I store money for long-term categories in a savings account. This is made up of a combination of category balances (emergency fund, buffer, vacation fund, shiny stuff etc).
I know the categories balance (C1, C2, C3, C4, C5) = Account Balance
My enhancement request would be to provide the functionality to create virtual accounts/categories that are made up of common mathematical operators in conjunction with any combination of Category Budget, Category Outflow, Category Balance, Total Balance, Total Outflows, Total Budgeted, Account Balance, Account Cleared, Account Uncleared.
This would allow me to monitor and track all sorts of balance subsets automatically without having to do the maths, especially as they change regularly. I have a 4-month-old and 2.5 yr old. I'm so tired.
For example, my wife and I have retirement funds in multiple accounts, 6 I think, - Virtual Accounts will allow me to bundle those together.
My true Buffer balance is a combination of many categories and account balances. Answer? Virtual Accounts (I think).
Or am I just looking at my budget incorrectly; I really should be [insert other option...]
This sounds like a lot of work. Just make sure you keep enough in checking and put excess into savings.
I do like account groupings to get subtotals, but trying to match categories with accounts to the penny seems unnecessary.
Quote from: Joel on April 19, 2018, 10:41:44 PM
Just make sure you keep enough in checking and put excess into savings.
This would be a good use case to make sure that I have enough money in my checking:
Bills Categories + Credit Cards = Minimum to keep in checking
This could be a great addition to the "reports" section, or perhaps as a section with the "On/Off accounts" and "Closed accounts".
A dashboard of these different values on the reports page would be pretty cool (like a bunch of little tiles showing the balance, maybe with a sparkline view of the past X months or something). Then clicking on one of the tiles would open up that calculation as a graph of it's value over time.
Sounds like a great feature. Want to code it
@Billy_McSkintos? :P
QuoteWant to code it?
Woah easy tiger... I made the request, I don't have to do the dirty work.
Quote from: Billy_McSkintos on April 20, 2018, 01:46:52 PM
Quote from: Joel on April 19, 2018, 10:41:44 PM
Just make sure you keep enough in checking and put excess into savings.
This would be a good use case to make sure that I have enough money in my checking:
Bills Categories + Credit Cards = Minimum to keep in checking
This is where the old YNAB trick of leveraging future dated transactions comes in handy. If you primarily use your credit card(s) for spending and are setup to automatically pay the statement balance in full on the due date, you typically know your scheduled checking outflows for ~30 days. Once you have the exact amount and date do each scheduled outflow transaction, “enter to registerâ€. Don’t enter any inflows until actually received and make sure your working balance stays above whatever level you deem appropriate. Personally, I like to keep it at $5k after all planned outflows over the next ~30 days will be gone. Sometimes I run it a bit lower knowing our paychecks are predictable and a transfer from Ally Bank can happen within a few days, if needed.