Thanks to both of you for your input, and to Lifepillar for introducing me to the “budget” command. I had previously not used it because I had ledger aliased to 'ledger -E -V’ ; interestingly running the budget subcommand with those options in combination (but neither singly) will crash the program.
> On Oct 2, 2016, at 3:33 PM, Lifepillar <lifepil...@lifepillar.me> wrote: > > On 2016-10-02 17:35:07 +0000, John Wiegley said: > >>>>>>> "L" == Lifepillar <lifepil...@lifepillar.me> writes: >> L> Re (1), I believe that it is a good idea not to have nested accounts in >> the >> L> budget, the way you have. In other words, I think that reports would make >> L> more sense if you used: >> Although, there's a useful meaning here. Say my budget were: >> ~ Monthly >> Expenses:Food $50.00 >> Expenses:Food:Dining $20.00 >> Assets >> This says that I want to spend no more than $50 on food in a given month; and >> that further, of that $50, I'd like no more than $20 to be spent on dining. > > Sure, but that does not seem well supported by Ledger, e.g., `ledger budget` > outputs: > > 0 $70.00 $70.00 0 > Expenses:Food > 0 $20.00 $20.00 0 Dining > ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----- > 0 $70.00 $70.00 0 > Actual Budgeted Remaining Used > > Ditto for --budget. At least, you should do this instead: > >> ~ Monthly >> Expenses:Food:Dining $20.00 >> Expenses:Food $30.00 >> Assets > > Say you spend $40 on food and $10 on dining out, then you'll get: > > $50.00 $50.00 0 100% > Expenses:Food > $10.00 $20.00 $10.00 50% Dining > ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----- > $50.00 $50.00 0 100% > Actual Budgeted Remaining Used > > > which is a fine report. The problem is that the budget seems inconsistent with > the report. IMHO, avoiding subaccounts is a good compromise, e.g., > > ~ Monthly > Expenses:Food:Other $30.00 > Expenses:Food:Dining $20.00 > Assets > > 2016/10/02 * Other > Expenses:Food:Other $40.00 > Expenses:Food:Dining $10.00 > Assets > > ledger budget exp > > $50.00 $50.00 0 100% > Expenses:Food > $10.00 $20.00 $10.00 50% Dining > $40.00 $30.00 $-10.00 133% Other > ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----- > $50.00 $50.00 0 100% > Actual Budgeted Remaining Used > > I still see that I am within budget overall. Besides, the report looks in > accordance > with the way the budget is defined. It does give the impression that I've > overspent > in a category, though. > > In this example, one may prefer the former method, but in a more complex > budget > it may get confusing, I believe. > > Life > > > -- > > --- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "Ledger" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/ledger-cli/UdwJnM6MSL8/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > ledger-cli+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ledger-cli+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
