wish: add an Attribution (why) classification for transaction

[Etienne Boisseau]

I'm migrating from Grisbi, since HomeBank appear for more dynamic in it development, for the ergonomic, and the graphics that I was missing.
I'm really happy with HomeBank, thank you really much for what you've done!
But I am still used to a functionality of Grisbi that I am now missing, and that would make (for me) this software just perfect : it's the "budgetary attribution" (with sub-budgetary) field.

I.e. I want to be able to categorize my expenses according to "what it is" (category), but also "why/what for do I spend the money" (attribution).
E.g. I spend some money during August in categories Food/Restaurant, Transportation/Train, and Culture/Museum. What I would like to do, is to *also* class them in "Holidays/Summer 2015".
Tags don't appear satisfactory for me since there is no sub-tag, and no diagram according to tags.

IMHO, it is exactly the same principle than "Categories", but with another name.

The point then would be to be also able to generate graphs according to "Categories" or according to "Attributions".

Thanks a lot!

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

I need to think more about this first

[Etienne Boisseau (etienne-boisseau)]

Yipee! (-;

More seriously, if we consider that "Categories" describes the "What" of our expenses, "budgetary attribution" can be seen as an independent axis of analysis.
This could be either the "Why" of our expenses (e.g. for my vacation flight-ticket : What="Transport/Airplane" ; Why="Vacations/2016_Summer"), or it can be use to have analyze the types of our expenses (e.g. "Regular monthly bills", "Every-day life", "Extras" OR "Him", "Her", "Children"), etc.

Glad if this feature is implemented!
All the best.

[Thirty three (dites33)]

I strongly second this wish.
I previously tried with the "tags" feature without success (tags are not manageable nor at the same place as categories in forms, for exemple).

Hope this will be implemented a day :)
Thanks !

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

since 2016, tags evolve a little.
but I guess you will still want this ?

[Etienne Boisseau (etienne-boisseau)]

Thanks for following up on it, I appreciate.

For a few years now, I have actually reverted to Grisbi — mostly because of this feature. So I couldn't tell whether current state of HomeBank could do it. (I'm happy to have a go at it, I'd just need to export/convert my account file.)

However, what I can tell is how I'm using Grisbi and what I find useful:

* I'm tagging each transaction with a Category+Subcategory (e.g. “Food/Fruit&Vegs”) as well as Budgetary+Subbudgetary (e.g. “Ordinary/Eating”).
* I build report based on either (Sub)Categories or (Sub)Budgetaries.
* For some reports (e.g. “Average monthly spendings per (Sub)Budgetary”, which excludes extra-ordinary transactions [windfall payment, real-estate investment, …]), I filter out some transactions based on a combination of (Sub)Categories and (Sub)Budgetaries values.
* For most transaction, one could correctly populate the (Sub)Budgetary based on the (Sub)Category (e.g. “Food/Fruit&Vegs” most of the time implies “Ordinary/Eating” — just like categories can be deduced from Payee: “BP” → “Mobility/Fuel”).
* … yet there is no strict mapping (i.e., rule that would apply all the time) between (Sub)Categories and (Sub)Budgetaries (e.g., “Food/Fruit&Vegs” could also go with “Vacations/2020-Summer”).

I hope this helps!

[HelloTheWorld (loic-dupont)]

old wish, but new question :

does this "Budgetary assignment" (do not misunderstand with existing rule assignment) get close to the "YNAB" method, saying "give every dollar a job" ?
Thus, those budget are... giving every dollar some jobs ?

And, as I read there is now a budget section (that I didn't explore right now), would it solve this issue ? Or not ? Or is it a step in this direction ?