Budgets...

[MackMan]

I've been using an old trusted 2D budget sheet I created in Excel a couple of years ago, and it's served me remarkably well up to now.
I need to incorporate something 3D in to Access, and was wondering how best to do this.

I'll need to extract spending by Category and Sub Category per month and compare to Budgeted Amounts (which is simple enough to do) but I was wondering...

In order to create a successful budget table, what would it's structure look like?

I've been looking online for days, and cannot find anything credible to get some ideas.

I'm probably thinking on the lines of one Table for each budget period (months in this case) and one table for the Categories along with their respective budgeted amounts, and then use the necessary queries to compare spending v's budget.

I'm just wondering if anyone has done this, and what works well?

 

[spikepl]

Requirements are normaly specified in terms of the end product, and the task of the designer is to get there. So specify (not "I'm probably thinking") what the end product is and then seek help when or if stuck.

BTW: You do NOT split similar data onto different tables, because that is encoding information into structure (and adding more would require changing data structure which is a nono, or PITA, for those who like that sort of thing). Do you have one wallet for January, another one for February and so on?

 

[MackMan]

Sorry about that.
I'm no designer, and would never be, but this is something I can 'experiment with', however, I was just after some ideas on how I could do so.

I don't have a wallet for each month, and can see why the design would not be based upon this, but in my insights on gathering some ideas and possibilities, it doesn't help to ask questions. I have already decided (by deduction of experimenting and your reply) that multiple tables for my needs is impractical.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

what do you mean by 3D?
are you trying to get what-ifs?

other than that, the budget would match the header accounts for your expenses, surely. If you expenses givers you a summary, then simply store a budget figure in the header, and present a sum of the budgets in the same way as your expense totals.

it may work better by storing the budget item as a transaction of a "budget type", but the same principle applies.