brarcher / budget-watch

Application for personal budget management
GNU General Public License v3.0
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minus sign, overview #31

Open paulle opened 8 years ago

paulle commented 8 years ago

It could be a nice enhancement if the mumber for the expenses would have a minus-sign (and maybe in dark red), the income mumbers (dark green). Even it would be nice to have a one page summary for a certain budget (expenses, incomes listed, budget limit and 'saldo' (budget over limit (how much) or how missing to the budget limit).

brarcher commented 8 years ago

Even it would be nice to have a one page summary for a certain budget

This is an interesting idea. What I was currently working on was a way to display all transactions for a given budget. Currently when a budget is clicked it brings up and edit screen, which is typically not helpful. Instead, I was planning on opening the transactions screen and only display the transactions on the clicked budget. I believe that would be helpful (at least for me), but getting a summary for the budget may be yet another helpful screen.

Currently, when one views the budgets, the following information is displayed for each budget over the configured dates:

screenshot_2016-04-06-13-40-19

Could anything be added to/replaced on this screen which would be useful or make the information more clear? If so, could you give a proposal? One idea based on the concept of coloring would be to color code the current spending value: if under budget display black, if over budget display red. If a separate screen may be more useful, and ideas on how it may differ from the budget summary screen and how one may navigate to it?

paulle commented 8 years ago

Coloring for sure would be helpful, because it helps to see the at a quick glance. I believe too, adding a minus sign to the expenses would be helpful and makes things clearer on the transaction side and even for color blind people. (I had a colorblind friend using a program for controlling incomes/expenses. The program only used red/green numbers for indicating and he sometimes got confused ). Kind regards

Am 6. April 2016 19:45:21 MESZ, schrieb Branden Archer notifications@github.com:

Even it would be nice to have a one page summary for a certain budget

This is an interesting idea. What I was currently working on was a way to display all transactions for a given budget. Currently when a budget is clicked it brings up and edit screen, which is typically not helpful. Instead, I was planning on opening the transactions screen and only display the transactions on the clicked budget. I believe that would be helpful (at least for me), but getting a summary for the budget may be yet another helpful screen.

Currently, when one views the budgets, the following information is displayed for each budget over the configured dates:

  • Name
  • Budget amount
  • Summary amount (expenses-revenues)
  • A progress bar indicating how close to the budget the current spending is

screenshot_2016-04-06-13-40-19

Could anything be added to/replaced on this screen which would be useful or make the information more clear? If so, could you give a proposal? One idea based on the concept of coloring would be to color code the current spending value: if under budget display black, if over budget display red. If a separate screen may be more useful, and ideas on how it may differ from the budget summary screen and how one may navigate to it?


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brarcher commented 8 years ago

Upon further reflection, I think that I will not add a - sign or color code revenues or expenses. Here is my rationale:

Currently a user will enter a positive number for both an expense and a revenue value. If that value remains positive when attempting to create and edit an expense, yet expenses are displayed with a - sign in the transaction summary screen, I think that will be confusing. If instead the app required one to enter a - sign for an expense, I think that could also be confusing.

As for the color, what color means positive and what color means negative is culturally dependent. For example, typically in the West black or green represents positive and red represents negative. However, in many (all?) asian countries (e.g. China, Japan, Korea) it is the opposite. That is, red (the color of progress) represents a positive value and green represents a negative value. Consider the Shenzhen stock ticker:

http://finance.sina.com.cn/realstock/company/sz399001/nc.shtml

When the market is down green is displayed.

screen shot 2016-04-06 at 11 21 36 pm

paulle commented 8 years ago

With the color dependency of colors you are right, I didn't think of it. so it's better to leave it as it is or you have to offering an option for two color schemes (asian and western). Because of the -sign I thought if the user is entering an expense it would be helpful if the -sign is displayed without the user have to enter it, same thing when editing an expense.

Am 07.04.2016 um 05:25 schrieb Branden Archer:

Upon further reflection, I think that I will not add a - sign or color code revenues or expenses. Here is my rationale:

Currently a user will enter a positive number for both an expense and a revenue value. If that value remains positive when attempting to create and edit an expense, yet expenses are displayed with a - sign in the transaction summary screen, I think that will be confusing. If instead the app required one to enter a - sign for an expense, I think that could also be confusing.

As for the color, what color means positive and what color means negative is culturally dependent. For example, typically in the West black or green represents positive and red represents negative. However, in many (all?) asian countries (e.g. China, Japan, Korea) it is the opposite. That is, red (the color of progress) represents a positive value and green represents a negative value. Consider the Shenzhen stock ticker:

http://finance.sina.com.cn/realstock/company/sz399001/nc.shtml

When the market is down green is displayed.

screen shot 2016-04-06 at 11 21 36 pm https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/5264535/14339658/60473208-fc4e-11e5-8e11-dd182bfa9fbc.png

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/brarcher/budget-watch/issues/31#issuecomment-206680208

brarcher commented 8 years ago

Because of the -sign I thought if the user is entering an expense it would be helpful if the -sign is displayed without the user have to enter it, same thing when editing an expense.

That is true, good point. Let me think on it further. Personally I do not like the - sign there, but if it is less confusing and more helpful to others, I may put it in.