Making sense of budgets in GnuCash - totally confused

[Richard Walker]

Many thanks Cheryl,

*"do you have more than one top-level Expense account?"*
That's it! My first reaction was no of course not, but I did have a rouge
expense account sitting - I must have created it accidentally.

*"The budgeting feature assumes that there is only one and does not work if
there are multiples"*
Yep - so I see.

Thanks again,
Richard.


On 5 March 2016 at 02:17, Cheryl Wheeler <c_wheeler_2002 at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> With respect to the budget totals, do you have more than one top-level
> Expense account? If you do, can you change the type of one of them (e.g.,
> to Bank) or delete one or merge them into just one Expense account? The
> budgeting feature assumes that there is only one and does not work if there
> are multiples (or so I was told when I asked a similar question a few
> months back).
>
> I'm not sure whether this also applies to top-level Asset and Liabilities
> accounts, but it may.
>
>
> On 2016-03-04 8:02 PM, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
>
>> Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 01:17:23 +0000
>> From: Richard Walker<trustmeimanengineer at gmail.com>
>> To:gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> Subject: Making sense of budgets in GnuCash - totally confused
>> Message-ID:
>>         <CAJh+dUBXLdxKvAZg6QM17Ont1uEcxgcArZ_Yp_rzMT=
>> n4OE0HA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I've been using GnuCash for a several years, but have just started trying
>> to use the budget tool.
>>
>> My goal is simple - I know approximately what money I'm expecting to come
>> in and go out, and I want to estimate what the balance will be in future
>> months. I've done this separately in a spreadsheet and I know what numbers
>> I'm expecting.
>>
>> I've read the budgeting documentation
>> <http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/budget_creation1.html
>> >and
>> budgeting
>> history wiki article,<http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Budget_History>but I'm
>> completely confused by the GnuCash budget tool.. I can't get things to add
>> up.
>>
>> It seems 'obvious' that the bottom 4 rows are displaying totals, and that
>> the income line should list the total income each period, expenses the
>> total expenses. However, I can't seem to find anything that affects these
>> lines - they always display 0 no matter what budget details are entered,
>> as
>> in the image below. Can anyone shed some light on this?
>>
>> I can't find a description of what the transfers line is supposed to be?
>>
>> The total line seems to ignore income and expenses, so I'm very confused
>> as
>> to what this is actually for! I must be missing something.
>>
>> I've also tried the "budget flow" report which looks more promising, but
>> I'm very confused by the way GnuCash is making things positive or negative
>> and I'm getting crazy numbers out. Happy to post an example.
>>
>> Any suggestions welcome.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Richard.
>>
>
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