notriddle / budget-envelopes

An Android app for managing money.
GNU General Public License v3.0
57 stars 33 forks source link

Allocation on the first of the month #10

Open jvanderstel opened 11 years ago

jvanderstel commented 11 years ago

Hi,

One of my incomes comes in quarterly on a different day each quarter, so I set up my monthly budget in "Budget with Envelopes" with that income as one of my monthly incomes at 1/3 of the quarterly income.

When I entered my incomes on the first of October, It was without that monthly amount of that quarterly income, of course, so it was less than my monthly budget total.

Budget with Envelopes automatically allocated my inputted income and shorted 2 different envelopes (they seemed to be arbitrarily selected) for the monthly amount of the missing quarterly income, but said nothing about the problem it encountered in distributing the income. That makes Budget with Envelopes rather hard to work with for me.

I suggest that "Budget with Envelopes" allow the user to specify one envelope that the difference amount would be added to, or automatically add that positive or negative amount to the first envelope in the envelope list. (In my case, the difference was a total of just -14 dollars.") This behavior was completely unexpected. My first envelope is always "Misc" and the envelope budget program that I wrote automatically assigns "Misc" as the first envelope in the list where it automatically adds that difference amount.

You see, every quarter I personally put my quarterly income deposit into a specific envelope, where it is stored. 14 dollars (1/3 of that quarterly income) is transferred from that envelope to my "Misc" envelope on the first of each month to zero out that $14 difference.

Budget with Envelopes currently lists it's envelopes in alphabetical order, so I could not have my first envelope listed as "Misc". For your information, my first 4 envelopes in "Budget with Envelopes", in alphabetical order, are "BugCard" with a monthly budget amount of zero, "CarR" with a monthly budget amount of $7, "Dental" with a monthly budget amount of $6.50 and "Dog Lic" with a monthly budget amount of $1. "Budget with Envelopes" added -13 dollars of the -14 dollar difference to the "Dental" envelope and the remaining -1 dollar to the "Dog Lic" envelope. How it selected those particular 2 envelopes to add the difference to and those 2 specific amounts, I don't know.

I could adapt to Budget with Envelopes's way of doing it if I could understand the logic that "Budget with Envelopes" is currently programmed with to select the envelope(s) to send the difference to, and the specific amounts it will use.

Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. I related above how I solved that particular problem in my own envelope budgeting program back in 1981.

Cheers,

John Vander Stel Grand Rapids, Michigan

notriddle commented 11 years ago

I'm not sure what's going on, because Budget has no logic for determining which envelope to short. When I try to over-allocate or under-allocate a paycheck, the OK button is grayed out.

jvanderstel notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi,

One of my incomes comes in quarterly on a different day each quarter, so I set up my monthly budget in "Budget with Envelopes" with that income as one of my monthly incomes at 1/3 of the quarterly income.

When I entered my incomes on the first of October, It was without that monthly amount of that quarterly income, of course, so it was less than my monthly budget total.

Budget with Envelopes automatically allocated my inputted income and shorted 2 different envelopes (they seemed to be arbitrarily selected) for the monthly amount of the missing quarterly income, but said nothing about the problem it encountered in distributing the income. That makes Budget with Envelopes rather hard to work with for me.

I suggest that "Budget with Envelopes" allow the user to specify one envelope that the difference amount would be added to, or automatically add that positive or negative amount to the first envelope in the envelope list. (In my case, the difference was a total of just -14 dollars.") This behavior was completely unexpected. My first envelope is always "Misc" and the envelope budget program that I wrote automatically assigns "Misc" as the first envelope in the list where it automatically adds that difference amount.

You see, every quarter I personally put my quarterly income deposit into a specific envelope, where it is stored. 14 dollars (1/3 of that quarterly income) is transferred from that envelope to my "Misc" envelope on the first of each month to zero out that $14 difference.

Budget with Envelopes currently lists it's envelopes in alphabetical order, so I could not have my first envelope listed as "Misc". For your information, my first 4 envelopes in "Budget with Envelopes", in alphabetical order, are "BugCard" with a monthly budget amount of zero, "CarR" with a monthly budget amount of $7, "Dental" with a monthly budget amount of $6.50 and "Dog Lic" with a monthly budget amount of $1. "Budget with Envelopes" added -13 dollars of the -14 dollar difference to the "Dental" envelope and the remaining -1 dollar to the "Dog Lic" envelope. How it selected those particular 2 envelopes to add the difference to and those 2 specific amounts, I don't know.

I could adapt to Budget with Envelopes's way of doing it if I could understand the logic that "Budget with Envelopes" is currently programmed with to select the envelope(s) to send the difference to, and the specific amounts it will use.

Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. I related above how I solved that particular problem in my own envelope budgeting program back in 1981.

Cheers,

John Vander Stel Grand Rapids, Michigan

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