@lubos I am assuming that the request of the OP, is the same one that I want Manager to be able to do. I have actually made a similar request in the past in various topics.
The problem with the Profit and Loss Budget is that not all your outgoings and incomings are contained within the P&L. I might spend money on developing my helpdesk, which is more a capital expense so it goes on the B/S not on P&L. Or I might start the year off with a negative bank balance, so my profit for the year does not match with what I actually will have in the bank account at the end of the year so I am none the wiser whether my balance will be above zero at the end of the year or any given month in the future because my bank account is a B/S figure not related to the P&L figures.
Essentially the requirement to make sure that cash balance stays above zero in future months is what I think we are both looking for - so this budgeted cash flow statement you are referring to may be what we are both looking for?
The biggest problem most businesses with small budgets have is ensuring that there is adequate money in the bank account every month for expected expenditures and to ensure that one does not overspend in the upcoming year. I don’t care what the report is called nor whether it is an accounting feature, but that is an important business requirement that virtually every business requires.
As the OP said, the P&L budget is a step in the right direction but fails on three important points. It does not include money that you are spending that is recorded in B/S. So my budget is not accurate because money I am spending is not showing in that report. This is why limiting the budget report to just P&L does not work.
The second and possibly more important problem is that it does not help plan your cash flow in the upcoming year to ensure that you don’t run out of money in any given month!
The third problem with the budget report is that I can only enter figures. There is no way in the report to detail how I arrived at those projected figures - so essentially I still have to use an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the figures and update them over the course of the year.
I am hoping that you will be able to add this functionality while you are working on the Cash Flow reporting functionality as I consider this to be one of the most valuable features that could be implemented in an accounting program and far more urgent than other Idea in the idea categories. It would also put Manager significantly ahead of any other accounting program as most of them don’t have this functionality either. The idea that one needs to copy and paste figures between spreadsheet and accounting program really should be obsolete. All the figures are already in the accounting program - all that is required is a way to incorporate it into a report that shows future balances for each month and includes current year B/S entries etc.
Here is a topic I created in the past on this topic - Budget and Cash Flow