excluding accounts in fava-envelope

Juan Pinto

unread,

Sep 26, 2023, 6:51:53 PM9/26/23

to Beancount

Hello, I'm new to the world of plain-text accounting but have been diving in head-first and learning a ton.

I'm trying to set up my YNAB-style budget using fava-envelope, but have run into an issue. I have some investment sub-accounts under Assets:Investment:*, and it appears that if I've transferred money into one of these from one of my bank accounts, those transactions show up in the budget as categories. I end up seeing something like "Assets:Investment:Vanguard" with the amount corresponding to how much I put in that month. I've tried mapping these accounts to "Income" as someone suggested, but this seems to throw the "funds for month" out of whack.

Is there a more robust way to exclude accounts from the budget calculations? Thanks!

—Juan

ju...@jdpinto.com

unread,

Sep 27, 2023, 9:41:41 AM9/27/23

to bean...@googlegroups.com

Whoop, I was wrong. It did actually work as intended when I mapped accounts to exclude to “Income”, I was just miscalculating how much I had for the month (forgot to add what has already been spent this month). Please disregard!

—Juan

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Beancount" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beancount/al8XuYJj0Ks/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to beancount+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/74a81654-3e03-463c-a125-5016207d1a66n%40googlegroups.com.

Brian Lalor

unread,

Sep 27, 2023, 10:21:50 AM9/27/23

to bean...@googlegroups.com

I’m really curious how this works for you. Would you mind sharing an approximate example? There’s little in the fava-envelope showing the workflow, and how the beans flow over time.

I may be about on the same place in my Beancount journey as you, Juan. I kind of abandoned YNAB a few months ago, but I really like the envelope-budgeting idea and would like to incorporate a similar idea in Beancount to try to manage spending.

—

Brian Lalor (he/him)

bla...@bravo5.org

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/MW5PR84MB1356077651BCD364726DE3C1FCC2A%40MW5PR84MB1356.NAMPRD84.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

Juan Pinto

unread,

Oct 3, 2023, 9:02:48 PM10/3/23

to Beancount

Sure! Here's what the top of my budget file looks like:

2023-09-01 custom "envelope" "start date" "2023-09"

2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:Joint:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:Debts:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:Juan:GiftCards:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:EBT:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Liabilities:*"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "months ahead" "4"

** Mappings

2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Taxes:*" "Income"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Investment:*" "Income"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Assets:Juan:Investment:*" "Income"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Equity:*" "Income"

2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Rent"                   "1.1 Rent 🏠"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Utilities"              "1.2 Utilities 🚰"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Groceries"              "1.3 Groceries 🛒"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Phone"                  "1.4 Phone 📱"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Subscriptions"          "1.5 Subscriptions 📆"

The trickiest part for me was figuring out how to hide accounts. Mapping them to "Income" like this seems to work just fine. Here's what this looks like on Fava:

Anything still in the "Available" column at the end of the month carries over to the next month. So far everything's working well, but it's still pretty early in my journey. I do wish there was a way to modify the budget directly from within Fava.

—Juan

Brian Lalor

unread,

Oct 5, 2023, 10:34:02 PM10/5/23

to bean...@googlegroups.com

Thanks! Looking forward to playing around with it.

—

Brian Lalor (he/him)

bla...@bravo5.org

On Oct 3, 2023, at 8:43 PM, Juan Pinto <ju...@jdpinto.com> wrote:

Sure! Here's what the top of my budget file looks like:

2023-09-01 custom "envelope" "start date" "2023-09"

2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:Joint:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:Debts:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:Juan:GiftCards:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:EBT:*"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Liabilities:*"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "months ahead" "4"

** Mappings

2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Taxes:*" "Income"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Investment:*" "Income"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Assets:Juan:Investment:*" "Income"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Equity:*" "Income"

2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Rent" "1.1 Rent 🏠"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Utilities" "1.2 Utilities 🚰"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Groceries" "1.3 Groceries 🛒"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Phone" "1.4 Phone 📱"
2023-01-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Monthly:Subscriptions" "1.5 Subscriptions 📆"

The trickiest part for me was figuring out how to hide accounts. Mapping them to "Income" like this seems to work just fine. Here's what this looks like on Fava:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/53f1fe82-1768-4255-97e1-39e7c92adf2dn%40googlegroups.com.

Reply all

Reply to author

Forward