Mortgages and other "loan" types?

[Dave Peticolas]

Paul Lussier writes:
> 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 woul
> 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 :)

There are pieces of what you need in the current CVS version.
There is a financial calculator dialog where you can enter
payment amount, principal, interest rate, etc., and it will
solve for the remaining variable.

There is also code to create a payment schedule, but it has
not been incorporated into the GUI.


> 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?

The CVS version uses an XML format -- it's fairly straightforward
once you take a look at it, but feel free to ask additional questions.

dave