A Budget Proposal - Virtual Accounts

[David T.]

OK. I was picturing a situation where the “Envelopes” were implemented as sub-accounts of your Checking Account, that is:

Assets:Checking
Assets:Checking:Auto
Assets:Checking:Rent
Assets:Checking:Etc.

And then buying gas would involve Expenses:Gas and Assets:Checking:Auto, while rebalancing would involve a transfer from Assets:Checking:Rent to Assets:Checking:Auto. In this situation, in basic register view, you would only have to change the number in each transaction once (since GnuCash Automagically adjusts the hidden split amount).

David

> On Jan 21, 2016, at 9:47 AM, Matt Kowske <jmk at cmail.nu> wrote:
> 
> True.. it does auto-fill which is helpful, but still requires me to change the amount in 4 different places. For example if GC auto-filled my last transaction on buying gas, that was $10.00 and this transaction is now $15.00 I need to change 10 to 15 in 4 different split lines:
> 
> 1)Assets: Checking
> 2) Expenses:Gas
> 3)Budget:Budgeted Money
> 4)Budget:Auto
> 
> This may not seem like much as a single entry, but when you have to do many transactions each week it quickly adds up. Bottom line is it is NOT as easy or streamlined as other products. I am aware that it requires resources to make this better (which I can't help with), but I'm simply stating what could be improved on.
> 
> Rebalancing of budget categories -- same deal.. it can be done manually I'm just looking for easier ways. I am going off past experience with Quicken, MS Money, Mint, etc. 
> 
> I don't doubt that GC is capable of this as is, but it's not simple and that turns a lot of people off (including me, but I deal with it because of the many advantages of GC). Software like YNAB is very attractive to the personal finance sector because of its ease of use and pretty interface. Since migrating to GC I spend a lot more time entering transactions than I used to. I think everyone would agree that trying to minimize time spent on data entry is a good thing.
> 
> 
> On 01/21/2016 07:37 AM, David T. wrote:
>> 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> <mailto: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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