Short introduction:
I've been using classic YNAB for about 2 years and it's helped me tremendously. I'm just as excited about financier.io and look forward to supporting the developer for something I use all the time. I was often frustrated with the reports in YNAB and once I learned you could export to CSV, I made my own reports with software I'm familiar with (Filemaker).
Reports
This is not necessarily a solid feature request, but if others saw it they could maybe see how it could be helpful. More generally and long term, I think a "data analysis engine" of sorts that could find data that stands out in one way or another could be really cool and valuable. Maybe just send you a monthly/quarterly/yearly e-mail with certain insights or something.
Here's the explanation of the data analysis I wanted to do on my data:
(http://i.imgur.com/kExBY5Sl.jpg)
By the numbers: Pretty silly, but shows how manys months of data I've accumulated and how many sub categories I have.
Highlights: Looked for the best/second best, and worst/second worst months in terms of net worth increase.
Subcategory overages: I wanted to determine what sub categories I was most frequently under-budgeted (slightly less important), and by how much (more important).
Subcategory average budgeting: This I wanted to create to see on average, what I budget for a sub category (and how many months I've budgeted it) and then how much on average I spend in a category (and the number of months I've actually spent money in that category).
As some examples:
10 year anniversary trip - $58.27 average budget (19 months) and $0.00 average spending (0 months)
I've been budgeting for a 10 year trip for 19 months, and so far, have not spent any money from that fund.
Amazon Prime (9) - $12.45 average budget (20 months) and $104.94 average spending (2 months)
On average budgeted for prime for 20 months, but spending for that has only occurred in 2 months.
Fuel - $180.22 average budget (23 months) and $167.34 average spending (23 months)
On the flip side, Fuel is something we buy every month. While I may have a buffer in the category, it would show me on average what my spending is so I could possibly take a month off and assign my income $$$ elsewhere.
Just signed up today and I'm excited about where this could go in the future!
This is a pretty cool idea, and I like how well thought out it is! :)
Are you imagining a static type of analysis overview as a text based report thing kinda like this? Or something more configurable?
Thanks
The analysis you suggest seems to be focused on variance reporting of budgeted amount vs. actual. It would be meaningless in my case, as I often adjust my budgeted amounts throughout the month to make sure my category balances are accurate so I can make informed spending decisions.
Quote from: Alex on November 22, 2016, 04:20:24 PM
This is a pretty cool idea, and I like how well thought out it is! :)
Are you imagining a static type of analysis overview as a text based report thing kinda like this? Or something more configurable?
Thanks
I think text-based would only really make sense if you were maybe sending out e-mails to include a few different "metrics". I did it that way because it was the simplest way for me to get the data that I wanted to know. I had some rudimentary configuration built in to the tool, but that was pretty much just enabling each reporting section.
(http://i.imgur.com/ylqBLx7l.jpg)
I could see highlights / overages / average spending / budgeting being different report types maybe. I just really like the idea of different "metrics" that maybe stumbling upon could be valuable.
Quote from: Joel on November 22, 2016, 05:11:08 PM
The analysis you suggest seems to be focused on variance reporting of budgeted amount vs. actual. It would be meaningless in my case, as I often adjust my budgeted amounts throughout the month to make sure my category balances are accurate so I can make informed spending decisions.
I know not everyone uses the software the same way, it just so happens I like to roll over my overages in most cases. I can justify it since we're "Rule 4" in YNAB terms (living on last months income), going over is not actually spending money I don't have on hand.
The added benefit to that is being able to identify (other than anecdotal / trying to remember) the subcategories I over spend/under budget, which is quite valuable to me. I suppose you could try and infer that same information if it was logging how often subcategories funding was altered (and how much more or less is was from the previous value), but I wouldn't be surprised if that's not logged anywhere.