On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Dave Wells <[email protected]> wrote:
> OK, thanks. The problem with the approach you suggest, though, is
> that I still want to set actual categories
> (e.g. Expenses:Shopping:Software) on all purchases, I just don't
> necessarily want a separate budget for each category. I suppose I
> can have sub-accounts of Expenses:Misc, but then I lose the
> flexibility of later introducing a budget for a previously
> miscellaneous account. Plus "Misc" isn't really intrinsic to the
> transaction, but an artifact of the budget.
I budget this way, as I too have also found putting balances in
accounts that have children to be confusing and unhelpful.
But I do track real categories. To track the budget, I add automated
transactions that translate real activity into virtual
activity. Ledger treats my budget transactions as virtual, so this
maps pretty well: real is real, and budget is virtual/imagined.
To capture your Expense:Shopping:Software transactions, and 'move'
them into Expense:Misc (or whatever your budget fund is called -- I
call mine "Fund:*").
= /Expense:Shopping/
[$account] -1
[Expense:Misc] 1
That automatically makes a new virtual post that backs-out the post to
Expense:Shopping:Software, and balances that with a virtual
expendature to the budgeted account Expense:Misc.
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