Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget

Re:Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget by Pyxl101 on Friday November 13, 2015 @10:58PM (#10564381)

I've always wondered why finance continues to run on a monthly cycle. Why isn't that kind of tracking more continuous? It seems to introduce artificial and harmful effects, like people trying to "game their numbers" at the end of a month.

It seems like reporting ought to be continuous and instantaneous.

I imagine there are historical reasons why things have worked that way, since it was inconvenient for humans to compute aggregations any more frequently. However, now we have computers. Why report on a month or quarter or year? Why not look at the report every day, or as often as needed?

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Re:Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget by ctrlaltdel121 on Saturday November 14, 2015 @01:03AM (#10564685)

The point of doing a budget on a monthly cycle is that most bills are monthly bills. I also have days where I spend half a paycheck and days where I spend zero dollars, so how much money I gained or lost in a day is of almost no relevance.

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Re:Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget by zhte415 on Saturday November 14, 2015 @02:09AM (#10564813)

Historically? Perhaps batch processing.

It simply isn't possible for a bank for example, to press a button and see where the money is. It takes several days of operations to get anything near accurate and meaningful.

This sounds like a joke, but it most seriously isn't. (this is before the qualitative nature of valuing stuff, this is simply the question 'where is the money?')

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Re:Sid Meier's Civilization Inspired Budget by nunodonato on Saturday November 14, 2015 @03:46AM (#10564995)

monthly bills and monthly paychecks...

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