Colin Wright <cdwright@gwi.net>
2009-08-03
1.0

# Budgets

## What is a budget?

A budget is a categorized list of expected income and expenses for a period.

The Budget facility of &kappname; allows you to create annual budgets. More than one Budget can be created for any year. You set monthly Budget values against any Income or Expense categories that you have defined. The values can be set in three ways, depending on the Period:

Monthly

  (Default) specify a single value applied to every month in the Budget

Yearly

  specify a single value to divide evenly across each month in the Budget

Individual

  specify separate values for each month.

  This is used for income and expenses spread irregularly through the year.

&kappname; provides a number of reports which compare actual income and expenses against the entered Budgets.

## Your budgets

You can access your budgets by clicking the appropriate icon in the navigation pane at the left hand side of your &kappname; window.

### Creating, changing, and deleting budgets

This section of the Budgets window displays the list of Budgets contained in the current file. If no Budget has yet been created the list will display a single empty Budget called "Budget <year>" where <year> is the current fiscal year. The list of Budgets has two columns:

Name

  Name of the Budget

Year

  Fiscal year of the Budget

Values from the selected Budget are displayed to the right. To select a different Budget you can click on the Budget in the list. Alternatively, when the list has focus, you can select a different Budget using the up and down keys. If you have made changes to a Budget and then select a different budget &kappname; will ask you whether you want to discard the changes.

There are five buttons above the list of Budgets.

New

  Create a new budget

Rename

  Edit the name of the selected Budget.

  You can also edit the name of a Budget by clicking on the name of the selected Budget or double-clicking on the name of a different Budget.

Delete

  Delete the selected Budget

Revert

  Reverts the selected Budget to its last stored state.

Save

  Accepts any unsaved changes to the selected Budget and stores them.

Additional options are available on a menu accessed by right-clicking on a Budget.

New Budget

  Create a new, blank Budget.

Rename Budget

  Rename the selected Budget.

Change budget year

  Displays a window with a list of years to select a different budget year.

Delete budget

  Delete the selected Budget.

Copy budget

  Creates a copy of the selected Budget. The new Budget has the name "Copy of <budget>", where <budget> is the name of the copied Budget.

### Account List

The Account List displays the list of Income and Expense Categories. As in other places in &kappname; the list is organized in a tree structure. The list can be expanded or collapsed to show or hide Subcategories within a Category. The Account List has a number of columns:

Account

  Account name

Type

  Account Type (Income or Expense)

Tax

  Checked if a Category included in Tax Reports

VAT

  Checked if a Category marked as a VAT Category

Balance

  Current balance of Account. Blank for Categories

Value

  Total yearly value in the Budget. If an Account has Subaccounts and the Account's list of Subaccounts is collapsed the value displayed is the sum of the values for the Account and all of its Subaccounts.

The Account List can be filtered using "Hide unused Categories". In Budgets this hides any Categories for which no value has been assigned to the Category or any of its Subcategories.

### Assignments

The Assignments area shows the value for the selected Account.

Account

  Displays the name of the selected Account. If the Account is a Subaccount, the full name of the selected Account is displayed in the Account:Subaccount format.

Total

  Displays the total yearly value assigned to the Account

Include subaccounts

  In Reports show actual income or expenses in Subcategories belonging to the Category against the Category instead of the Subcategory.

  If a Subcategory has a value defined in the Budget the income and expenses are shown against the Subcategory.

Clear

  The Clear button resets the budgeted account value or values to zero.

Period

  The Period radio buttons allow you to select the period for which the value applies

  Monthly

    A single value is entered, specifying the amount per month. This is the default setting.

  Yearly

    A single value is entered, specifying the amount per year.

  Individual

    Values are specified for each Calendar month. This is used where expense or income is spread irregularly through the year.

  If a value is or values are already specified and the Period is changed &kappname; will ask whether to use the current total yearly value to assign the new values.

### Update and Revert

For performance reasons, changes made to a Budget are not saved immediately. Instead, they first have to be stored using the Update button and then permanently saved using the &kappname; Save.

When a Budget's values are first modified, the Update and Revert buttons are enabled. Multiple changes can be made to the Budget. Pressing Update will store the changes, disable the Update and Revert buttons and enable the &kappname; Save.

The &kappname; Save only saves changes that have been stored using the Update button. Thus, if you have modified a Budget but not yet stored the changes &kappname; Save will not affect the modified Budget and the Update and Revert buttons remain enabled.

Revert undoes any changes made to a Budget since the last Update and disables the Update and Revert buttons.

Changes stored using Update but not yet saved using &kappname; Save can only be reverted by reloading the &kappname; file.

## Budget Reports

&kappname; provides a number of reports to compare actual income and expenses against Budgets. These are listed in Reports under "Budgeting". There are two types of Reports:

Budget only

  Reports displaying values from a Budget: Monthly Budget Displays the monthly values from a Budget. Yearly Budget Displays the monthly values from a Budget, with yearly total.

Compare Budget and Actual

  Reports comparing values from a Budget to actual income and expenses: Budget vs. Actual This Year Month-by-month comparison for the current year so far, with total. Monthly Budget vs. Actual Month-by-month comparison, defaulting to the current month. Yearly Budgeted vs. Actual Month-by-month comparison for the whole of the current year, with total. These reports provide a base from which custom reports can be created by changing the date range and Budget. Of the Budget reports, only the "Budget vs. Actual This Year" does not allow the Budget to be changed.