Your budgetsYou can access your budgets by clicking the appropriate icon in the navigation pane at the left hand side of your KMyMoney window.
There are two major sections to the budget window. These are described in more detail below. On the left, the main section displays the list of budgets you have created. Above that are buttons for creating, renaming, and deleting budgets. On the right, there are three sections. At the top is the Accounts List. At the bottom is a display of the amounts assigned to the budget for the category selected in the Accounts List above. Between those two areas are some additional controls for managing the budget.
This section of the Budgets window displays the list of Budgets contained in the current KMyMoney file. If no Budget has yet been created the list will be empty. The list of Budgets has two columns:
- Name
Name of the Budget
- Year
Fiscal year of the Budget. Note that the starting month and day of the fiscal year can be specified in the Configure KMyMoney dialog.
Values from the selected Budget are displayed to the right. To select a different Budget you can click on the Budget in the list. Alternatively, when the list has focus, you can select a different Budget using the Up and Down keys. If you have made changes to a Budget and then select a different budget KMyMoney will ask you whether you want to save or discard the changes.
There are three buttons above the list of Budgets.
- New
Create a new, empty budget. The default name of a new budget is "Budget <year>" where <year> is the current fiscal year.
- Rename
Edit the name of the selected Budget.
You can also edit the name of a Budget by double-clicking on the name of a Budget in the list.
- Delete
Delete the selected Budget.
Additional options are available on a menu accessed by right-clicking on a Budget.
- New Budget
Create a new, empty Budget.
- Rename Budget
Rename the selected Budget.
- Change budget year
Displays a window with a list of years to select a different fiscal year for the budget.
- Delete budget
Delete the selected Budget.
- Copy budget
Creates a copy of the selected Budget. The new Budget has the name "Copy of <budget>", where <budget> is the name of the copied Budget.
- Budget based on forecast
Fills in budget amounts based on data from KMyMoney's Forecast values. See the section on Forecasts for more information.
The Accounts List displays the list of Income and Expense Categories. (Remember, within KMyMoney, categories are treated as a special type of account.) As in other places in KMyMoney, the list is organized in a tree structure. The list can be expanded or collapsed to show or hide Subcategories within a Category. The Accounts List has a number of columns:
- Account
Account (Category) name
- Type
Category Type (Income or Expense)
- Total Balance
Current balance of Account. This will be blank for Categories, unless the Category is defined in a foreign currency. In this case, Total Balance will show the value for the Category in its defined currency.
- Total Value
Total yearly value in the Budget. If a Category has Subcategories and the Category's list of Subcategories is collapsed the value displayed is the sum of the values for the Category and all of its Subcategories. If a Category is defined in a foreign currency, the Total Value will show the value in the base currency.
Below the Accounts List are several controls. The and buttons are described further below. The collapse and expand buttons collapse or expand the entire Accounts List.
The Accounts List can be filtered in two ways. Checking the Hide unused categories checkbox hides any Categories for which no value has been assigned to the Category or any of its Subcategories. To the right of this, is an unlabelled text box. Only categories which include whatever is typed in this box are listed, but their parent categories are also listed.
Note that changing either the Hide unused budget categories or the filter value is likely to change the list of Categories display. You may need to re-expand the list to see all the Categories that should be displayed with the current settings.
The Assignments area shows the values for the Category selected in the Accounts List.
- Account
Displays the name of the selected Category. If the Category is a Subcategory, its full name is displayed in the Category:Subcategory format.
- Total
Displays the total yearly value assigned to the Category.
- Include subaccounts
If this is checked, then Reports show actual income or expenses in Subcategories belonging to the Category against the Category instead of the Subcategory.
If a Subcategory has a value defined in the Budget, then the income and expenses are shown against the Subcategory.
If the Category selected in the Accounts List has its Subcategories collapsed, although its Total Value will show the sum of the Total Values for all its Subcategories, the amounts in the Assignments area may still show 0, unless this box has been checked or an amount has explicitly been assigned to the Category.
In general, for you will either check this box and assign values to the Category and not to any of its Subcategories, or not check the box, and assign values to the Subcategories but not the Category. If any Subcategories have assigned amounts when this box is checked, then those amounts are rolled up to the Category.
- Clear
The button resets the budgeted category value or values to zero.
- Period
The Period radio buttons allow you to select the period for which the value applies
- Monthly
A single value is entered, specifying the amount per month. This is the default setting.
- Yearly
A single value is entered, specifying the amount per year.
- Individual
Values are specified for each Calendar month. This is used where expense or income is spread irregularly through the year.
If a value is or values are already specified and the Period is changed KMyMoney will ask whether to use the current total yearly value to assign the new values.
For performance reasons, changes made to a Budget are not saved immediately. Instead, they must first be stored using the button and then permanently saved using the button.
When a Budget's values are first modified, the and buttons are enabled. Multiple changes can be made to the Budget. Pressing will store the changes and disable these buttons.
The button only saves changes that have been stored using the button. Thus, if you have modified a Budget but not yet stored the changes button will not affect the modified Budget and the and buttons remain enabled.
Revert undoes any changes made to a Budget since the last Update and disables the and buttons.
Changes stored using but not yet saved using can only be reverted by reloading the KMyMoney file.