On Sat, 2 Nov 2019 at 11:33, Jim Passmore <j...@passmore4.com> wrote:
> TL;DR--Summary lines are good, but poorly named. keep them. > > Regarding the summary lines, as already said Income and Expense totals are > self-explanatory. I'll try to explain a use-case for the other lines. > > First of all, let's ignore the "transfers" part for a bit. When I do a > budget, I'm concerned about inflows and outflows, and I do it all with > respect to my operating account (a personal checking account). In spite of > the double-entry approach to accounting, I don't fill in expected entries > to the operating account--just the budgeted income and expenses. Then you > can look at the totals to determine if your expected income will cover your > expenses and make decisions to adjust the budget (or at least maybe you're > willing for the account balance to decrease by the expense overage for that > budget period). Having a "Total" of Income-Expenses does the math for you, > and helps you determine how much more you can plan to spend, or how much > more income you need, etc. > > So now let's consider the "Transfers" line. If I want to budget some cash > to go into a savings account, I would enter the transfer amount into the > Asset account, and the end result to my operating account balance is > exactly the same as an expense--the balance goes down. Same thing applies > to paying down a liability--it's not an Expense in the strict accounting > sense, but it's an outflow from the operating account. After you collect > these, treating them the same as expenses in the "Total" line (i.e., > subtracting them, currently) is appropriate. > > I have no idea on a use-case for budgeting changes to equity. > > As for the names "Total" and "Transfers": > As it operates currently, "Total" is a poor name; "Difference" would be > more accurate. However, if you change the sign-reversal treatment you may > have positive income, negative expenses, and "Total" would be an accurate > choice. > > Transfers--isn't everything in double-entry accounting a transfer? :-) > > Just totaling the Income/Expense/etc. would force the budgeter to do the > math for each period. Having some sort of net at the bottom is very good. > Maybe call it "Net Budgeted Cash Flow"? After all, I'm describing a > planned cash flow. > > Hope this made sense. > Actually no. I'm keen to hear feedback with real-world data from real users. C _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
