Mortgages and other "loan" types?

[Paul Lussier]

In a message dated: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 14:23:03 PST
Dave Peticolas said:

>Paul Lussier writes:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I'm wondering when depreciating loan types such as mortgages and auto loans
>> will added to GnuCash? Other than that, thanks for a great app.  I've been 
>> tracking development for sometime, and have finally started my conversion
>> over to GnuCash (I should be be done by the end of Jan. (I'm slow and lazy)
>
>There is the 'liability' type which subsumes a mortgage or loan type.
>There is currently no support for entering and using loans rates, though.

Hmmm, that's what I'm looking for.  In Quicken, I could "create" a loan and 
enter the length of the loan, the rate, and the amount.  Quicken would then 
create a "payment plan" schedule that would breakdown each payment into 
capital and interest.  If I pre-paid any of the principal, Quicken would 
re-calculate the payment plan and I would be able to see things like how many 
payments I knocked off, how much interest is being saved, etc.

I'm assuming this type of calculation is pretty straight forward, and it would 
take but a simple perl script to figure it out.  The only question I have is 
how would I get at the information to perform the calculation and create the 
tables?  I have done no hacking on GnuCash at all (until now, I've been 
perfectly content to remain an end-user :)

Is there a description of the file format for the .xac file that GnuCash uses 
some where on the website and maybe some example perl code I could look at to 
learn how to parse it?

I don't promise anything, but I'll at least try to get something started :)
-- 
Happy New Year,

Seeya,
Paul
----
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	 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!