Proposal for developers - cash flow (longish)

[Vahur Lokk]

I was eagerly waiting for new gnucash to become available because of 
advertised possibility to enter future transactions. Now I have tested it a 
bit and it does not seem to do what I expected.
I try to explain my idea, maybe you have some use for it.

In fact the single most important output of my book-keeping is a cash flow 
prognosis for next month, which, in turn I use to put together a budget.
I currently do it on a spreadsheet, using gnucash data written out by hand.

Income is quite straightforward to show - at least those on fixed salary know 
well when and how much they get. 

There are three types of expenses
a) regular bills. Payment date for those is usually fixed. Amount is either 
fixed, too, or at least quite stable and can be predicted more or less 
reliably by averaging. So these are easy to handle. From cash flow point of 
view credit payments can be handled under this category, too.
b) cash expenses. All the other expenses you make by bank transfer or cash. 
Cannot be predicted separately, but, as a class can be averaged as well.
c) credit card expenses. These create cash outflow in some point in the 
future. There are different schemes used, I for example have to pay all the 
credit card expenses lump sum on the 10th date of next month. So this cash 
flow is also predictable.
I think that perfect interface for such thing would be some kind of calendar 
showing daily cash balance. Even better if this calendar allowed some direct 
data manipulation to test different situations. Simpler and faster solution 
would be some spreadsheet template used together with proper data export 
facility. I am no programmer but, as spreadsheet poweruser could do easily 
such template for Gnumeric or OOCalc.

Wahur