scheduled loan payment setup question

[Brian Smith]

On Mon, 23 Dec 2002 12:37:46 -0600
  "John W. Eaton" <jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu> wrote:

>If not, then what I think I want to do is create a 
>function to compute
>the current interest due given the interest rate for the 
>loan and the
>current principal.  This function would simply have to 
>look up the
>balance given an account name and then return
>
>   balance * interest / 12

This is (one of the reasons) why so far I'm not impressed 
with the Loan Druid. The interest portion should be 
calculated based on the current loan balance, not just on 
the original loan amount. Your solution is pretty close to 
correct - it works for most mortgage loans, although car 
loans are typically compounded daily and you would need to 
use balance * interest / 365 * days since last payment. 
The way GnuCash is doing it now, it will rapidly become 
incorrect if extra principal payments are made.

If they can fix that, and the fact that the Druid sets up 
the scheduled transaction to begin on the date of the 
second payment, I will be able to use it. Otherwise I'll 
be sticking to my current method (a group of OpenOffice 
spreadsheets which calculate out my various loans).