Recognize "contra-expenses" in budgets correctly

[zachgoll]

Discussed in #2026

^{Originally posted by nixone March 25, 2025}

Describe the feature

Scenario

Let's say I buy some electronics for 50 EUR, identified as a -50 EUR transaction with Electronics category. I then return it, because of various reasons, and get 50 EUR back, represented as another +50 EUR transaction with Electronics category.

Current state

Currently, in Budgets, this is shown on both Income and Expenses side, even though Electronics is identified as uy some Electronics (category) for 50 EUR, identified as a -50 EUR transaction with Electronics category. I then return it, because of various reasons, and get 50 EUR back, represented as another +50 EUR transaction with Electronics category. Currently, in Budgets, this is shown on both Income and Expenses side, even though Electronics is identified as an Expense category.

Expected state

What I would expect is that these transactions can be cancelled out (maybe implicitly or explicitly by some manual marker - link - connecting them together). I would expect to show 0 EUR income and 0 EUR expenses at the end of the month.

Why is this feature important?

I imagine reimbursements and potentially paying for something and then getting money back for most part from someone else (reimbursements for health care?) can be quite a common use case.

Additional context, screenshots, and relevant links

No response

[zachgoll]

Right now, we're filtering each category total based on signage. Instead, we should just pull in all transactions per category and let the user be responsible for making sure that they're not assigning income transactions to expense categories and vice-versa.