Future transactions in account totals

[Josh Sled]

On Thu, 2004-03-04 at 04:36, Michael Kjorling wrote:

> Now, I also added a future transaction, a deposit to one of my accounts that
> will take place on the 25th. I cannot use the scheduled transaction feature
> for this because I do not know the amount until about three weeks before it,
> and it changes from time to time (payment for per-hour contract work). 

FWIW, you may be able to use the Scheduled Transactions for this ...
it's just not documented well, and there's no affordance for it in the
UI...


In the template transaction, you can type any non-numeric string into a
credit/debit cell, and it will be realized as a variable.  When the
Scheduled Transaction [SX] comes due, you will be prompted to provide a
value for that variable to complete the transaction and allow it to be
created.

| Memo                | Account          | Credit    | Debit    |
+---------------------+------------------+-----------+----------+
| Work Done           | Income:Mumble    |           |   amt    |
| Work Done           | Assest:Bank      |  amt      |          |

In fact, you can put any number of these ad-hoc variables in the
credit/debit cell, and compose them in a mathematical expression; when
the transaction comes due all the variable values will be prompted for,
and the expression evaluated.


The intent was the support the use case of:

	A phone bill has two parts: the "basic fees" and the 
	"long-distance portion". Three roomates share the expense of a 
	phone-bill; one of the roommates is the "bank" for the group.
	They all split the basic fees equally, and one of the roommates 
	pays 80% of the long-distance [due to increased usage].

The template transaction would then look like:

| Memo           | Account                     | Credit | Debit  |
+----------------+-----------------------------+--------+--------+
| Phone Bill     | Assets:BankOfExample        |        |   [1]  |
| My share       | Expenses:Phone              |   [2]  |        |
| Roommate1 Owes | Assets:Money Owed:Roommate1 |   [3]  |        |
| Roommate2 Owes | Assets:Money Owed:Roommate2 |   [4]  |        |

[1]: basic + long_distance
[2]: (basic / 3) + (long_distance * 0.1)
[3]: (basic / 3) + (long_distance * 0.1)     # same as [2]
[4]: (basic / 3) + (long_distance * 0.8)


With respect to the "3 weeks before", you can adjust the "create in
advance" option to '21', and you'll be prompted on the 4th for your
transaction on the 25th.

...jsled

-- 
http://www.asynchronous.org/ - `a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo
${a}@${b}`
# A: Because it breaks the flow of normal conversation.
# Q: Why don't we put the response before the request?