[GNC] How to use Budget ?

[Adrien Monteleone]

I’m not quite following you on how you think GnuCash is telling you that you are overspending.

The way the budget module works, you input how much you budget to receive in a period.

You then budget how much you are going to spend on various expenses, as well as transfers, if any. (transfers would be ’to’ savings or ‘paying off’ liabilities)

The more recent version (3.8) made this more difficult by removing the ’total’ line from the bottom summary. This has been fixed in the development version and should be available when 3.9 is released in a few weeks. The result will be that you see how much of the budgeted revenue has not been budgeted to be spent or transferred to other assets or paying down liabilities. (or seeing that you have ‘over-budgeted’ outflows)

If you have built up a savings from a previous period and budget some of that to be spent you should not be seeing an ‘overspending’ condition. If you are, then that might be a bug in the current way the summary is calculated.

For example, if in January you budgeted:

Revenue: 1000
Savings: 200
Expenses: 700
Liabilities: 100

That would ’net’ to zero, all revenue has been allocated - so far - so good.

Then in February you budgeted:

Revenue: 1000
Savings: -200
Expenses: 1100
Liabilities: 100

That should still net to zero. You’ve used 200 from savings to make up for the lack of revenue to cover expenses and liability payments.

If the budget module is *not* showing this, then you’ve found a bug. Please report it soon so it can be fixed in time for 3.9.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Mar 5, 2020 w10d65, at 10:38 PM, Long <Phamhoanglongvn at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> i want to planning my finances follow 50/30/20 style. Because i don't want
> to budgeting for each accounts which i never know will i buy it for that
> month, that take so much things to do.
> 
> But when i do that, i will have some trouble.
> i assume that, every month i will spend about 1000, and i had budgeting my
> expense for 1000 and saving to buy something if i want, And When i spent, i
> open Budget Report, I will overspending because GnuCash Budget always add
> All my actual to the Top Level Expense.
> This is weird, i don't overspending, Because i'm only used 1000 for that
> month like i planned, i just use my saving (budgeted) to buy what i need, i
> don't overspending because I'm not used over 1000 for that month.
> 
> Please help me, tell me if i misunderstanding something.
> 
> Thank for take your time to help me and sorry for my bad English.