Budget advise - DIY or use the built-in?

[Oon-Ee Ng]

Thanks Aaron,

The issue (for me) would be that my assets include various accounts.
Let's say I have a savings account with Bank A and a fixed deposit
with Bank B. If I'm saving up 500 dollars this month for my vacation
next year, I'm 'forced' to have it entirely in one or the other
accounts. Or I can do various convoluted schemes (e.g. Assets:Fixed
Deposit:Vacation and Assets:Savings:Vacation) which wouldn't give me
an overview of Vacation.

Perhaps this is a limiting factor for double-entry accounting?

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 4:29 AM, Aaron Laws <dartme18 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Oon-Ee Ng <ngoonee.talk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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?
>
>
> I'm not a professional nor licensed accountant. I've used gnucash for a few
> years now for personal and business accounting.
>
> It does seem possible to follow allmybrain's advice and set up the books
> according to his recommendation. I would create the budget accounts
> (Budget:Food for example) as assets rather than liabilities. (Think about
> when you don't spend all the money budgeted, do you really have remaining
> liabilities, or remaining assets?)
>
> If you're just looking for a relatively small number of budgeting accounts,
> consider creating subaccounts of your actual asset accounts that are holding
> the money. For instance, if you want to save up for a vacation in your
> chequing account, create an Assets:Chequing:Vacation account and move money
> from Chequing to Vacation as desired. The balance of Vacation is visible at
> a glance, and even simulates an encumbrance on the funds by reducing the
> chequing account balance. (In this case, before you reconcile your Chequing
> account, do a no-balance-change reconciliation to reconcile all the Chequing
> to Vacation transactions.)