Budget advise - DIY or use the built-in?

[Oon-Ee Ng]

I tried using Gnucash's budget some years ago but never really saw the
benefit. However with 2 young children added to my (fiscal)
liabilities I'm taking another look. For background, I have full
financial records including cash balances, accounts, loans, and
spending for the past... 5 years or so.

The thing about Gnucash's budget (to me) is its quite hard for me to
tell how much I have left in a budget when quickly checking things
out. Also carrying over year on year is very manual. I've read [1]
which was linked in the wiki, but it seems a big hassle to have
intermediate accounts for this purpose (not to mention this wouldn't
work if I'm not holding money as cash, for example if I've placed some
in a short term fixed deposit).

Are there any general/specific suggestions for budgeting using
Gnucash? Or am I just trying to shoehorn accounting and budgeting
together in a bad way?

My main goal is to be able to tell fairly quickly (at a glance, if
possible) the answer to the following questions:-

1. Am I on track with budgeted savings (vacations, kids' education
fund, etc.)? This is separate from retirement/life savings.
2. How much of budget X have I spent this month/quarter/year (where X
can be one of clothes, gadgets, movies etc.)?
3. How much more can I afford to spend of budget X this month/quarter/year?

Ideally amounts in a budget carry over and are transferable, so if I
haven't managed to watch a movie in the cinemas for 2 and a half years
(coincidentally that's my son's age) I would either see a large amount
building up in that budget or be able to transfer it to the
'children's toys' budget.

Thanks.

[1] http://allmybrain.com/2008/12/15/better-budgeting-with-gnucash/