A Budget Proposal - Virtual Accounts

[David T.]

GnuCash does automatically fill in transaction data using prior entries, which would seemingly fulfill your first issue. Does it not, and if not, why not?

As for the need to manually rebalance your accounts, I don’t see how the software sould accomplish this is a wide range of use cases, and I also don’t see that this is an undue burden. I manually enter transactions into GnuCash all the time.

David

> On Jan 21, 2016, at 7:08 AM, jmk <jmk at cmail.nu> wrote:
> 
> On 01/14/2016 10:04 AM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
>> On 1/14/2016 12:27 AM, Andrew Beard wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> My proposal for handling budgets in GNUcash is to elevate the idea of
>>> an ‘envelope’ account to a new level.  In particular, I propose the
>>> creation of a new ‘virtual’ account type.  By ‘virtual’ account I
>>> mean simply an account which calculates balances and maintains totals
>>> but the transactions themselves always belong to the ‘real’ parent
>>> account (e.g. a bank checking account).
>>> 
>>> Cash envelopes themselves provide a nice case-in-point.  When a
>>> person uses actual envelopes to budget their cash, the amount of the
>>> asset - cash - is the same regardless of how many envelopes they
>>> might have split it into.  However, when somebody spends from an
>>> envelope, they have done two things:
>>>    1) Decreased their budgeted amount for that envelope category (or
>>> budget).
>>>    2) Decreased their Cash asset amount.
>>> The envelope (or virtual account) balance has decreased, but the
>>> actual cash asset has decreased as well.  Said another way, *both*
>>> ‘accounts' have decreased, but one asset is real (cash) and the other
>>> is ethereal (your idea of where that money should have gone).
>> 
>> 
>> Useful that you referred back to the original way "envelope budgeting"
>> worked back when it was physical bills in physical envelopes. Please
>> take another look at that PROCESS (what you would have been doing).
>> You will see that you DON'T need anything else in gnucash. Or rather,
>> you want these "virtual accounts" to play the role magic might have
>> (bills magically moving from their envelope to your wallet instead of
>> you having to actually touch them).
>> 
>> In the old days ---- you went shopping and spent $10 out of your
>> wallet to buy groceries. When you got home, you took $10 out of the
>> groceries envelope and put that into your wallet. OR, perhaps you knew
>> you were going to go grocery shopping, so before leaving home you took
>> $10 from the envelope and put that in your wallet. OK so far?
>> 
>> Assuming those were real accounts in gnucash, what would those look
>> like? Do you really have a problem seeing what those transactions
>> would be? Your "virtual accounts" are intended to make the bills
>> "jump" in between your wallet and the appropriate envelope so you
>> didn't have to actually enter that part of the overall transaction.
>> 
>> Look, this sort of thing (having to enter more of a transaction) is
>> NOT limited to budgeting. Since small amounts, I do not have separate
>> bank accounts for each restricted fund.  So when an expense is paid
>> that qualifies for one of those restricted funds being used, besides
>> cash and the expense, also a transfer from restricted to unrestricted
>> (the main part of the bank account). When recording a sale of goods,
>> not just sales and cash affected but also goods inventory and "cost of
>> goods sold".
>> 
>> So here (envelope budgeting) not just cash (wallet) and particular
>> expense account but also wallet and the particular envelope. Nothing
>> virtual involved.
>> 
>> Michael D Novack
> 
> While I agree that envelope budgeting CAN be done in GNUcash as is (no
> need for virtual accounts) it is cumbersome and a lot of work. Perhaps
> virtual accounts are not needed, but what I see as needed then is some
> way to set up relationships from one account to another. The process of
> entering transactions to and from the "envelopes" should be automatic.
> When I enter a transaction for Auto:Gas it should know (by previous
> setup from the user) and automatically deduct from the Auto/Car budget
> category.
> 
> Additionally I would like to see a way to rebalance amounts from
> different envelopes. Again, this CAN be done with manual transactions
> but some assistance from the program would be a time saver.
> 
> Both of the above I've experienced with other budgeting software I've
> used and would love to see this in GC too.
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