I did my own budgeting in a spreadsheet for awhile, and those big lump purchases were definitely something that's hard to model.
I think it's pretty easy to create a budgeting product for the 90% case but those odd lumpy purchases and split payments are something everyone wants to deal with differently.
For example, my girlfriend and roommates often split purchases by one person buying, and the other person adding an entry on Splitwise.
That Splitwise entry isn't a bank transaction until maybe weeks later when I get a Venmo payment from a roommate covering several Splitwise requests, and for my budget I want to match up the $100 charge at the grocery store with the $50 Splitwise request with the $250 Venmo payment that was only partially for the $50 owed on groceries... not an easy problem to solve in a general way that makes lots of users happy.
> That Splitwise entry isn't a bank transaction until maybe weeks later when I get a Venmo payment from a roommate covering several Splitwise requests, and for my budget I want to match up the $100 charge at the grocery store with the $50 Splitwise request with the $250 Venmo payment that was only partially for the $50 owed on groceries... not an easy problem to solve in a general way that makes lots of users happy.
When you spend $100 at the grocery store you make an entry with $100 subtracted from assets:bank, $50 added to expenses:groceries, and $50 added to assets:receivables.
Once your friend pays you $250 for your outlay, you add them to assets:bank and subtract them from assets:receivables.
It’s a little tedious in a spreadsheet, because each transaction results in at least two new rows, so it can feel redundant, but this is basically double entry accounting that can handle this and many other situations.
Yeah I mean I understand the money flows, but it's so tedious to keep my credit card transactions, splitwise, and venmo open while I'm entering things in the spreadsheet.
A budgeting UI that managed this would be amazing, but I understand other people may not keep track of their money flows this way so it doesn't necessarily surprise me that it's not already built.
I think it's pretty easy to create a budgeting product for the 90% case but those odd lumpy purchases and split payments are something everyone wants to deal with differently.
For example, my girlfriend and roommates often split purchases by one person buying, and the other person adding an entry on Splitwise.
That Splitwise entry isn't a bank transaction until maybe weeks later when I get a Venmo payment from a roommate covering several Splitwise requests, and for my budget I want to match up the $100 charge at the grocery store with the $50 Splitwise request with the $250 Venmo payment that was only partially for the $50 owed on groceries... not an easy problem to solve in a general way that makes lots of users happy.