Hi Edward and others. For a few weeks I've been reviewing the budget module.
It's true that the budget *editor* prematurely reverses the signs of amounts, handling period amounts (i.e. changes in amounts in a period) assuming sign-reversals is set as credit-accounts. The advantage is positive numbers throughout: budgeted expense +ve, budgeted income +ve, and stored internally as such. This despite the equation whereby incomes normally becomes more negative with time, therefore budgeted income should be -ve. The budget *viewer* simply reports the numbers as-is i.e. positive numbers everywhere. The amounts are reversed where appropriate for processing in reports. The difficulty is that the budget editor/viewer/reports do not show consistent amounts when sign-reversal pref is changed. It is being planned that: internally-stored budget amounts will be modified in 4.0 onwards to reflect the internal changes. Therefore budgeted income *internal* amounts will be negative. The editor and the viewer will respond to sign-reversal preference. The reports will also be sensitive to it. But the outcome will be a more consistent experience with the editor/viewer/reports especially when preference is modified. The worst case scenario may be instead of Income Bgt=$100, Act=$99, Diff=$1, the report may display Bgt=-$100 Act=-$99 Diff=-$1. Without this change the worst case report would be "Income Bgt=$100, Act=-$99, Diff=$199" when the wrong sign-reversal preference is used. This requires that GnuCash 4.0 onwards will perform a one-time fix to modify the signs of budget internal amounts. It is hoped that the budget editor&viewer will be more intuitive, and the reports will be consistent as well. But it will have to make educated guesses about the previously created budgets... I tend to think that most people will have created them using Sign Reverses = Credit Accounts preference, but cannot really confirm. I think the budgets just don't work well with other sign reversal options. So the question to everyone using budgets is -- is it safe to assume most of you are using General / Sign Reverses pref = Credit Accounts? On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 at 08:31, Edward Doolittle <edward.doolit...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello Geert, David T., Everyone, > > I had a chance to spend a few minutes with the budget module, to try to > make sense of the signs. > > First, Here's what I expect: With Edit -> Preferences -> Accounts -> > Reverse Balanced accounts set to "None", I would expect positive values in > the budget to correspond to debits. With Edit -> Preferences -> Accounts -> > Reverse Balanced accounts set to "Credit accounts", I would expect positive > values in Assets and Expenses to correspond to debits, and positive values > in Equity, Income, and Liabilities to correspond to credits. > > What actually happens: The budget module appears to be insensitive to the > Reversed Balanced accounts setting. However, its operation does correspond > to "reverse credit accounts"; to be specific, positive amounts entered into > Assets or Expenses correspond to debits, and positive values in Income or > Liabilities correspond to credits. > > (See attached screen shot, in which (for the first six months of the budget > I chose a pair of account types and entered +100 into the corresponding > spaces in the budget. You can see that +100 corresponds to a debit for > debit accounts and a credit for credit accounts.) > > To answer Geert's original question, to pay down a debt using an asset you > would enter -100 in the asset account (credit the asset) and -100 in the > liability account (debit the liability). That is how the budget module > would represent that transaction, and how folks using the "reverse credit > accounts" feature would understand it to be. > > For those who prefer setting "Reverse Balanced accounts" to "None", Geert's > suggestion of representing the transaction by -100 to assets and +100 to > liabilities would be correct. But those people would be in the minority I > suppose. > > What is still wrong with the budget module: > > 1) The module should be sensitive to the setting of "Reverse balanced > accounts". It currently does not seem to be, that I could tell. > > 2) The "Transfers" summary line shows the net effect of budgeting amounts > to assets and liabilities. However, the transfers line is like a debit > account, which causes the sign to switch in a disconcerting way when > liabilities are budgeted. (See months 5 and 6, i.e., July and August, in > the screenshot.) I suggest breaking the Transfers line apart into Assets > and Liabilities, or, at least, showing the formula by which it is computed > in the row title (i.e., "Transfers (Transfers to Assets - Transfers from > Liabilities)" (that is, if "reverse credit accounts" is in effect)). > > However, there's no reason to assume that an entry of type "Transfers" > would be like a debit account, so instead I suggest it would be better to > get rid of the "Transfers" summary line altogether and instead include > separate lines for "Transfers to Assets" and "Transfers from Liabilities". > > (To compound the issue, the Total line seems to be a credit account, of > type Equity perhaps, which can cause a sign to bounce twice as we follow it > through. +100 in Liabilities becomes -100 in the Transfers summary line > which becomes +100 in the Total summary line.) > > 3) The Total row title should include the formula by which it is > calculated, i.e., (when "reverse credit accounts" is in effect) the row > title should be "Total (Income - Expenses - Transfers to Assets + Transfers > from Liabilities)". > > 4) Since the use of negative signs in Liabilities is confusing to many > people, this all should be carefully documented somewhere. > > 5) Note there is something odd happening in the last four months of my > artificial budget when I involve "Equity". I think this means that we > should think about the Total row in the budget as a credit account of type > Equity, so transfers to/from Equity have no effect on the Total. Still, it > seems kind of odd. I would suggest including Equity in the summary rows at > the bottom (Transfers from Equity) and in the Total, which would then be > "Total (Income - Expenses - Transfers to Assets + Transfers from > Liabilities + Transfers from Equity)". > > 6) There seem to be some other problems with the budget module that not > everyone has. The budget module eats up a lot of compute cycles on my > Windows machine, making it very slow to respond to typing, but not on my > Mac. And I have trouble with one of my credit cards not being rolled up > into the total Liabilities correctly. I'll have to spend some more time > tracking those problems down. > > 7) I haven't begun to address the budget reports, but the budget balance > sheet does seem to be wrong, as Larry and others have noted. > > Edward > > > On 1 March 2017 at 06:10, David T. via gnucash-user < > gnucash-user@gnucash.org> wrote: > > > > > > On Mar 1, 2017, at 3:30 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnuc...@kobaltwit.be > > > > wrote: > > > > > > Background of my question: recently someone proposed a fix for the > > gnucash > > > budget balance sheet report [1] because it was showing incorrect values > > > (according to the poster). > > > > > > As budgetting is an area of gnucash I'm not at all familiar with all, > I'm > > > having trouble estimating whether the patch submitter really did > > discover a > > > bug and the fix is valid, or whether he is using the budget feature > > > incorrectly. > > > > > > My question is simply this: > > > I want to budget a repayment of a credit card (from my bank account). > > > > > > How should I enter this in a budget: > > > Bank: 100.00- > > > Credit card: 100.00- > > > > > > Or > > > Bank: 100.00- > > > Credit card: 100.00(+) > > > > > > I would expect the latter as I think transactions need to balance. > > However the > > > other person expects the former. > > > > > > I've read the gnucash documentation which is unfortunately not showing > > any > > > example or detail in this regard. > > > > > > In addition there's an outstanding bug report [2] with the exact same > > request, > > > so answering this here, would solve two problems at once :) > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > > Geert > > > > > > > > > [1] https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/120 > > > [2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=689754 > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gnucash-user mailing list > > > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > > > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > > > ----- > > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > > > > Geert, > > > > I’ll begin by saying I may misunderstand the original problem, but when I > > look at the Budget Balance report, I frankly think that it is screwed up > in > > more significant ways than how it represents liabilities. > > > > As to the original problem, I think there is a disconnect between how the > > budget features operate, and how the rest of the application operates, > > which the bug hints at. In reference to the comments on the pull > request, I > > turned off Preferences->Reverse Signs, and looked at the results of both > > the CoA and Budget info. What I noticed: the Budget values *don’t* change > > with the preference, but the report and the CoA *do* change. In other > > words, if I change the preference to reverse Income & Expense accounts, > the > > CoA reflects this (i.e, they both display as positive values), but the > > values in the budget seemingly remain as originally calculated, with > > negative values. I am not clear on what exactly is happening, because the > > report seems to still work, even though the budget numbers retain their > > original values. If I recalculate the budget numbers, however, they take > on > > (and keep) the current signs. The report continues to behave > consistently, > > regardless of the sign displayed in the budget. So, it is not clear > whether > > one should enter a negative value (reduce the liability by entering a > > negative number in the budget) or a positive one. > > > > So, it seems to me that it is perhaps very understandable that a user > > would receive confusing results. It is not clear to me what the > resolution > > is, except to say that the current situation is highly confusing. > > > > Be all that as it may, the report itself is fundamentally troubling for > > me. For starters, which accounts is it including, and for what purpose? > > When I run this report, I get a listing of every account in my > > file—regardless of whether accounts are hidden, empty, zero balance, or > > part of the budget. It would seem to me that the Budget Balance Sheet > would > > only include accounts that the user has designated in the underlying > > budget. This is not helped by the fact that the options to exclude zero > > balance/zero value accounts doesn’t seem to work. > > > > Next, it is very difficult to determine that this report apparently is > > tallying up the numbers from the budget entries. At least, based on the > > liability account that I was using to examine this bug’s behavior, that’s > > what it seems to do. I don’t know for sure, however, because none of the > > other numbers seem to match from the budget the the report. Confusing the > > matter is the fact that values turn up for accounts without budget > > numbers—in my case, the report includes commodity holdings info, even > > though they are not part of the budget. So, it is anyone’s guess what the > > report actually includes. > > > > David > > _______________________________________________ > > gnucash-user mailing list > > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > > ----- > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > > > > > > -- > Edward Doolittle > Associate Professor of Mathematics > First Nations University of Canada > 1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2 > > « Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents > et un ingrat. » > -- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > 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. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.