Since 3.8 release, the "total" line at the bottom of the budget editing view has disappeared, making it impossible to budget to zero at a glance.
See current discussion at https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/commit/775200ef
More prior discussion start at: https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2019-October/087551.html https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2019-November/087742.html
Thanks very much Christopher - the calculation determined in the first link is accurate in my opinion. The previous totals line was extremely useful in planning cash flow in and out of an operating account (i.e. treating asset increases and liability decreases as expenses, and conversely asset decreases or liability increases as income for the purposes of the "total" calculation).
Thank you Alex -- you're the only one among the whole userbase who has given a concise and useful definition for the Totals summary. I would conclude that the budget Equity does not need to figure in this summary, and it would be more appropriate to name this line "Unbudgeted" or "Remaining Budget"?
Glad I could help! Yes, I agree regarding Equity... I can't think of any reason I would want this included in a budget, but I'm also not a trained accountant. I've only used equity accounts for opening balances.
Further discussion took place in https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2020-January/044464.html onwards. Phil has confirmed that Equity budget values do not belong in the budget editor. @Alex - I'd be very grateful if you could send a sample datafile with a realistic budget, using all 4 headers appropriately. This will help restore previous functionality. I'd be keen to expand the summary headers as follows Inflow from Income - usually positive Outflow to Expense - usually positive Outflow to Asset/Liability - usually positive indicating increasing savings and paying off loans, whereas negative would indicate drawing from savings or using line of credit Unbudgeted Balance - usually positive, but aims towards zero
P.S. specifically looking for a sample book whereby realistic budget values exist for all 4 account types asset/liability/income/expense.
P.S. apologies to phil - I had not realized the budget editor/viewer have recently been modified by another contributor https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/503 who was responsible for adding EQUITY values into budget totals. I'll ask him for feedback as well.
...and the answer is bug 781345
test branch available at https://github.com/christopherlam/gnucash/tree/maint-202001-budget-editor-summaries feedback welcome in this bug report or on github https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/630
*** Bug 797553 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I only want to mention that I, too, was relaying on previous "Income/Expenses/Transfers/Total" version of budget view, I also vote for this to be returned, thank you :)
I am clearly late to the discussion, and I note a fix is planned. I, too, noticed the same missing "total" when moving from 3.6 to 3.8 recently. Perhaps already understood with a change decided, but I did understand the former "transfers" as a sum of movement (or transfers) of cash to asset accts (e.g., contributions to savings or investment accounts) and movement to liability accounts (e.g., mtge and other loans). The "total" was the net of income less expenses less transfers (i.e., the bottom line). I do like the new budget module with transfers broken out into "assets" and "liabilities" as that will help better visualize the destination of these non-expense reductions of income, and the bottom line could be titled "total" as before or "net," "net income," or "net income/loss". To me "budgeted balance" etc. would be confusing, it is not unbudgeted but rather a target of the budget or financial plan. Intuitively one would plan to budget to have net income leftover rather than net loss. Common use of budgets mirrors the P&L/income statement with a "net" at the end. As a note, other personal financial software has used the term "overall total" for the net or bottom line.
Waiting for confirmation that the patch fixes the budget satisfactorily.
I've reviewed the patch and commented on the merge request.
All, with the patch merged in, please review this bug and confirm whether it's fixed properly.
Hi sorry, I would love to help, but I do not know how to do that. Just an end user, who might be in over his head!
Tested with build git 3.8b-119-gf1667e7ba+(2020-02-02) and it seems to function correctly. @wdr747@yahoo.com: There's some learning curve and initial hurdle to get setup building from source but once you do it once, it isn't hard at all to do multiple times. You might take a look at https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building. Since that document can be a bit rough and lead you down multiple rabbit holes, the command I use to make test builds is: rm -rf * && cmake ../gnucash/ -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/tmp/install/ -D ALLOW_OLD_GETTEXT=ON && make -j6 where I'm in an empty "build" directory with the gnucash git checkout next to it. Note that this command will remove the contents of the directory you're currently in. Running the built version is as simple as "./bin/gnucash" from the build directory after building.
Hi. Just downloaded the latest 3.9 release for windows. I am seeing the new captions as described on the news/announcements page. However, it seems like the liability total is being subtracted instead of added when calculating the Remaining to Budget. For example: if the total income is 900, the expenses 300, equity 300, and the liabilities (300): the "remaining to budget" is showing 600 instead of 0.
@Ben: see bug 797659 and try the latest win32 nightly for an amended budget editor.
fixed in 3.10
Hi, I note comment 21 indicating this bug was fixed with 3.10. It does not appear to be fixed in 3.10 [Build ID: 3.10+(2020-04-11)] on Windows 10. I reviewed bug 797659 from comment 20 as best I could and could not determine if it was resolved, though it seemed to address 3.9. I note that bug's status is listed as needinfo and am presuming it is not resolved/fixed, but again it might apply only to 3.9. I note a historically similar experience to one of the other bug posters that Liability accts budget values were previously negative. The Budget tool in 3.10 seems to correctly subtract “Outflows to Expenses” and “Outflows to Assets/Eq/Liab” from “Inflow from Income” to arrive at the net or “Remaining to Budget” amount, if positive values are used in the budgeted Liability accts. However, the Budget Report displays the budgeted Liability amounts with the reverse sign (as entered in the Budget tool) from the actuals. This was also mentioned in the other bug report. Reverse Balance Accounts is set as the default “Credit accounts” option. When I use the Estimate function in the Budget tool for Liability accounts, it enters negative numbers. I think a separate bug report may be needed, if one has not already been filed, that the Budget Report should subtract budget values from actuals to arrive at a difference or variance and not how the Budget Report is currently set up. So the Budget tool seems to handle the arithmetic correctly if manually entering Liability budget amounts as positives, but the Budget Report will behave incorrectly with those positive budget values and negative actual values. Using Reverse Balance Accounts options do not help, at least as far as I can interpret. It seems this is not fixed in 3.10, unless I am doing something very incorrectly...? If more info or screen images will be helpful, please let me know. Hopefully this is not too much info. Thanks very much.
To clarify The budget totals being displayed is fixed in 3.10 The budget liability being signed reversed will be fixed in 3.11. Please confirm with the daily builds at https://code.gnucash.org/builds/win32/maint/
Got it. Appreciate the clarification. I am open to help with a little guidance. Is there a resource to help me understand what do with the daily build (e.g., can I or do I install it alongside my production(?) version of the software, etc.)? If it is something i have to build, that might be a bit too advanced for me at this stage.
Just download the latest gnucash-3.10-xxxxx-setup.exe from the link Chris provided and install it. It will replace your 3.10 production installation; you can keep using the daily until 3.11 is released or re-install 3.10 when you're done testing.
I installed the Windows 6/2 build, and the budget totals appear to function as would be expected. I utilized the Estimate function and entered manually in both a preexisting budget and newly created budget. Can do more if needed. It appears the naming of the subtotals in the totals table has been discussed on this bug and the other referenced above. I can comment there, too, if that is preferred. "Tranfers" seems to be a reasonable term for movement of funds to asset and liability accts. At some point "Transfers" became "Outflows to Asset/Equity/Liability" (at least in 3.10). I note in the build I experimented with that this subtotal has been renamed to simply "Tranfer." My interpretation is the single "Outflow to Asset/Equity/Liability" is going to get broken out, which would be helpful to avoid confusion. "Tranfers to..." would still be reasonable terminology, whether as a single subtotal or three separate subtotals, the concept being one starts with funds (from income or preexisting assets) and then transfers some to other assets or liabilities (e.g., to savings accts or principal portions of loan pmts), since the movement of funds to these accts is not considered an expense in accounting.
