Setting budget

[Soundtek]

Hi, I am trying to set up a monthly budget but the program is set up in a "strange" way. It gives me the option to set budgets for each individual category and subcategory but I have dozens. I would like to set a single budget for several categories so that I can have at a glance the level of spending in several categories at once. Is this possible?

Thank you

[nstein]

I would like to set a single budget for several categories so that I can have at a glance the level of spending in several categories at once. Is this possible?

Can you give an example of your category structure and what you are trying to achieve?

You can budget in any level of the category hierarchy you want, and you don't have to budget for each category. The blue lines are totals for the category + all of its subcategories.

So if you have a few categories you want to budget/view as a group you could always group them together in the category hierarchy and put the budget at the group level. For example, I've grouped some categories into a group called "Discretionary Spending":

Screenshot 2024-03-11 181630.png (101.75 KiB) Viewed 491 times

now I can just budget on discretionary spending:

Screenshot 2024-03-11 182154.png (259.48 KiB) Viewed 491 times

You can see that the budget "Estimated" amount is only on the group, but the blue total line at the bottom shows the actuals from all subcategories against the budget total. The budget reports show the actual against the group budget as well:

Screenshot 2024-03-11 182807.png (213.82 KiB) Viewed 491 times

Screenshot 2024-03-11 183019.png (90.28 KiB) Viewed 491 times

[Soundtek]

Sorry for the late reply. I understood what you were trying to tell me and tried to fiddle with it. The solution was to create the category "budget" and move all the expenses (category and subcat) I want to keep an eye on into it. The downside is that this affects all the reports (making them slightly harder to read) and more importantly it becomes slower to search the category each time I enter a new expense.

I was hoping for something simpler such as "Select the categories you want to keep an eye on" and through check boxes the program would automatically select those categories and pull the data to calculate the budget.

Nothing serious anyway. Thanks for your help

[nstein]

The solution was to create the category "budget" and move all the expenses (category and subcat) I want to keep an eye on into it.

I was hoping for something simpler such as "Select the categories you want to keep an eye on" and through check boxes the program would automatically select those categories and pull the data to calculate the budget.

You could simply budget on these few categories directly (without regrouping them under a single "budget" category). Then in the budget screen you can hide all the other non-budgeted categories by selecting "View Planned Budget Categories".

Screenshot 2024-03-20 202422.png (251.36 KiB) Viewed 433 times

Unfortunately the built in reports still show everything. We could potentially add a view option for those to match that in the budgeting screen.

[Soundtek]

You could simply budget on these few categories directly (without regrouping them under a single "budget" category). Then in the budget screen you can hide all the other non-budgeted categories by selecting "View Planned Budget Categories".

But this would not help because the program always asks you to give a budget to each individual category and only then group them together.

Take for example the Auto & Transports category in the attachment in my previous post. In my specific case I can't give a specific budget to the whole category or worse to each individual subcategory because sometimes I only fill up my car 1 time a month, other times 3 times. Sometimes I drive 300km through the highway in 1 day and sometimes I don't go for 3 consecutive months. In the Food & Dining category I only have 2 subcategories: grocery and eating out. There are periods when I eat out with friends every day and periods when I stay home and eat alone.
There are periods where I spend more in some categories and less in others and periods where I spend less in the former and more in the latter, based on needs, and this is true for all categories so you understand that it is impossible for me to give a budget for each of them... and actually I am not so fussy to do such a thing. It would be much simpler to manage if there was an overall budget into which fit certain categories, and this budget would take into account the sum of all those categories, nothing simpler than that.