loan/mortgage repayment via sched xactions: feedback request

[Josh Sled]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 07:47:41AM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:

| What I forgot to mention is that IPMT really uses the _current
| principal balance_, not the _expected_ principal balance.  In other
| words, if you pre-pay (over-pay) principal, your interest will be
| lower than expected.  This means the SX cannot be run in a vacuum; it
| needs to be able to look at the current balance of the
| "loan-principal-account" so it can compute the actual interest.

Good to know.  I think this will be handled -- at least in the first order
but probably primarily -- in-as-much as a) SXes must be created serially,
w/o interruptions and b) the IPMT implementation will use the "current"
value of the account for it's computation.  There was a bit of discussion
in #gnucash of a single-day versus average-daily-balance for this, but
I think that'll become clearer later.


Follow up ... I've thought out some of the creation Druid, and would
like feedback.  I find GUIs [Druids, especially] to be a huge PITA,
so I'd rather get some feedback up front if ya'll can imagine a bit. :)
Does this have all the right prompts ... in a resonable order ... does
it fit people's respective bills?


Druid thoughts...

Page Order:
Intro -> Params -> Opts -> Repayment -> [Insurance ->] [Taxes ->] Review


--------------------------------------------------
| Intro
--------------------------------------------------

"This is a step-by-step method of creating a loan
 repayment setup within GnuCash.  In this Druid,
 you can input the parameters of your loan and
 it's repayment and give the details of it's
 payback.  Using that information, the appropriate
 Scheduled Transactions will be created.

"If you make a mistake or want to make changes
 later, you can edit the created Scheduled
 Transactions directly."
--------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------
| Params
--------------------------------------------------
Principal        : [amount entry]
Actual Principal : [[optional] amount entry]
Interest Rate    : [numeric entry] %
	Type     : [ ] Fixed
                   [ ] Variable ---------+
                   | Type  : 10/1,7/1,...|
                   | When  : [freqspec?] |
                   +---------------------+
Start Date       : [Gnome Date Entry]
Length           : [num entry] [years|v]
   Remaining     : [num entry]
--------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------
| Options
--------------------------------------------------
Do you...
  [ ] Utilize an escrow account?
      Account: [ acct select |v]
  [ ] Pay PMI/Insurance?
      [ ] Via the Escrow account?
  [ ] Pay taxes?
      [ ] Via the Escrow account?
--------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------
| Repayment
--------------------------------------------------
Amount        : [ amount entry ]
Assets from   : [ account sel |v] 
Princiapl to  : [ account sel |v]
Interest to   : [ account sel |v]
Remainder to  : [{escrow,principal}|v]
Frequency     : +- freqspec ----------------+
                |           ....            |
                +---------------------------+
--------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------
| Insurance
--------------------------------------------------
Amount    : [ amount entry ]
Account   : [ account sel |v]
Frequency :
   [ ] Part of Repayment Transaction
   [ ] Other:      +- freqspec ----------------+
                   |           ....            |
                   +---------------------------+
--------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------
| Taxes
--------------------------------------------------
[ same as Insurance ]
--------------------------------------------------


...jsled

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