Budgeting

Here is a start at gathering budgeting-related resources.

• hledger > balance > Budget report, hledger's built-in periodic budget report
• Budgeting and forecasting, a older introduction to these (written for hledger 1.5 in 2018)
• https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/budgeting, annotated examples of journals implementing budgets
• plaintextaccounting.org: Budgeting, more budgeting-related docs, for all PTA tools
• The YNAB (YouNeedABudget) way: Age Your Money
• Some other budgeting tools for comparison: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted#money-budgeting-and-management

PTA budgeting notes

 <sm> two commands that are roughly equivalent: ledger budget --add-budget expenses, hledger balance --budget -E expenses
 <sm> they show both budgeted and unbudgeted accounts            

--budget has no effect on single-column reports, it requires a reporting interval
--budget INTERVAL enables all periodic transactions with that interval; these can be date-limited
--budget hides all non-budgeted subaccounts; can be depth-limited more

<sm> there's different ways to do budgeting                     [16:46]
<sm> let me try to count them                                   [16:50]
<sm> "envelope budgeting" is analogous to having a set of envelopes containing cash for different purposes. 
You can model the "envelopes" with 
a. real-world accounts (eg your bank lets you create arbitrary savings accounts), 
b. virtual (imaginary) subaccounts of a real-world account (eg your checking account), 
c. virtual accounts "off to the side" (budget:*)
<sm> also you can do the transfers to and from these manually, or generate them with automated posting rules
<sm> "goal budgeting" (best name I can come up with) involves setting some inflow/outflow goals per account per period, 
and then measuring how the actual flows compare with the goals. balance --budget provides this report
<sm> I think that's 7 ways

From https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/doq9p5/new_to_ledger_budgeting_question:

Also search for budgeting links at http://plaintextaccounting.org . You'll see two main approaches discussed:

1. "envelope budgeting" - sounds more like what you've been doing. Based around explicitly allocating money for each purpose. Good for managing > cashflow. Requires more journal entries. Can be done entirely manually (1a) but many docs advise using automatic posting rules to assist (1b). Many > different ways to handle the details. Requires more thinking.

2. the other kind ("report-based budgeting" ?). Based around a special budget report provided by Ledger/hledger, which uses periodic transaction > rules to set budget goals. Automatic posting rules might be useful here too, I'm not sure. Provides less enforcement, requires less work. Fewer ways > to do it, perhaps provides simpler/clearer reports.

I often find "budgeting" covers/touches on quite a lot of topics:

• setting earning/spending goals,
• reviewing performance against those goals,
• controlling earning/spending based on the goals,
• allocating funds for short term expenses,
• allocating funds towards savings goals,
• updating allocated funds as transactions occur,
• reallocating funds/balancing the budget,
• end of period actions (roll over ? reset ?),
• forecasting cash balances and managing cashflow,
• forecasting income/expenses...

How to set up a time budget

• create a time.journal which includes your (timedot or timeclock) time log file (assuming you're not tracking time in journal format)

  # time.journal
  include time.timedot
  

• choose a budget interval, eg daily, weekly or monthly
• if you have some historical timelog data, review average spending on that interval to get a baseline

  $ hledger -f time.journal date:thisyear bal -WA
  

• in time.journal add a periodic transaction rule to allocate budget amounts, similar to baseline, on that interval

  ~ weekly
      (adm:time)       1h
      (ser:some:proj)  4h
  

• run a budget report, using the same interval:

  $ hledger -f time.journal bal --budget -W
  Balance changes in 2017/11/27w48:
  
              ||     2017/11/27w48 
  ===============++===================
  adm:time      || 0.25h [25% of 1h] 
  ser:some:proj || 0.75h [19% of 4h] 
  ---------------++-------------------
              ||             1.00h 
  

A time budgeting workflow

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203521, summary of my 2018-2019 time budgeting workflow:

I keep a hledger timedot file[1] open in a hot-key drop-down iTerm window. Each 15-minute chunk is logged with a dot. I group dots into hours for > quick visual scanning.

2019-01-08
fos.hledger.sup  .
adm.email  ..
adm.finance  .... .... ..
fos.plaintextaccounting  .
fos.hledger.issues.941  .... .
has-res  ...
biz-res  ..

I've trained myself to update this often while at the computer, and before walking away. Delayed retroactive logging is also pretty easy. Working in quarter/half/whole hour chunks, and in rhythm with the clock, and having a pane showing recent sleep/wake/timelog-saved events, all help. Not every day is the same; this system has been quick and flexible enough to suit a range of conditions. I can set daily/weekly/monthly time budgets if I want. Some more details at [2].