QUESTION ON TRACKING BALANCES

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 04:24:28PM -0500, _ wrote:
> I'm fairly new to GnuCash, but I tried various things with Quicken and 
> found it cumbersome to accomplish.  Here are some questions I need help on:

welcome

> 
> I want to track TOTAL balances due, such as on mortgage and car loan, 
> but I also want to track the monthly payments due, so that both MONTHLY 
> DUE and TOTAL DUE will be there at a glance on my ACCOUNTS page.  Don't 
> worry about interest and principal in your examples, unless you want to 
> - I think I can get that idea on how to configure that after knowing the 
> basics.  Thanks!

the total balance due is pretty straightforward: every loan you have
outstanding should have a corresponding Liability account in gnucash
with the current balance. When you make  payment, a portion of that
payment offests that liability, thus showing a decrease in
principal. The balance of that liability account is the total balance
due (ignoring interest, as you asked).

The monthly due bit is a little trickier and really depends on a
number of different factors. Really, though, there isn't such a thing
as monthly due in the context of the chart of accounts. You could fake
something using a temporary account, but that's pretty kludgey. For
liabilities with known payment amounts (mortgages, car loans, and
other term loans) you could enter scheduled transactions to appear at
the appropriate times, that might help. For liabilities with unknown
payment amounts (credit cards), you'll have to just use the
statement. Maybe, though, I don't understand what you are asking.

A
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