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Upcoming: moneyGuru 1.6
I will soon start working on moneyGuru 1.6, which will mostly be about straightening out budgeting and adding more flexibility to it.
Budgeting: The current system is not flexible enough, and it also doesn't give enough feedback. The "budgeting" section in the account info panel will go away, and will be replaced by a "budget" checkbox in the transaction info panel.
Yep, budgeting will work very similarly to scheduled transactions. Budget transactions will be scheduled at regular interval and the amount of the scheduled instances will be offset by the transactions that are occurring during the scheduled period that touch the same income/expense account. For example, if you already had a 400 $ monthly budget on groceries with a target on your Credit Card account, it will be translated to a scheduled (monthly) transaction with a 400$ amount going from Credit Card to Groceries, with the "Budget" box checked.
The budgeting system will behave similarly to how it does now, but instead of just showing in the graphs and in the account sheets, it will also show up in the transaction tables, exactly like scheduled transactions also show up, except that their amount field will be read-only (because it's a calculated value). The info panel for the transaction will be editable however, as it will show the original budget amount.
The edition of the budget transaction will also be like scheduled transaction, allowing you to modify that budget after a certain date, or just for one occurrence.
One interesting that this new system will also bring is the possibility to create a "split budget", so you can spread the budget to multiple asset/liability targets.
New view: A new view will be added that show scheduled and budgeted "root" transaction (one transaction per schedule, rather than one per occurrence like in other tables), allowing you to easily see start date, stop dates, next occurrence, budget remaining, stuff like that.
Auto-save: Copies of your document will be saved at regular interval, so if something goes wrong and you hadn't saved for a while, you won't have lost everything.
Budget columns in Profit & Loss: 2 new columns will be added in the Profit & Loss view: "Budget" and "Remaining", which will show the budgeting information for the current date range.
Filtering in the account view: At the moment, typing something in the filter bar when you're in the account view takes you to the Transaction view, making it hard to look for particular transactions in a particular account. I will fix that.
Auto-completion: I'm not sure why, auto-completion in the Account view was designed so that only values from the current account would be considered for inclusion in the auto-completion list. Therefore, if you create a transaction with a payee that you already entered, but that doesn't touch the account you are currently in, it won't be included in the auto-completion list. I can't, for the life of me, remember what was the rationale behind this decision, so I'll remove that limitation.
Budgeting: The current system is not flexible enough, and it also doesn't give enough feedback. The "budgeting" section in the account info panel will go away, and will be replaced by a "budget" checkbox in the transaction info panel.
Yep, budgeting will work very similarly to scheduled transactions. Budget transactions will be scheduled at regular interval and the amount of the scheduled instances will be offset by the transactions that are occurring during the scheduled period that touch the same income/expense account. For example, if you already had a 400 $ monthly budget on groceries with a target on your Credit Card account, it will be translated to a scheduled (monthly) transaction with a 400$ amount going from Credit Card to Groceries, with the "Budget" box checked.
The budgeting system will behave similarly to how it does now, but instead of just showing in the graphs and in the account sheets, it will also show up in the transaction tables, exactly like scheduled transactions also show up, except that their amount field will be read-only (because it's a calculated value). The info panel for the transaction will be editable however, as it will show the original budget amount.
The edition of the budget transaction will also be like scheduled transaction, allowing you to modify that budget after a certain date, or just for one occurrence.
One interesting that this new system will also bring is the possibility to create a "split budget", so you can spread the budget to multiple asset/liability targets.
New view: A new view will be added that show scheduled and budgeted "root" transaction (one transaction per schedule, rather than one per occurrence like in other tables), allowing you to easily see start date, stop dates, next occurrence, budget remaining, stuff like that.
Auto-save: Copies of your document will be saved at regular interval, so if something goes wrong and you hadn't saved for a while, you won't have lost everything.
Budget columns in Profit & Loss: 2 new columns will be added in the Profit & Loss view: "Budget" and "Remaining", which will show the budgeting information for the current date range.
Filtering in the account view: At the moment, typing something in the filter bar when you're in the account view takes you to the Transaction view, making it hard to look for particular transactions in a particular account. I will fix that.
Auto-completion: I'm not sure why, auto-completion in the Account view was designed so that only values from the current account would be considered for inclusion in the auto-completion list. Therefore, if you create a transaction with a payee that you already entered, but that doesn't touch the account you are currently in, it won't be included in the auto-completion list. I can't, for the life of me, remember what was the rationale behind this decision, so I'll remove that limitation.
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Inappropriate?Virgil,
Just a quick note. I’m getting back on your other question hopefully later today. Not sure why you want to design the budgeting feature in the way outlined above. Budgeting should be different from scheduled transaction, i.e. keeping a lid on your expenses regardless how, when, and where they occur. Setting a target on one account or even linking the budget to various accounts won’t do it. Surely, you have found yourself in a situation where you make unplanned and spontaneous purchases. In this case moneyWell should clearly show that I’ve gone over budget in this month if my setting for, say, software is $20 and I’ve just spent $24.95 on dupeGuru ME. However, those $20 should not be shown or considered as planned. Unless I don’t understand something in your description above I believe you’re on the wrong path. Budgets must be set in the expenses accounts. The way you describe it above might look very confusing in the end.2 Comments
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I hope it's not me who doesn't understand you, but I assure you that setting a target account in this system (like in the current system) does not prevent transactions coming from other asset/liabilities than the target account but going to the same income/expense to be counted. Therefore, if you usually buy your software with your Visa card and have a 20$ budget on software with a target to Visa, buying dupeGuru ME with your Paypal balance will make your budget bust, both in the new and the old system.
As for the confusion, I agree that this approach to budgeting is unlike what is present in other applications. However, there will be the new "Budgeting" view which will show (and allow you to create) budgets similarly to other applications. So hopefully, it will lessen the confusion, and give the users the best of both worlds (I think that new system's flexibility will really be interesting) -
Oh, and also: You will not need to set a target account in the budgets. You will be able to let the "other side" of the transaction blank. However, if you do, your budgets will not be correctly reflected in your Balance sheet.
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Inappropriate?Point taken. Let’s continue that example. I buy the software for $24.95 via PayPal and the budget target is the VISA account. In my ledger the budget will show as a transaction in the Visa account, right? You mention above that budget items show in the accounts and transactions. What happens once the month ends? Can I set weekly, monthly, and yearly budgets? What happens to my monthly budget of $20 for software that has the Visa account as a target once I make a purchase via PayPal? I just feel that reconciliation will be very confusing. However, I’m open for surprises...:)
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Inappropriate?Although budget transactions will behave like scheduled transactions, they will still be special. When today's date reaches the period's end (can be any period that a normal scheduled transaction support), the transaction will disappear. Therefore, no budget transaction will ever show for a date that is not in the future. If you bust your budget, the transaction will also disappear.
As for your first question, I'm not sure I understand it. If you buy dupeGuru ME with your Paypal balance, it will be a normal transaction. Your Visa account will not be affected. However, the budget for the Software expense account will. When previously you had a 20$ forecasted increase in Software and a 20$ forecasted increase in Visa, upon your purchase from Paypal, the forecasted 20$ increase in Software will be replaced by an actual 24.95 increase, and the 20$ forecasted increase in Visa will be replaced by nothing (the increase ended up being a decrease in your Paypal balance).
I'm not sure how this could affect reconciliation. Budgets can't be reconciled because future transaction cannot be reconciled. -
Inappropriate?Understood. However, in terms of reconciliation: all these budgets would show in the list, right? Making the whole list somewhat cluttered. I suggest another color/background for budget items... maybe dark blue or red? Or a separate section for budget items, i.e. all projected expenses within the next four weeks on top? Or maybe a filter to not show budget items?
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Inappropriate?I was thinking of making their amount italic (to indicate that it's not editable. I would change "Previous Entries" entries from bold to italic to stay consistent).
As for reconciliation, I'm really not sure that it would change something. Since budgets can only be shown in the future, they will not be mixed with reconcilable transactions.
Anyway, we'll see what happens with the first preview builds, and I'll adjust from there. -
Inappropriate?The new budgeting system sounds a good improvement. I'm awaiting the first preview builds to play with and will give feedback.
Thanks for the good work, Virgil. -
Inappropriate?I'll be on vacation for a month in about a week. Unfortunately, I won't be able to release any kind of preview from 1.6 before then. I've been making progress on the budgeting changes, but it's a quite big change and the current state of the budgets is not very pretty (buggy).
Moreover, lots of things have been interrupting my work on moneyGuru 1.6 lately, so it's been slowing my progress.1 Comment Add a comment
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So have a nice vacation then - I'm looking forward to trying out the first preview build!
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Inappropriate?You would think, from the inactivity of this thread, that the 1.6 release is not being worked on, but it is. I have resumed my work on the budget feature a few days ago, but there's a lot of work to be done before I can release a preview.
Now that I have opened the source code of HS's application, you can follow moneyGuru's progress more closely by looking at its bugtracker website. -
Inappropriate?Cool... glad to see you back at work!
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Inappropriate?Can I make a suggestion for viewing budgets - in the Account screen, to have a line indicating the current monthly budget, that way you can easily see at a glance which months you went over, and which were under. Maybe you could also use more colour on the bar charts - say green when under budget, orange when between 90% and 100% of budget, and red when gone over - again it makes it easy to see how you are keeping to your budget
I like the idea of the budget screen - especially if it makes it easy to see how total expenses match the total budget - are we still under, even though some may be over, or did we blow it completely.
Soli Deo Gloria
Jerome
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I added a ticket for it, but I'm not too sure yet how/if I'll do it. I'm not a fan of "rainbow" graphs with tons of colors. There's already 2 of them (gray and green), and I think it's enough.
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Inappropriate?I finally made enough progress in the schedule/budget re-working to have a preview release made. What has changed is that there is now a "Schedules" view, from which schedules can be added, removed, edited. The Transaction Info panel no longer has "repeat" controls, but I added a "Make Schedule from Selected" command (cmd-M), which allows you to quickly create a schedule from an existing transaction.
There's also a change in budget's behavior. The budgets now generate schedule-like "spawns" in the transaction and entry tables, allowing you to see exactly how much money is allocated to each budget period.
The budget view has yet to be created, which is why the toolbar button is disabled. The budgets still have to be set through the account panel, but this will change in future releases.
http://download.hardcoded.net/moneygu... -
Inappropriate?I immediately downloaded the preview after your announcement and looked at the changes. Seems to be ok from what I have seen up to now.
The budget targets now create a scheduled Transaction on the last day of month showing the remaining amount from the budgeted value, this looks quite nice in my opinion. I'm looking forward to seeing the budget view soon.
Thanks for your great work, Virgil!
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?I have just uploaded a new preview version. This version has the schedules/budgets views completed, with edition and all.
It also improves the search functionality by including splits' memo field in it, and by allowing to run a search in the Account view (previously, running a search while in the Account view would take you to the Transactions view).
This new version also has a new "Budgeted" column for both the Profit & Loss and the Net Worth views. This column shows the budgeted amount remaining for the current date range (in the Net Worth view, if the current date range is in the future, the Budgeted value is cumulative). With the addition of this column, I decided not to include this amount in the other columns (previously, remaining budget would be added to the other values. For example, if you had a 200$ budget on "Clothes" and that you had 150$ assigned to it, the "Current" column would show "200.00". Now, it shows "150.00" and "50.00" in the Budgeted column).
Oh, and there's a new preference allowing you to set when your fiscal year starts (for Year and Year-to-date ranges).
There are some quirks with calculation for budgets that are not Monthly budgets. I know about them, I'll fix them. However, the current interface allows you to set non-monthly budgets (for example, yearly budgets) without problems. The only thing is that sometimes, your budget will not be counted.
This new version rocks big time.
http://download.hardcoded.net/moneygu...2 Comments Add a comment
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To be honest, I don't use budgeting much but your description sounds very interesting and as soon as I can spare some time I will definitely take a closer look! Keep up your excellent work!
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Ah, the budgeted column wasn't enabled by default (when simply upgrading moneyGuru). This column is very informative - good idea to show it there!
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Inappropriate?Tons of bug fixes later, I have released moneyGuru 1.6.0 just now.2 Comments Add a comment
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I can't access my accounts with cmd+arrow anymore. Having to use cmd+]
Is this deliberate or an omission?
I'm on Snow Leopard, but I assume this isn't the problem as v1.5 works fine. -
It's deliberate. I hadn't realized yet that the arrow based shortcuts conflicted with basic text shortcut (go right or left one word). When editing text, it could cause problems.
I know, the shortcut change is annoying, but I quickly got used to it. -
Inappropriate?Sorry Virgil, but the new shortcut isn't an equivalent if you don't use a US keyboard layout. It doesn't work with a German keyboard layout because the [-key is used as ü-key (German umlaut).
I don't mind the conflict with the basic text shortcuts (that was never an issue actually) but I do understand that you like to avoid them by default. Could you please add a preference where I could change the shortcuts at least?3 Comments Add a comment
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Yeah, I'll try to figure something out for the next release.
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Thanks!
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Good news! I implemented the arrow shortcut "manually" (rather than through the main menu), and they work without interfering with the text based shortcuts (so a preference is not needed because there is no reason to turn them off). This will be a part of the 1.6.2 release.
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Inappropriate?Great news! I really miss the simplicity of the arrow keys shortcut! As always, I appreciate your outstanding custoumer support!1 Comment Add a comment
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I tested moneyGuru 1.6.2 on Tiger, and it seems that my solution for shortcuts doesn't work on it. I run Snow Leopard and I haven't created a Leopard test partition yet, so I don't know if my solution works on Leopard. What do you run? If you run Leopard, please let me know how 1.6.2 behaves (It's going to be released in about an hour).
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Inappropriate?I am running SL, too. However, I have a Leopard machine at home and will check how it behaves this afternoon or so...
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Inappropriate?I'm running 10.5.7 on a G4 PB and don't have any issues with the keyboard shortcuts (cmd+arrow) in the new version 1.6.2. MG just keeps getting better and better.
I noticed that scheduled transactions show in the transaction view and the P&L view but the budget doesn't take them into account. By this I mean that the transaction shows, the amount shows but the budgeted amount still remains the full amount for the end of the month. It should be reduced by the transaction amount even if it is a scheduled transaction correct? If the transaction is entered manually it behaves as it should and the budget is reduced.
I'd also like to see a way to know when a budget is "busted". As it is now the budget amount goes to "0" why not show it as -##.## (in red?)?1 Comment Add a comment
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You are right, the scheduled transactions aren't deducted from the budgets. That's a bug, thanks for spotting it!
I opened 2 tickets:
https://hardcoded.lighthouseapp.com/p...
https://hardcoded.lighthouseapp.com/p...
