On 31/01/2018 16:09, Christopher Lam wrote:
Hi Matt- I thought this should move to the devel list, because of
technical details, and this discussion will be very speculative.
I had a thought about how envelope budgeting could work: "divide your
paycheck into separate envelopes for different purposes".
A solution: *Create another type of transaction.*
There's already u(n)reconciled, (c)leared, (y)reconciled, (v)oid
transactions. And (f)rozen I believe is unused. Let's create a new type
- (b)udget. But the balances are handled differently.
[snip]
What do we think of this?
The budget balance for an asset account represents "money remaining to
allocate", and the budget balance for an expense account effectively
represents "the upper limit that I'll allow this account to be". The
budget balance, minus running balance represents "money left in
envelope". I can increase envelope contents by transferring budget money
from asset to the expense accounts.
I wouldn't know how to handle credit card nor loan interest.
I think it's an interesting thought experiment. The devil will be in the
details.
The advantage will be that the underlying code can handle this augmented
functionality without major difficulty (famous last words.)
this "problem" is already "solved" in our friendly ledger-cli applications.
It is *not* a case of gnc people not knowing what to do or how to do it.
for e.g. I am, at the moment, in the process of doing my multiple view
portfolio analysis starting from
https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Asset-Allocation
which is more or less what envelope budgeting is plus a bit.
see
https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Working-with-multiple-funds-and-accounts
The reason I don't think this is likely to get done in gnc any time soon
(think decades) is because the UI will never satisfy anyone.
My 2 free Trump cents.
--
Wm
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