[Kmymoney] Monthly vs. yearly in budgets
Mikael Kujanpää
mahead at iki.fi
Sun Aug 7 11:55:04 BST 2022
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
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