Does the scheduled transactions feature work?

[Ken Heard]

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Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Apr 2009, Ken Heard wrote:
>> In the frequency window I selected monthly, to begin on 2009-01-01,
>> every 1 month, on the 1st.  In the template transaction I entered the
>> accounting details.  Finally I selected the big + and then Enter.
>>
>> I consequently expected the transactions for each month from 2009-01-01
>> to 2009-04-01 to be entered, but they were not.  Is there something
>> wrong with this feature or with me?
> 
> 
> OK, the documentation and screenshots are old, but the actual method has not 
> changed.
> 
> What really happens, is that on the NEXT first of the month to come, Gnucash 
> will enter your scheduled transaction(s) for that day. If you fail to open 
> the file on that day, it will check on the next start up and enter 
> transactions.

In other words, it is impossible to create a scheduled transaction to
begin on a date before the system date.  When I was setting up my
gnucash in April 2009 for the fiscal year to begin on 1 January 2009 I
would have found such a feature useful.

> Your transactions may be entered for the past months if you close down and 
> start again, but I've never tried that myself.

No, what you suggested did not work, at least not for me.  What did work
however was to change the system date to a date before the date when the
earliest scheduled transaction to be be created for the first time.
Then open gnucash, create the transactions.  Then close gnucash and
change the system date back to the cuurent date.  The next time gnucash
is opened all the scheduled transactions so created will be entered up
to the current date.

While this work-around does work, it is cumbersome.  Having the option
to create scheduled transactions with a retrospective date would be *so*
much easier.  I have consequently file an enhancement bug -- 584323.

Regards, Ken Heard

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