BudgetsThis plugin allows you to define and manage your budget.
Like in all other financial software, Skrooge allows you to define a budget. You can do it manually or automatically.
In manual mode, you can:
Define a budget amount for a category for a year.
Define a budget amount for a category for all months of a year.
Define a budget amount for a category for a specific month of a year.
Define if income or expenditure of sub-categories must be taken into account in the defined budget (example: if the option is selected then a budget for the category "Car" will take into account the category "Car > Fuel").
Tip
You can define a budget capturing all income or expenditure not defined in another budget by leaving the category empty. This is really useful to make sure that you do not miss an expenditure.
In automatic mode, you can:
Define a budget for a year based on the transactions of the previous year.
Define missing budget items to balance each month and/or the year (even on manually defined budget).
To go further in budgeting we will take as example the following balanced budget:
-500€ per month for "Food".
+500€ per month for all other categories of expenditure and income.
Imagine that you spent 600€ for "Food" during the previous month! Skrooge informed you that you are over the defined budget but you could not stop eating. So you spent more than expected! How should you deal with this?
Budget rules will allow you to define how you want to do with the delta (positive or negative). For example, you can choose to transfer the delta of one month to the next month. In this case, your new budget for "Food" for the current month is -400€ (-500+100). So you have to take care to recover the situation.
Budget rules can also help you for your project. For example, you can define a rule like this: All positive delta (saving) on "Food" are transferred in "Holidays". This way, when you have the expected amount in "Holidays" budget, then you know that you can go.