Budget

[imendes]

I think that the budget should show the transactions that are scheduled, so we can have a realistic idea of the budget for that year.

[stanbusk]

I take note.

[imendes]

Also, in my opinion (see in other programs), and it's very useful, iCash should have in budget the actual value of the account and another column where we put the forecast for that account for the period (year), so we can compare the those two values. It would be very interesting if exists a colunm with the percentage of the desviation.

Thank you

[stanbusk]

Yes, we are ready to add this soon. It is a top request right now.

[aleiacono]

Just installed release 4.3 and appreciated that budget has improved. Now there are comparison columns that can be useful, but the problem now is that the comparison is made vs. the full year budget (i.e. 1st quarter balance vs. full year budget) and, therefore is hard to make a realistic comparison (as well as the deviation % have no sense). It would be better to split the budget at least in quarters (the info are already there) and compare it vs. the balance at that date.

[stanbusk]

A budget is not necessarily for a full year. It can be for a month, a Quarter... You can perfectly create a budget called 'April' and compare it to current april data.

[MonHawk]

When you define the budget in iCash, you are explicitly stating monthly, (and therefore annual) figures.

So when you tick the compare box, and choose a particular Month, the variations should be for a month.

Equally, if you choose Last Year, the variations should be for a year.

But if you choose Current Year, then iCash should be able to work out what period that is (ie almost 4 months if you do it today) and do the variations accordingly (ie compare against a third of the budget).

I think the following 2 features would make this budget feature really fantastic:

1) Have an extra column in there, before "Chosen Period" and "Variation", which would be "Budget for this period" - which would show either 1 month's worth, or 12 month's worth, or whatever length of time is in the Chosen Period (from the Compare With: dropdown)

2) Have an extra option in the "Compare With" dropdown which is custom dates.

[MonHawk]

Sorry, the first point of my previous post wasn't correct. I have just been playing round with automatically calculcating a budget based on eg "last month", or "last quarter" or "last 12 months".

I'm not sure the default behaviour of the budget calculation works quite as I expected, which I will try to explain with an example expense account that has 120 going out per month - every month.

If I do a budget based on "last 12 months", then this expense shows a total of 1440, and 120, with "Monthly" chosen as the Interval dropdown. This seems great.

If I now do a budget based on "last month", then the total is 120, and it now shows 10 "Monthly" - which doesn't make sense.

Even though I've chosen "Last Month" as the period to base the budget on, there is still an implicit assumption that the total amount is an annual amount, and the Interval Amount is a monthly amount.

Which is why I said what I said at the beginning of the last post.

I would still be interested in your comment on my 2 feature suggestions however.

Kind regards, Monique

[stanbusk]

This is correct, you can't create budgets for a period smaller than a month. At least not with the current version. Are you looking to do weekly budgets? or just the possibility to set custom start and en dates?

[MonHawk]

No personally I don't do weekly budgets - it is just that when you create a new budget, and choose "Last Month" as a period, then press Calculate, you get a rather odd set of figures. The budget does not seem to be "aware" of what length of time it is for, and I think it should be aware of this.

The way I personally want to use budgets is create an annual one, by putting in lots of monthly figures (I used "Last 12 months" as a start-point to my budget, and this worked brilliantly).

What I then want however, as the current year progresses, is to see how I'm doing against my budget. So at the end of January I want to compare January against 1/12 of the annual budget. At the end of February I want to be able to input custom dates (1st Jan to 28th Feb) and compare those two months against 2/12 of the annual budget. I'd probably also compare just Feb against 1/12 of the annual budget. And so on as the year progresses.

So I would ideally want the following features:
1) a feature to input my custom dates (1st Jan to 28th Feb for example),

2) a column before the "Actual Amounts" which has the correct fraction of the Annual Budgets (eg 1/12 of 2/12 as described in above example)

3) totals at the bottom - of both the pro-ratad budget and the actual amounts.

Would this be possible in a future enhancement?

[stanbusk]

I agree with #1 and it is easy to add.

I don't understand why a new column for #2, where do you set that fraction? I guess not in the column as you would have to edit a lot of rows, right?

About #3, you want budget P&L, (real) data P&L and the difference, right? Below the budget.

[MonHawk]

to explain #2, let me show an example:

Currently, if I select my annual budget, tick the Compare With box and choose January, I get something like:

Cat/Acc Amount Interval Total January Variation

Income A 100 Monthly 1200 80 some huge %
Income B 20 Monthly 240 30 some huge %
Expense A -50 Monthly -600 -45 some huge %
Expense B -40 Monthly -480 -42 some huge %


What I would like to be able to see is (note the extra column, and the totals row):

Cat/Acc Amount Interval Total Jan Budget Jan Actual Variation
Income A 100 Monthly 1200 100 80 meaningful %
Income B 20 Monthly 240 20 30 meaningful %
Expense A -50 Monthly -600 -50 -45 meaningful %
Expense B -40 Monthly -480 -40 -42 meaningful %
Total 360 30 23 meaningful %

And if now, instead of selecting just January to compare against, I selected say 1st Jan - 15th March, then that's 2.5 months worth, so now I'd like to see

Cat/Acc Amount Interval Total Period Budget Period Actual Variation
Income A 100 Monthly 1200 250 210 meaningful %
Income B 20 Monthly 240 50 55 meaningful %
Expense A -50 Monthly -600 -125 -115 meaningful %
Expense B -40 Monthly -480 -100 -80 meaningful %
Total 360 75 70 meaningful %

Sorry if it doesn't line up properly. Does this make sense?

Ie the

Monique

[MonHawk]

Sorry, here it is a (tiny bit) better formatted:

Code:

Cat/Acc    Amount    Interval    Total    January Variation Income A       100    Monthly    1200     80       big % Income B        20     Monthly      240     30       big % Expense A     -50     Monthly     -600    -45       big % Expense B     -40     Monthly     -480    -42       big %

What I would like to be able to see is (note the extra column, and the totals row):

[MonHawk]

Sorry, formatting still not ideal. All rows fitted onto one line when I did a preview.

[stanbusk]

Right now I don't understand it fully. Could you write something as detailed as possible with an example and attach it to a support ticket?