Budget Rule

Budget Rules are the method used by Budgetizer to automatically help you to budget your money. A Budget Rule describes how you want to budget credits to Accounts in the current Budget System. When you create a credit using the Transaction Wizard, each Budget Rule is run in the order in which it appears on the Budget Rules Screen, which causes your money to automatically be divided up amongst the various Budget Items in your Budget System.

When you create a new Budget Rule, you will be presented with a dialog with the following fields which define how the Budget Rule will work.

Percentage:
This checkbox will determine whether the "Amount" field will be interpreted as a fixed amount or as a percentage.

Amount:
This field allows you to enter the amount of the Budget Rule. If the "Percentage" checkbox is checked, then this amount is interpreted as a percentage (i.e. "15.35" = "15.35%"). Otherwise, this amount is interpreted as a fixed amount (i.e. "15.35" = "$15.35", or whatever currency you are using).

Percent of:
This drop down box is only active if the "Percentage" checkbox is checked. This field will allow you to set which value will be used when the percentage is calculated. The options are "Net Deposit", which will use the "Amount" value from the Transaction Wizard to calculate the percent, "Gross Deposit", which will use the "Gross Amount" value from the drop down box in the Transaction Wizard, and finally any of the existing Budget Items, which will use the amount currently allocated to the specified Budget Item when calculating the percent. Note that this is not the current balance of the Budget Item, but the amount that is allocated to that Budget Item for the credit that is being handled at the time.

From / Into:
These drop down boxes will allow you to set from which Budget Item the money for this Budget Rule is being moved, and into which Budget Item it is being moved. Usually, the "From" field will contain the "Unbudgeted" value, and the "To" field will be some other Budget Items. If these two fields are the same the Budget Rule will do nothing.

Applies to all deposits / Applies to deposits from:
If the "Applies to all deposits" checkbox is checked, then this Budget Rule will be run for every credit regardless of which party it is from. Otherwise, you can select a party from the "Applies to deposits from" drop-down box to specify that only certain credits should use this Budget Rule.

Applies to all accounts / Applies to deposits into:
If the "Applies to all deposits" checkbox is checked, then this Budget Rule will be run for every credit regardless of which Account it is in. Otherwise, you can select an Account from the "Applies to deposits into" drop-down box to specify that only credits to certain Accounts should use this Budget Rule.

Advanced Use of Budget Rules

Most basic Budget Rules will simply move an amount from the "Unbudgeted" Budget item into some other Budget Item. However, this does not always have to be the case. Budget Rules are always executed in the order specified on the Budget Rules Screen, and the effect of these Budget Rules is cumulative. This means than by the time a Budget Rule runs, there may have been other Budget Rules which have already run. You can use Budget Rules which take advantage of this by building upon each other. A common use of this technique is to create a Budget Rule which runs very last and moves 100% of the money in "Unbudgeted" into a "savings" Budget Item. This way, after all of your budget needs have been met, the remainder of the money will be put into your "savings". Note that this will not work if this Budget Rule is first in the list. If that is the case, then all of the money will go into "savings" before it can be budgeted to any other Budget Item.