This is a feature request.
An issue with budgets in MoneyGuru is that the current interface
makes it hard to follow whether the budgeted amounts are enough in
practice. The "budgeted" column in "profit & loss" has only a
limited use since:
-
If an account is over-budget, the budgeted value is always zero.
Not only is information lacking, it also hides the fact that there
is a problem (as discussed in #57 Visual budget threshold and #68 Show negative values for budget).
-
In past periods, all budgets are assumed to be consumed, and
displayed as zero. My understanding is that the budgeted value is a
function of the remaining time in the period, so as to calculate
available money in the period when the budget is over a longer
time. I don't understand the exact function, but the effect seems
to be that past period without remaining time always have a budget
of zero, even if there was an underspend in that period.
Virgil has explained the issues linked to the "budgeted" column
in "profit & loss", and I agree with him that it would result
in incoherent totals if negative values were allowed.
However, I think that the right place to provide the information
to track one's budgeting is in the "budgets" tab. In this tab, the
period indicator is visible, but not used as far as I can tell. My
idea would be as follows:
- Rename the "amount" column into "repeat amount";
- Add an "amount" column that is the budgeted amount over the
currently selected period (i.e. if the repeat amount is 100$, the
repeat is 1-monthly and the period is "Jan 2012 - Dec 2012", the
amount is 1200$).
- Add a "spent" column that is equal to the "current" value for
the budgeted account in "profit & loss" over the same
period.
- Add an "available" column that is similar to the value of the
"budgeted" column in "profit & loss", but can be negative. This
provides the currently missing information to see if one is over-
or under-budget in the selected period.
- Add a "total budget" line at the end of table that sums each
column. Amongst other, it will give an indication as to whether one
is spending overall more or less than budgeted.
I hope that my explanation is clear, and that my request makes
sense. In any case, I thank you a lot for all the good work you but
into the application.