How to read the Net Worth/Forecasting report

[anMoney Developer]

This report can be a bit confusing.   It can be in Forecasting more (Budget items checked) or Net Worth mode (Budget items not checked).

First column (Net Worth):

In Net Worth mode or for past dates in Forecasting mode, this column is the sum of the current account balance and any upcoming recurring items.

In Forecasting mode for future dates only, this is the sum of the current account balance, any past due recurring items, minus any non-budgeted upcoming recurring items.

Second column:

This is only used in Forecasting mode for future dates only.  It is the sum of the projected budgeted spendings and any budgeted upcoming recurring items.

Third column:

This is just the sum of the first two columns, and it is the forecasted account balance, the column that's the most interesting.

The most confusing aspect is that budgeted recurring items move from the first to the second column as the date changes from past to future.  The easiest way to understand is that two report mode changes as this happens, and only the first column is used for past dates.

[Stefano Cislaghi]

I appreciate this post. I was looking this morning to the forecast report and wasn't totally clear.

So the third column is what i expect to have (in all my account) at the end of the period after I've paid all my budgeted expenses.

 

Correct?

 

Ste

[anMoney Developer]

Yes, exactly.

[Stefano Cislaghi]

That's very good. Is there a way to show all expenses out of budget?

This to understand, stating maybe last month, what has been spent and was not in a budgeted category

 

Thanks

Ste

[anMoney Developer]

Those should be in the first column.

[Stefano Cislaghi]

mm... so it is not so clear. My net worth for the next 12 months is constant, while saving and projecting are going up. Why net worth is constant?

 

Ste 

[anMoney Developer]

The first column Net Worth will be constant if you have all your recurring bills as part of your budget.  Only, if you have some recurring bills NOT part of your budget you will see a change there.

[Stéphane Mojon]

I have a strange behavior with this report... For monthly recurring bills, it works fine. 

But I have a weekly recurring bill that is part of my budget. And this bill affects both the first and the second columns. Therefore, this weekly bill is doubled over the report...

[Stéphane Mojon]

I think the problem is that my recurring bill is par of my budget. Therefore, if I want to see both recurring bills and budget entries in the report, my bill is doubled.

Is that really the expected behavior?

[Renato Wiltgen]

In my opinion, this report shoud consider everything from the recurrent bills and plot a line over the time with the account balance.

What I want to see in this report is: how much will be my lowest balance in a particular month/day (depending on the filter) to plan an investment for example...

Right now I must add all recurrent bills in my account to visually see the lowest balance in that period and it's not productive.

Could you add (or teach me how to do myself) a report only plotting the lowest balance in a period taking into account the recurrent bills?

A nice to have feature would be "what-if" scenarios as well....

Thank you very much

[anMoney Developer]

You can get the lowest balance, but you must set the report to Daily  granularity.  But when you do that, you notice that report runs very slow.  The calculation is complex, so it takes a while.  If I added a "lowest balance" option, I would have to implicitly set the report to "Daily" and that would slow the report down considerably for the average user.

[Renato Wiltgen]

Daily isn't what I'm looking for yet.... The report must calculate the daily balance but I just wanna see one line per month:

Month | max. bal.| min. bal.
Jan. | $123.89| $2.77
Feb. | $1,680.65| $544.90
Mar. | $2,678.45| $241.89

And so on...

Can't you di that?
Maybe something else would be when I click the balance - min or max drills down into that month so I can see a daily report for that month

Thank you very much

[Albéric CEZAR]

Hi,

Today I notice that the second column put some positive expense in the daily mode report. In fact, I writed a future expense and included it in my budget. This expense exceed my planned budget and the forecast module include the out of budget part as a positive expense (I guess that is because it apply a minus function on a negative number). 

Is that normal ?

[anMoney Developer]

Alberic's data pointed out some issues.  Let's say you already have a future transaction entered for the a budget category.  In that case, I need to take a maximum of the entered amount and the budgeted amount for the projection.

[Nick Emblow]

I agree with Stéphane - it seems the "projected" balance column is counting recurring transactions that are budgeted items twice when the "include budgeted items" is checked. I tried unticking "include recurring transactions" to get a budget forecast, bit it didn't seem to do anything to the report.

[anMoney Developer]

Yes, this happens if you enter recurring transactions early.  Will fix it for the next update.

[Nick Emblow]

This may be a bit off topic but it would be good if we could do a "budget only" forecast. I've been doing this manually via exporting the budget over time report and calculating the running balance on a spreadsheet. Obviously not the most efficient way to do it. 

[anMoney Developer]

I guess I don't understand how a Budget only Forecast report differs from a Budget Over Time report?

[Nick Emblow]

Well to me it seems like at the moment the budget over time forecast is giving the result of the individual periods (i.e. months) and not a cumulative (or running, if you like) total of the surpluses and defects for each period.
Example at the moment
February -100
March +200
April +400
May -350
Etc...
Budget only forecast would be
February -100
March +100
April +500
May +150
etc...
Cheers
N
PS love the app BTW.

[Nonato Sousa]

Bom dia

Comprei o app a algum tempo e agora me deparei com uma duvida que esta me deixando desanimado em relação a lançamentos no cartão de credito.

exemplo: Faço o lançamento a cada despesa que surge, e notei que quando chega a fatura deste cartão tenho que efetuar um novo lançamento com isto noto que gera uma duplicidade pois já fiz os lançamento anteriores e no dia do pagamento da fatura que que lançar o total novamente...

como resolvo isto, gostaria de sua ajuda...

Grato,

Nonato

[Zoni]

Hi,

I notice that this occurs until now. If I register a future transaction (credit card account) and this expense exceed my planned budget, the app add positive value to column of budget.

I agree that the maximum of entered transactions and budgeted amount should be calculate.

Any workaround or fix? Or am I doing something wrong?

Another issue is when I change a recurring transaction, changing the value of some specific occurrence. This affect the first and second column of Forecast Report. 

In my case if I have a monthly value = 20 and change a specific occurrence to 30. The first column receive +10 and the second column receive +10 too. The third column is correct, but this make confusion. 

Net Worth| Budget and Recurring Items | Total

10 | 40 | = 30. (Current)

0 | 30 | = 30. (Expected)

Thanks,

Zoni