[Kmymoney] Monthly vs. yearly in budgets

[Cristian Oneț]

2012/2/2 Mikael Kujanpää <mahead80 at nic.fi>:
> Hi! Could someone light what's the difference between using monthly or
> yearly field when creating budget? The only difference I have noticed is the
> amount that is entered, but in both cases it is used as equal monthly
> amounts.
>
> I created my first budget month ago. I based it on the old transactions by
> looking couple of years back, and then decided if I can budget some amount
> by monthly basis or by yearly. For example, the money I spend to rent is
> always same per month, so I can budget that amount by monthly. Then there
> are some other categories that I know I will use some amount per year, but I
> don't know exact months when that will happen. So I thought I can use the
> yearly field for those kind of categories.
>
> Unfortunately that didn't help, since the yearly amount is shared equally to
> all months, and it makes using budget reports quite difficult. Some fields
> are red because I have exceed the shared amount, while I know I'm well in
> budget in real life. Then there are some other fields with zero euros used,
> since I will spent money on them in coming months. But these categories are
> still calculated to budgeted monthly total, so therefore it looks like I
> have spent much less than I have budgeted.
>
> This, combined to the fact that transfers between accounts can't be traced
> in budgets (the liability problem that was asked in previous case), makes
> using the budget reports quite difficult. The total sum I got for the month
> isn't usable until I have deducted the loan payments and those categories
> that are budgeted by yearly basis but that weren't used in this month.
>
> I was wondering if the yearly amounts could be used in budget reports so
> that the monthly available sum is the sum that was budgeted deducted with
> sum that has been already used in previous months?
>
> 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.

Regards,
Cristian