it would be nifty if GnuCash figured this out on its own.
> 
> E

If you look through past threads on the mailing-list you’ll see that there has often been discussion about whether there’s any real need to close accounts at all.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t close the accounts (essentially zeroing the expense and income accounts at the year end by making transfers to equity), produce the reports that require closure of the accounts, and then delete these year-end transactions before setting up your budgets. You can close the accounts again afterwards if you want to.

I think it might be possible to set up the budgets avoiding the last day of the financial year, provided you avoid recording any real transactions on the 31st December, but I haven’t tried this.

Ideally, GC would date-stamp the year-end transactions immediately after the 31st December, and immediately before 1st January, which would get you out of this particular difficulty, but I think the argument from the developers would be that the whole year-end thing is unnecessary, and other developments are more important.

Michael

> 
> On 4 February 2015 at 00:50, W Geoffrey O Black <wgoblack at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Forgot to say that I am running GnuCash 2.6.5 on a MacBook Air with OS
>> 10.9.5. I doubt the issue I posted about is version-specific or
>> OS-specific, but I try to provide all potentially relevant information.
>> 
>> W Geoffrey O Black
>> 
>> On Feb 4, 2015, at 12:43 AM, W Geoffrey O Black <wgoblack at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> I’ve been trying to create a budget and use the “Estimate” feature to
>> automatically fill in values for each account, and I’ve run into a big
>> problem. (Big for me, anyway.)
>>> 
>>> I am trying to generate a revenue and expense budget for calendar year
>> 2015, with twelve monthly periods. If I select 01/01/2014 as the start date
>> in the “Estimate Budget Values” dialog, I get accurate values (meaning
>> consistent with my 2014 spending) for January-November, but in December I
>> get a big negative number, and the total for the year is 0.00.
>>> 
>>> You can probably guess from the above that I close my books at the end
>> of each year using the "Tools:Close Book” menu item. Obviously the Estimate
>> feature is reading those closing entries just like any other entry—making
>> the whole feature essentially useless for me.
>>> 
>>> I know that GnuCash can “learn” to ignore those closing entries, because
>> it can generate accurate Income and Expense reports for any period so long
>> as the “Closing Entries Pattern” is filled in in the Options dialogue. How
>> complicated would it be to implement something similar for estimating
>> budget values? I.E., add a “Closing Entries pattern” field to the Estimate
>> Budget Values dialog? That would greatly enhance functionality of the
>> budgeting feature for users like me who do close the books at the end of
>> each year.
>>> 
>>> I guess for now I’ll probably stick to doing my budgeting in NeoOffice
>> Calc, but I’d love to see useable budgeting tools in a future version of
>> GnuCash.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> W Geoffrey O Black
>>> 
>>> wgoblack at gmail dot com
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Edward Doolittle
> Associate Professor of Mathematics
> First Nations University of Canada
> 1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2
> 
> « Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents
> et un ingrat. »
> -- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI
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