Request - Ignore negatives in budget difference calculations
I'd like to have a simple binary preference added that causes negative values to be ignored in summing budget differences. That is negative numbers get treated as zero. I use it so that budget overspends dont't cause me to think that I have more money available than I actually do. Reports then behave like a simple version of envelope budgeting. This is a feature that was available on the very first finance manager I used on Windows 3.1! back in the early 90s and I found incredibly useful.
For a simple example: say I've one bank account and two budget categories both at $40/month. If at the end of the month I've spent $20 on one budget and $30 on the other then the budget report will show a total difference from budget of $30. If I have $50 in the bank I know I can spend $20 leaving $30 to cover the total committed spend in the two budgets. However, if I've spent $50 in category 1 and $30 in category 2 the report shows a total difference of $0 ($-10 + $10). This is of course arithmetically correct but when I subtract the difference of $0 from the $50 balance I think I have $50 to spend when in fact I don't I've only got $40 disposable. I still need the $10 for category 2 items still to be bought. On the 15 year old app I could say treat negatives as zero so it could do this quick disposable income calculations.
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1 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 02 Jul, 2010 05:56 PM
Spallen,
Thank you for your suggestions, I think what you describe here would be helpful to some of our users. Our feature request and bug reporting system is integrated with our wiki. We invite our users to register and use these systems to help improve Moneydance by bringing bugs to our attention and requesting new features. Users can also vote on tickets, which helps us determine how wide-spread bugs are and which requests have the most demand. There is also a user-created wiki entry which describes one method for doing envelope type budgeting, which is available here.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance, and thank you for your interest in Moneydance.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
Angie Rauscher closed this discussion on 02 Jul, 2010 05:56 PM.