How should I enter values on a budget in gnucash ?

[lejohnston]

Geert,

I have gone back and made entries in a test file.

First to you question of how to enter the scenerio in the budget: I think both should be positive numbers. The Asset would then cancel the Liability.

Second after making several entries and rerunning the report I still don't know that the report is intended to produce.

Although all of my accounts are highlighted to be included in the report none of the Income or Expense accounts are shown.

When I first ran the report it showed zero in all my Asset and Liability accounts (I had not budgeted anything in them). It did show Existing Assets as Zero (although I actually have several thousand dollars in my Asset accounts) and Unallocated Assets as: $1157 and New Retained Earnings as: $1157. This was at the end of January.

I then entered some data for income and expenses for February and ran the report again. This time the Unallocated Assets were: $362 as were the New Retained Earnings. I could see nothing in my Accounts that accounted for that difference.

Since the report is for the Accounting Period (I see no other options), in my case 2017, I wonder if shows Zero Assets because I had none at the end of 2016 (I started GNUCash as of January 1). I wondered if the report was projecting that I would have more income than I budgeted and that was why it showed Unallocated Assets. I did have more income that I budgeted in January, but not in February. However when I entered more income than I had budgeted for March and reran the report the Unallocated Assets remained at $362.

In my budget I then entered budget amounts for all of my Asset and Liability Acounts. Those amounts then appeared in the report when I reran it. I budgeted a total of $120 in my Asset accounts and $75 in my Liability Accounts. The Report now shows: Allocated Assets: $120, Unallocated Assets: $167, Total Assets: $287. It also shows New Liabilities as: $(75), New Retained Earnings as: $362, New Equity and Total Equity as $362 and Total Equity and Liability as: $287. 

All of the above numbers seem to add up. I still don't know where the Unallocated Assets and New Retained Earnings actually come from.

Since I do not know what this report is designed to report and it does not give me any information that I find useful I have stopped using it. However I would still like to understand it.

For my Budgeting purposes Phil L's 'Budget YTD Report' gives me most of the information I need (although there appear to be a couple of bugs, or at least things I don't understand in it).

I hope this helps,

Larry





On 03/01/17 02:31 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
> Background of my question: recently someone proposed a fix for the gnucash 
> budget balance sheet report [1] because it was showing incorrect values 
> (according to the poster).
> 
> As budgetting is an area of gnucash I'm not at all familiar with all, I'm 
> having trouble estimating whether the patch submitter really did discover a 
> bug and the fix is valid, or whether he is using the budget feature 
> incorrectly.
> 
> My question is simply this:
> I want to budget a repayment of a credit card (from my bank account).
> 
> How should I enter this in a budget:
> Bank: 100.00-
> Credit card: 100.00-
> 
> Or
> Bank: 100.00-
> Credit card: 100.00(+)
> 
> I would expect the latter as I think transactions need to balance. However the 
> other person expects the former.
> 
> I've read the gnucash documentation which is unfortunately not showing any 
> example or detail in this regard.
> 
> In addition there's an outstanding bug report [2] with the exact same request, 
> so answering this here, would solve two problems at once :)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Geert
> 
> 
> [1] https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/120
> [2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=689754
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