Categories Headers or Totals
I currently set my budgeting up with "Headers or Nest under" ie Bills header will have all things like power, internet, gas, under the main title, or "Insurance" will list all the insurances, I would have expected the "header" to be active under the budget with the totals for that item ie all the insurances or all the bills?, see attached pic
Screenshot_2018-04-15_11.20.22.png
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1 Posted by tony.cooper655 on Apr 15, 2018 @ 05:09 AM
Actually with research this feature has been asked for by customers since 2015? thats 3 years!!!!!! is there a good reason its not been implemented?
2 Posted by thomas on May 04, 2018 @ 02:54 AM
I too have wondered about that. It does not make sense that the total of the sub-categories does not show in the Parent header. Furthermore, I found that when you add a number into the Parent, it adds that to your budget total expenses. That is redundant.
3 Posted by tony.cooper655 on May 06, 2018 @ 02:50 AM
Can we have a response please?
4 Posted by winginsue on May 20, 2018 @ 12:45 AM
I too would like to see things listed as subcategories. While doing so, please put the income at the top instead of the bottom. ALL financial reports have income first. As a bookkeeper this makes me crazy.
5 Posted by afordjones on May 22, 2018 @ 11:37 AM
I have just asked the question again without realizing that this was a long-time question still without a solution. I do hope that it can be addressed.
Thanks for a good program. This would be a big help though
Anthony
Support Staff 6 Posted by Sean Reilly on Jun 21, 2018 @ 10:28 AM
Thanks for all of your messages and I apologise for not responding to this earlier. I composed most of this message weeks ago, but there are a lot of details that kept coming up and changing my position on it. This message shows my current thinking on the issue of category budgeting totals, but I'd appreciate everyone's suggestions or corrections.
As you mention, one problem with rolling-up subcategory amounts into a parent is when you've set a budgeted amount for the parent category. I think it's important to be able to differentiate between the amounts that are assigned to that category and any amounts that have rolled up into it from sub-categories. That's why the budget report puts any rolled up amounts into a row called Other- rather than mushing them together. In the budget editor we don't have a place to put the extra line, but I do agree it would be useful to have subcategory amounts rolled-up and displayed somehow. I think it's clear though that any rolled up amounts/totals need to be differentiated from amounts specifically assigned (or budgeted) to the parent category.
Once we resolve how to show an extra total amount for parent categories, we've got one other issue. How should subcategory amounts be rolled up to the parent totals? We could roll up all amounts, non-budgeted amounts, or over-budget amounts. I think rolling up all amounts as in your screenshot would be problematic because amounts in subcategories are being shown in two places: the subcategory and parent category. To me this makes it seem like spending for that category is doubled and could be misleading if someone is new to it.
Rolling up non-budgeted amounts into a second total value for parent categories in the budget editor would be easy, and I'll commit to adding that soon. That would basically work like the "other" row in the existing budget report.
I'll consider adding an all-amounts total but that would need to be displayed differently since it would include amounts that were already shown on the screen. Maybe in a mouse-over or popup on the budget cell.
I'm interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this, and I promise to not take so long to respond next time!
Thanks,
7 Posted by Mike Bray (Quot... on Jun 21, 2018 @ 11:07 AM
Hi Sean and others
I have a Budget Generator extension that basically allows you to set annual budget amounts and propagate that money over the budget entries for the year. I wrote it to accommodate my way of doing budgets. In that extension I faced the same problem. Do you roll up or not.
The stance I took was to have a check box against each summary category. If you leave it unchecked then nothing is rolled up and you can put in separate amounts for the summary category and its sub-categories.
If you check the box then you can not enter an amount in the summary category. When you calculate a row it will roll up.
The difference between my extension and the MD way of entering budgets is that you can construct the budget in my extension before it updates MD and you can manipulate the figures before updating MD. With MD you have to enter the values directly into MD. Once you have saved the figures from my extension the data in MD is managed as if you had input it directly.
Back to the question about how you do it in MD. A similar check box on the budget screen for summary categories would be sensible giving the user an option on each category. If checked then any change to the subcategory would update the summary category as well. MD should block any entry against summary categories that have the check box checked.
Just an opinion.
Mike
If you are taking input on budgeting in general I am used to being able to have draft budgets which are discussed before they are loaded up. This is what my extension does, it also allows you to have multiple versions of the same budget, however, only one is loaded into MD.
8 Posted by roger.collin on Jul 01, 2018 @ 05:26 AM
Hi,
Maybe I am looking at this too simplistically but could you not have a roll up button on the parent category that would hide all the sub-categories and display the rolled up value including the parent category value? When the category value is rolled up it could be appended with - total to indicate that all sub-category and parent category values were included. See proposed shot.
Also in the new budget, the budget bars in the Parent and sub-categories are too narrow and you cannot see the coloured progress bar. These need to be a bit thicker!
Roger
9 Posted by Arektom on Jul 05, 2018 @ 05:54 PM
Hi,
Why it can't be as easy as giving users an option on the "new budget setup screen"?
Simple checkbox will do the job.
System closed this discussion on Oct 04, 2018 @ 06:00 PM.