Comments / Suggestions / a couple minor bugs in 1.7.5

[Brian Smith]

On 23 Dec 2002 18:38:26 -0600
  Matthew Vanecek <mevanecek@yahoo.com> wrote:
>It appears that basically what is being asked for is an 
>entry wizard. 
>While not a bad idea, you can achieve the same sort of 
>functionality by
>setting view to Split for the loan payment.

No, this was originally a suggestion for a different way 
of arranging the Loan Druid that would show how the 
transaction was being built, and be more flexible and 
intuitive than the current Druid.

>1) Rarely do people use the same account names for 
>stuff.  PMI,
>   property taxes, warranty, whatever--people tend to 
>create
>   names meaningful to them.  To make this work, you'd have to
>   tie the entry fields to specific accounts.

You need to find my original message, which mentioned that 
the following page of the Druid after this would allow the 
user to tie each of these amounts to an account.

>2) To be strictly technical, accountingly-speaking, 
>you'd want
>   to expense your insurance, PMI, taxes, etc., on a 
>monthly
>   basis, even though you only pay them yearly.  This 
>can be
>   engineered via the new Scheduled Transaction 
>interface, or
>   simply by duplicating an existing transaction.

I can't think of any reason why the average home user 
would want to do that, but if they do, the Loan Druid 
would still be able to handle that. If the user isn't 
using an escrow account, those amounts will be expensed as 
part of the loan payment. If there is an escrow account, 
the next page of the Druid will schedule the expenses 
monthly, yearly, or however.

>3) Given the availability of the Split view, it's 
>unlikely that
>   such an interface would be developed soon.  I'm 
>considering
>   the frequency of entry here, too--unless you're a 
>real estate
>   broker, you probably only buy a house every 5 or 10 
>years or
>   so.  It'd be much easier to use the above-mentioned 
>Scheduled
>   Transaction interface (from a development 
>perspective).

I'm trying to picture an average home user using the 
current Loan Druid. I don't think the fact that they only 
have to do it once in a while is going to counteract the 
fact that it's unintuitive and doesn't allow them to see 
the payment being built until the very end. By no means 
would I want to hold up Q* or M$ Monee as paragons of 
proper accounting, but one thing they do right is make 
setting up loan payments easy. There's a lot the current 
Loan Druid could learn from their Wizards.

>I think if you sit down, and draw on paper the interface 
>you are
>thinking of, and then consider the additionaly interface 
>needed to hook
>accounts to the options, you'll see that it's really not 
>that much
>easier than using the Splits interface.

Perhaps not, but you can't use the Splits interface until 
the Druid has already scheduled the transaction. The point 
of my original suggestion was that the Druid should:

1) be easier to understand, and
2) show the amounts and how they combine into the total 
payment before the transaction is set up, so the user 
doesn't have to go back and modify it later.