[fava-envelope] Unexpected behaviors with activity and undeclared budget accounts

[Mark Martel]

I'm trying to get going with fava-envelope. 

The problem: Budget envelopes show up as expected but I'm not seeing activities show up as I expected they would.

My expectations were:

1. The following ledger entries would show up in the Expenses:Food row as -175, reducing the amount available to 1225. It's clear these transactions are being seen and processed by the extension but the Expense postings aren't being counted as budget activities for reasons that elude me.

2. I did not expect to see a Assets:US:Schwab:Checking row, since I haven't declared it as a budget account.

Here are the only transactions in the ledger:

2024-06-02 * "Groceries"

Assets:US:Schwab:Checking -150 USD

Expenses:Household:Groceries 150 USD

2024-06-04 * "Dining Out"

Assets:US:Schwab:Checking -100 USD

Expenses:Household:DiningOut 100 USD

And here are my fava-envelope declarations:

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "start date" "2024-06"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "months ahead" "12"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Expenses:*"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Groceries" "Expenses:Food"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:DiningOut" "Expenses:Food"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Automotive:Maintenance" "Expenses:Cars"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Automotive:Insurance" "Expenses:Cars"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Automotive:Gas" "Expenses:Cars"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "allocate" "Expenses:Food" 1400

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "allocate" "Expenses:Cars" 500

Can someone please help me correct the unexpected behavior? I'm assuming I'm making mistakes in my declarations.

Thank you!

[polarmutex]

I don't think anything jumps to mind as to why this is not working. I will look at it when I can and see what is happening. 

polarmutex

[Mark Martel]

Thank you! Please let me know if I can provide anything that might be helpful in diagnosing/troubleshooting.

[polarmutex]

pretty easy change to get what you want

```beancount

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:*"

```
budget accounts need to be the assets/liabilities accounts you want to track and then you map the Income/Expenses

Need to improve the documentation and feel free to create issues for change or new features

hope this works

polarmutex

[Mark Martel]

I was not clear whether you're suggesting:

A. add the line you've suggested to my declaration of budget accounts

B. replace my existing budget account line with this one

I've tried both A and B and I'm still getting errors with both: "Internal Server Error: The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there is an error in the application."

Here is my full beancount file for reference. Perhaps you can tell me what I'm doing wrong?

;; -*- mode: org; mode: beancount; -*-

;; Birth: 1980-05-12

;; Dates: 2021-01-01 - 2023-05-28

;; THIS FILE HAS BEEN AUTO-GENERATED.

* Options

option "title" "Household Forecasting"

option "operating_currency" "USD"

2000-01-01 custom "fava-extension" "fava_envelope" "{}"

* Commodities

1792-01-01 commodity USD

export: "CASH"

name: "US Dollar"

* Equity and Liability Accounts

1980-05-12 open Equity:Opening-Balances

1980-05-12 open Liabilities:AccountsPayable

1980-05-12 open Assets:Home

1980-05-12 open Assets:Car

1980-05-12 open Liabilities:Mortgage

1980-05-12 open Liabilities:CarLoans

* Banking

2023-01-01 open Assets:US:Schwab

2023-01-01 open Assets:US:Schwab:Checking USD

2023-01-01 * "Opening Balance for checking account"

Assets:US:Schwab:Checking 0 USD

Equity:Opening-Balances 0 USD

* Expense Accounts

1980-01-01 open Expenses:Household:Groceries

1980-01-01 open Expenses:Household:DiningOut

1980-01-01 open Expenses:Household:Automotive:Maintenance

1980-01-01 open Expenses:Household:Automotive:Insurance

1980-01-01 open Expenses:Household:Automotive:Gas

* Envelope Budgets

; https://github.com/polarmutex/fava-envelope

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "start date" "2024-06"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "months ahead" "12"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Expenses:*"

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Assets:*"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Groceries" "Expenses:Food"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:DiningOut" "Expenses:Food"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Automotive:Maintenance" "Expenses:Cars"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Automotive:Insurance" "Expenses:Cars"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "mapping" "Expenses:Household:Automotive:Gas" "Expenses:Cars"

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "allocate" "Expenses:Food" 1400

2024-06-01 custom "envelope" "allocate" "Expenses:Cars" 500

* Transactions

[polarmutex]

delete this line

2020-01-01 custom "envelope" "budget account" "Expenses:*"

budget accounts should be under Assets/Liabilities

mappings/allocations should be under Income/Expenses

[Mark Martel]

Thank you for trying to help but I get the exact same Server Error messages when I delete out that line.

Looks like I'll either have to give up or double down walking through your code in debug mode line by line to see where it's failing.

[polarmutex]

I want to help make sure we get past this. started a GitHub discussion where we could more easily go back and forth with the issue

https://github.com/polarmutex/fava-envelope/discussions/93