How are the budget totals calculated

[David Carlson]

On 3/2/2015 5:27 AM, David wrote:
> I just made three new budgets yesterday and noticed a few things that
> affected the totals on the bottom.
>
> 1.  If I had a sub account such as Auto : Maintenance in the expenses and
> inadvertently placed the amount in the parent column, et Auto instead of
> maintenance, it did not matter what I did to correct it, the total expense
> line would not change by that amount.  Had to start with a fresh blank
> budget.
>
> 2. The same for transfers.
>
> 3. I was shocked by the fact I had to place a negative number in the
> Liability column.  Say if I budgeted $50 for my Gas card I had to enter it
> as -50, same with the Mortgage principal payment.
>
> If you put a figure into the parent account, it does not matter what you put
> in any child account, the only thing that makes it to the totoal line is
> what you put into the parent account.  You can tell visually by the text
> being dark if directly entered into the parent and light if it is a sum of
> the child accounts.  
>
> I kept after it until the my total line was equal to my spreadsheet program
> that I used to fill in the budget in GC.
>
> The Total line at bottom is calculated Income - Expenses - Transfers.
>
> <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/n4676609/Selection_006.png> 
>
>
>
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Regarding items 1 and 2, which are the gist of David's comment, I agree
that if one uses the delete key, for example, to remove any value from a
parent account, then the child account amounts should re-appear, or even
better, all parent amounts should always be the sum of whatever is in
the child accounts and the parent account.

Regarding item 3, I think that budgets should respect the setting Edit >
Preferences > Accounts > Reverse Balanced Accounts, whichever of the
three choices is selected. 

I believe there are a few other places in GnuCash where the setting Edit
> Preferences > Accounts > Reverse Balanced Accounts is not strictly
respected, such as in summary lines at the bottom of account registers.

David C