First, what is your global Reverse Balanced preference (Edit / Preference / Accounts / Reversed Balance)?
On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 at 07:07, Tommy Trussell <tommy.truss...@gmail.com> wrote: > Does anyone use the Budget features in GnuCash? I have been giving it a try > and am finding some aspects quite puzzling. I have never been trained in > budgets so maybe I need to read up on some particular methodology to make > better sense of it. Maybe someone can weigh in with some background. > > A few weeks ago I asked about the lack of account codes in budgets and > budget reports and got no response. I wasn't surprised as I am sure very > few folks use account codes in GnuCash. I did open bug #797489. > https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797489 > > My greatest astonishment with Budgets has been that all the INCOME numbers > on the budget show as NEGATIVE. Is this by design? I have concluded this > must be a bug, but maybe I'm doing something wrong, so I thought I would > ask here before reporting it. > > As a result of the negative income figures, to project budgeted income I > have to enter income figures into the budget as negatives. Regardless the > budgeted and actuals (by default) "normally" get displayed RED. (!) Then > when I'm looking at the numbers, I have to tell myself that when looking at > incomes, negative (red) incomes and differences are "good" and positive > (black) income difference numbers are "bad." Is that right? I'm never > certain. But I'm easily confused. Well, needless to say budgeted income > numbers are darned hard to read. > > I keep wanting a way to pair up particular income and expense accounts in a > budget so they offset each other. I realize this may be beyond the scope of > the budget feature, but that one thing would it a lot easier to track > encumbered or designated funds. (The budget I'm working with is for a > church.) While I'm wishing, maybe budget and actual income and expense > amounts could be grouped and added or subtracted usefully using some > additional factor, such as account codes or search strings. > > When entering budget amounts it would sometimes be useful to be able to > enter one annual amount OR separate monthly budget amounts. But even with > the existing design, when entering budget figures over multiple months it > would be great if GnuCash could handle the math rather than having to > divide by 12 on a calculator. At the very least it could parse math > expressions like it does in the registers. I opened bug #727488 for this > one. > https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797488 > > GnuCash contains several specialized Budget reports... but I suspect most > haven't been fully implemented or tested. (I haven't opened any bugs for > the following.) > > The "Budget Report" works pretty well, but if you turn on all the columns > and try to print it, you lose everything off the right side. (In other > words, the report paginates properly vertically, but not horizontally.) > > Fortunately the Budget Report exports quite easily, so I can turn on as > many columns I want and export the report and import it into a spreadsheet. > With reformatting (like changing fonts and freezing column and row > headings), a spreadsheet is a great way to view the budget numbers. > Unfortunately copying and pasting into a spreadsheet from this report > doesn't work reliably. You have to use the export feature. > > The Budget Chart report works, after a fashion. But its two chart options > are limited and inflexible. I suspect exporting the Budget Report to a > spreadsheet would be a better basis for generating charts. > > I am not certain I understand the purpose of the "Budget Income Statement" > or "Budget Profit & Loss" They seem to show only budgeted amounts, not > actuals. Are they intended to "test" a proposed budget for sanity? My > negative budget amounts to workaround the negative income numbers (noted > above) are not compatible with these reports because they work just the > same as GnuCash's regular reports elsewhere. > > The "Budget Balance Sheet" and "Budget Flow" reports ... I do not > understand how these reports could ever be used. What is the effective date > of the Balance Sheet? It's not labeled, nor is it adjustable (unless I > missed something). The flow report has no label to show the selected budget > period, and no labels over the columns, so even if it contains some useful > data, it's inscrutable. Furthermore, the flow report provides only a very > limited period display option -- just one period at a time, no multiple > period options. > _______________________________________________ > 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. > _______________________________________________ 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. 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