[GNC] Budget report fails in multiple currencies

[Adrien Monteleone]

As long as the change in value isn't cumulative, I would want to know.

If I wanted to budget the same 'purchasing power' as last period/year, I 
would not want to budget the exact same nominal amount. (on that note, a 
feature to factor inflation for budgets would be swell!)

But I do understand that previous rates are no guarantee of future 
rates. (exchange or inflation) They provide a starting point though.

All of that would only affect my *next* budget, via Actual, not the 
current one. (it might also explain Variance) So I still think there's a 
potential bug.

Regards,
Adrien

On 1/7/23 11:35 AM, ml enquirer wrote:
> Hi Fred,
> 
> Thanks for the thought! I agree the change in value is 10,000. My point is,
> basically, that I don't care about currency fluctuations in money already
> spent when planning *next* year's budget.
> 
> But the 'problem' (which might just be that I need someone to explain what
> a 'budget' is!) is (at least) two fold:
> 1) When I think 'budget' I think "planning how much I can spend in this
> budget period". So I want the report to tell me that. If there are no
> transactions in any child account, I don't expect a non-zero total in the
> parent account. I certainly don't want a non-zero total that depends how
> long I've been using gnucash. In the first year of using Gnucash, this
> shows the total expense. In the 100th (hopefully!) year of using Gnucash,
> this mainly shows the currency fluctuation of the history of my grocery
> spending in years 0-99! These are totally different things, at least for
> the typical use of an expense account like 'groceries'.
> 2) The budget report and the budget view seem to show the totals
> aggregating in different ways. I would expect correspondence.
> 
> When you think "budgetting this year's groceries", why would you care about
> having to plan for the currency fluctuation in what has already been spent,
> and which is no longer available to spend, and which has no impact on what
> can be spent this year? Is there another report that you'd recommend that I
> use?
> 
> Let me be gently provocative: I think my described use-case is more widely
> relevant, at least for expense accounts if not for asset accounts ;) But as
> I keep on saying, I'm very ignorant of even basic accountancy techniques,
> so feel free to (gently) teach me!