How should I enter values on a budget in gnucash ?

[Edward Doolittle]

On 1 March 2017 at 11:48, lejohnston <lejohnston at dccnet.com> wrote:

I do not budget for funds moving between Asset and Liability accounts. I
> can not see what purpose that would serve.
>

If the transfer is one-way, it will have a significant effect that you
should consider when budgeting. For example, if you have a car loan, the
payment goes one way (partly to pay down the loan, partly as interest
expense). You won't see that money again, at least not in the short term.
So such payments should be considered in your budget.

On the other hand, the net effect on my chequing account after a month's
transactions is approximately zero, so I don't include it in my budget. The
same with my credit cards.


> Perhaps you would budget an Increase in you Savings Account or Retirement
> (in Canada RRSP) Account, but I am not sure you would budget a
> Decrease in your Checking Account. However I deal with this by having an
> Expense Account called Savings and another called RRSP. In these two cases
> I have been thinking about starting to use those two Asset Accounts in the
> budget rather than having Expense Accounts for them. I have not yet thought
> through how it would work though.
>

Gah! I strongly recommend you don't do that. Savings is an asset. RRSP is
an asset or an investment (another kind of asset).

The budget system more or less works now, even for asset and liability
accounts. There is just some confusion about the sign, which is positive or
negative when it should be negative or positive. (Or something like that
:-) )

E

-- 
Edward Doolittle
Associate Professor of Mathematics
First Nations University of Canada
1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2

« Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents
et un ingrat. »
-- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI