budgeting
James LewisMoss
jimdres@mindspring.com
23 Nov 2000 02:59:24 -0500
>>>>> On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 00:23:56 -0500, Aaron Peromsik <aperomsik@mail.com> said:
>> From: James LewisMoss <jimdres@mindspring.com> Date: 21 Nov 2000
>> 03:08:01 -0500 I want my budgeting system ...
>> ... to add transactions automatically
>> ... to mark transactions as automatically added so I can make sure
>> they are ok. ... to remind me to add items.
Aaron> I guess this is as good a place as any to introduce
Aaron> myself... I'm a Quicken user interested in switching to
Aaron> GnuCash if the right things happen with respect to scheduled
Aaron> transactions. By day, I'm a CAD software developer. I don't
Aaron> have much free time to contribute to GnuCash development, but
Aaron> I'll start by joining the discussion and take it from there.
Great.
Aaron> Quicken draws a distinction between "budgeting" functionality
Aaron> and "scheduled transactions." I find the scheduled
Aaron> transactions useful as reminders, but I don't use the
Aaron> auto-entry functionality because I don't want things entered
Aaron> as paid until I actually mail the check.
I agree there is a distinction, but I see scheduled transactions being
very useful for budgeting, so for the moment I'm including them
together in my head.
Aaron> On the other hand, having things entered in the register in
Aaron> advance would be useful for cash flow management. Currently I
Aaron> duplicate my scheduled transactions for the next couple months
Aaron> in a StarOffice spreadsheet to help me decide how much money
Aaron> gets transferred from savings to checking in time to pay the
Aaron> bills. If Quicken -- or more likely, GnuCash -- would have
Aaron> some in-between state for scheduled transactions which show up
Aaron> in the register but are not really entered yet, this task
Aaron> would take a lot less duplicative effort.
Aaron> ...
Aaron> What do other people think of these suggestions?
I like this a lot actually. I don't know how difficult it'll be to
implement, but the functionality sounds quite useful.
Jim
--
@James LewisMoss <dres@debian.org> | Blessed Be!
@ http://jimdres.home.mindspring.com | Linux is kewl!
@"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." Bach