Formulas in transactions

[Fred Bone]

On 24 March 2008 at 23:02, Mike or Penny Novack said:

> 
> >>
> >>For example to add 8.5% tax on a $23.85 item.
> >>
> >>1.085*23.85
> >>
> >>The difference in gnucash is that only the result is stored not the
> actual
> >>formula.
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> But again please note the discussion about "rounding" to whole
> dollars.
> 
> There is a similar problem here with splits not working. For example, 
> assume that you have three partners sharing at 41%, 32%, and 27% and you
> are trying to distribute $917 (100%). You have no reason toe believe 
> that the three amounts (41% of 917, 32% of 917, and 27% of 917) will add
> up to 917 (100% of 917).

That depends on whether you're insisting on whole dollars. The exact 
amounts will be 375.97, 293.44 and 247.59 respectively.

> In other words, if you aren't asking the application to do the math but
> doing the math with a calculator and you see that the total is going to
> be a little off you decide which amounts to adjust by a cent or two to
> keep the split in balance.

Note, though, that if your transaction has a credit of (say) 43.21 split 
this way, you'll end up with debit splits of 17.72, 13.83 and 11.67, plus 
an Imbalance of 0.01 credit; you can then decide what to do about this.

IOW, Gnucash will do as much as a system can possibly be expected to do, 
including rounding each split to the nearest cent, and alerting you (in 
the shape of the Imbalance split) if the rounded amounts don't add up to 
the original.