Additional layers for categories

[rpbeesley]

I use MMEX for the accounts for a small charity. It works really well... but it would be really helpful if we could create an additional layer or tier for categories (so they are nested 3 deep, not just 2). That would allow us to monitor in more detail, whilst still giving the same totals without having to do things by hand.

For example, at the moment we have:
01. Events
01. Events : London Marathon

What we would like is:
01. Events
01. Events : London Marathon
01. Events : London Marathon : Team Fred
01. Events : London Marathon : Team Martha
etc
so we can see the detail from the two teams as well as the Marathon total and all events total.
Is that possible to add?

[MartinArmstrong]

The suggestion to implement Tags described here viewtopic.php?p=22681 would be an alternative to adding an extra layer to Categories.

[Nikolay]

This will break the already established business logic. Reports first. And the most important thing is the database structure. Such a change will not be made in the next 100 years.
I suggest an alternative. You can use custom fields.

[Cedders]

If I may, I would like to bring my small contributions to this feature request because the need seems similar to mine.

I was considering posting a feature request to add a new field to transactions for "Project" or "WBS Element" (single level). The main purpose would be to be able to aggregate or lookup transactions for a specific project because they are often bound to a multiple categories or subcategories.

If you consider rpbeesley use-case, you can imagine that "Event" is the category and each team in it's association are a subcategory :

• Category : Events
  • Subcategory : Team Fred
  • Subcategory : Team Martha

Then for each transactions bound to a specific event you can specify the "Project" which could be "London Marathon" or any other.

In my use-case, I was thinking that it is quiet common to have a project in life which is related/bound to various categories like :

• House construction project

• Events (wedding, etc.)

• Professional project

• Travels

• Etc.

Then, you would like to have a report which shows the total expenses/income of a project and probably the details by category/subcategory.

How to do it ?
Nikolay proposal was also the first solution I had in mind and I am definitely sure it would work using a "single choice" field or a "string" within auto-completion. But, I would be great to see it in standard because it would provide a better user-experience :

• The field integration would be better than a custom field

• Could probably fit needs of many users ?

• It would be integrated in standard reports

• It could be included in budget

[whall3y]

There is a discussion of this (and an open issue) here: https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/1477

[Renato]

From my point of view, the implementation of cost centers would solve this problem.
But then the MMEX will soon cover the needs of a business accounting, whether that is in our sense?
Until now, they wanted to cover the needs of "normal" users (not bookkeepers).

[Renato]

Note: who needs information about accounting and much more should visit this homepage. https://studyflix.de/wirtschaft/kostens ... echnung-53
This page is in German, but with the Google Browser (and others) you can have it all translated into the language you want.

[luisdev]

This will break the already established business logic.

How? Will it not enhance it instead?

Such a change will not be made in the next 100 years.

That's very unfortunate.

Can you elaborate on why this change would be so difficult to implement?

I suggest an alternative. You can use custom fields.

Ok, but you cannot use custom fields in split transactions. That really limits them.

Or can you? If so, please explain how.

[Nikolay]

@luisdev

We are not changing the database structure yet to ensure compatibility of all products in the family. To enter another level for categories, we will have to do this. For this reason, this task has a low priority.
The next thing to do this is for someone to take it and do it. Looking on the case (https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/1477) for 4 years, no one has undertaken to do this. Because this is a large amount of work (all reports and import with export, budget, in general, everything will have to be redone). It takes a long time to check all this and you can make a lot of mistakes, for which no one will say thank you.
Approximating that 0 lines of code were made for this task in 4 years, I believe that in the next 96 years it will be the same IMHO.

I repeat that I like the idea of adding a "Project" more. This is a separate entity that does not affect existing reports. This can be implemented gradually and much easier.

Regards.
Nikolay

[Cedders]

I must say I can only agree with recent replies.

On one hand, it would definitely but a good features to be able to define multi-level categories but, on the other hand, it has been said it is difficult to manage this change (there is one DB table for categories and one for subcategories).

Therefore, the feature request mentioned (https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/1477) sounds pretty good to me. Adding a "Project" field could allow MMEX to get a deeper "categorisation" but also a cross-category without changing current DB structure that much.

The tag field sounds also pretty good because it's more generic than a single field "Project" and could allow multiple values.

Definitely looking forward to see it released and still available if needed