[Kmymoney] Monthly vs. yearly in budgets

[Mikael Kujanpää]

Cristian Oneț kirjoitti 3.2.2012 10:20:
> 2012/2/2 Mikael Kujanpää <mahead80 at nic.fi>:
>> For example. Let's assume I have category for computer games, with 
>> budgeted
>> yearly amount of 500 euros. Let's assume I spent 50 euros in January, 
>> so I
>> would have budget report that says for January:
>> 
>>       Used  Budgeted
>> Games   50      500
>> 
>> Then, in February I use 80 euros. In this point I think the budget 
>> report
>> should say for February:
>> 
>> 
>>       Used  Budgeted
>> Games   80      450
>> 
>> 
>> In the beginning of the March the month report should look like:
>> 
>>       Used  Budgeted
>> Games    0      370
>> 
>> 
>> The yearly report should look like this, after February:
>> 
>>       Used  Budgeted
>> Games  130      500
>> 
>> 
>> What do you think, would this kind of usage make sense, or am I 
>> thinking the
>> budgets somehow wrong way?
> 
> As a KMyMoney user I have exactly the same problem with yearly
> budgets. I remember that when I've first spotted this I've received
> the same explanation that Jack gave to this thread. That's a good
> description of *how the budget feature is implemented right now* but
> that does not mean that it should remain the way it is.
> 
> What I'm trying to say is that I totally agree that yearly budgets
> should work the way you've described above. I don't think that we have
> the development time right now to do this but nevertheless you should
> drop the above description as a wish at https://bugs.kde.org - produce
> kmymoney4 so it won't be forgotten.

Ten years have passed since we were discussing this. Sadly, the state of 
budgeting functionality have remained, and I haven't been able to use 
the budgeting functionality at all although it occasionally crosses my 
mind.

The workaround* presented in the thread -- at least in the way I 
understood it -- would cause the otherwise excellent budget reports to 
not display the actual transferred sums. Sure it would help with the 
planning part though.

*) "As a workaround this I have several expense categories marked "(only 
for budgeting)" and I assign the amounts needed for principal payment in 
the budget for these categories but I never actually record a 
transaction in these categories."

Today I started to think another kind of workaround. As suggested, I 
create the expense categories that what I want to budget, e.g. "car loan 
payments" and "house loan payments". But then, I have one more general 
"Book keeping" expense category.

In budget view I assign the monthly sum of 123 for the "House loan 
payments" category.

Now, to have the budget report to follow the loan payment expense 
transactions, I create the loan payment transaction this way:

House loan (this is the actual liability account): 123 euros
The interest: 10 euros
House loan payments: 123 euros
Book keeping category: -123 euros

(The interest category don't need this workaround, since it is already 
an category and not an account.)

This way the sums in the ledger match and the amount used per month for 
loans can be budgeted. Even the default reports that include every 
income and expense categories continue to work, since the expense 
category sums counter balance each other.

Within current limitations, this looks the best solution I could came 
up. But I haven't followed all the discussions for the last 10 years in 
this list, so if there are better solutions and / or my proposal has 
some fatal flaws, I would be happy to hear it out. :)

Mikael