Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Wayne Bird]

Daniel,

Good point, we'll see what happens.  This is one reason I'm migrating over to GnuCash, at least it's actively being developed, unlike MSMoney.

Wayne

From: daniel3ub at gmail.com
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:40:31 -0200
Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account
To: warlord at mit.edu
CC: wrbird at hotmail.com; gnucash-user at gnucash.org; derek at ihtfp.com

Derek:

To me, considering "future expenses" is related with the ability to know my account balance in any given date in the future. This is what the CashFlow Forecast report in MS Money tell you, and I think this is what Wayne and Ian were talking about. To do so, we must consider all TXs that will occour in some point at the future as "future expense", as well as consider the "future incomes" too. It does not matter if they are regular bills or a big flat TV to be bought next june.



Your needs (following your understanding of the matter) can be easily handled by GC (I think), but Wayne´s and mine´s will need a new report or a whole new feature.

I´ve wrote up some considerations about this matter back in april (see below) here in the list, but I didn´t know I should file a request in Bugzilla. I´ll try to put my considerations in the wiki so others can add to it, and then try to file a request (and I´d love to have some guidance about how a FS should be wrote).



Thanks for the VERY healthy discussion, guys!

===
My consideratins about the CashFlow Forecast Feature:

Great!



My experience with this kind of feature comes from MS Money, so I think my vision is very related to MM's features. Keep in mind the following is my particular vision.

I'd like to have the following views/reports for this feature:


1. A report showing the values for all selected accounts month by month (just like the actual budget view) or week by week, but for the months/weeks to come.
2. A line graph illustrating the above.

This is the way GC would get the data to populate the views:


1. Scheduled transactions: GC would look at scheduled transactions and simply add them to the data.
Since SXs already have a possible ending date, GC would take this into account.
The user should be able to select if a SX would be included in the Forecast upon SX creation, with the default to 'yes'.



2. Previous transactions: here we have three types of previous transactions:

a) the ones that occur regularly every once (i.e. the club's fee in january and june, the paycheck every 5th of the month)): This type would already be covered by GC as they will already be entered in the SX (see the "c" type below)



b) the ones that occur frequently but not regularly (i.e. groceries expenses, and almost every expense that does not fit in "a"): GC would look at the previous X months (being X selected by the user) and calculate the average ammount for this accounts. In my oppinion, an weekly average would be good. This average would then be added to the data for the Forecast. Let's say I've spend a total of $500 in groceries in the last 5 months. GC would take this total and calculate an average of $25/week ($100/month, 4 weeks/month) for my groceries expenses.



c) the ones that happen once in a lifetime (i.e. that don't have a defined frequency, as lottery wins, gifts, etc): The ideal cenario would be that GC would be aware of these one-time transactions and would ask the user if they would be added to the Forecast. If this is possible, then GC would be able to ask if the user would like to add the transaction as a SX, and then they would fall under the "a" type above.



The most automated this Forecast is, the better. This is why I don't like the idea of adding new dialogs or making the user enter new data into his/her existing GC file. I think the Forecast can work well with minimum user decisions.



Upon creating the Forecast Report/Graph, the user should be presented with a dialog asking:
1. the accounts to include in the Forecast (or use the Accounts properties for the Forecast - i.e. each account could include an option to add/remove it from the Forecasts)


2. the SXs to be included in the Forecast (or use the SX properties - i.e. each SX could include an option to add/remove it from the Forecasts)
3. how many months should GC look back to gather data
4. if the report would be monthly or weekly


5. the ending date of the forecast

A bonus would be if GC could look at the specified budget and get data from there :)

This is my vision. Any ideas? Comments? Criticism? =====


Daniel Trezub
http://www.gameblogs.com.br



On 17 December 2010 13:28, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:


Wayne Bird <wrbird at hotmail.com> writes:



> Derek,

>

>> You only need to follow the subaccount structure *IF YOU ARE TRYING TO

>> BUDGET FOR FUTURE EXPENSES*. For example, if you're trying to budget

>> for a TV, saving $50 each month to build up the $2000 for that TV, that

>> would be when you'd want a Savings (or Checking) Subaccount.

>>

>> However in this case the subaccounts don't make sense. You're just

>> using them as passthrough accounts, not as budgeting envelopes.

>

> I'm beginning to understand a little bit more.  I'm really mixed up between

> putting everything in envelopes (subaccounts) or nothing at all.  So I

> understand what you mean by budgeting for future expenses, but isn't

> everything really being budgeted for future expenses -- gasoline, groceries,

> utilities, bi-annual insurance premiums, etc.?  Maybe, instead of subaccounts,

> I should use the budgeting feature of GnuCash?



I guess it depends how you look at it.  I don't consider my regular

monthly or weekly expenses to be "future" expenses.  They are expenses

that happy regularly, and it's easy to see whether I've spent it this

month or not by just looking at my accounts.



To me, a future expense is one that I need to save for over multiple

months, multiple pay periods, like buying a TV, a new Car, a vacation,

etc.



> Please don't give up on me!



-derek



--

       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory

       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)

       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH

       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available

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