Planning future expenditure

[prl]

There seem to be a lot of different ways of managing this. The budget 
feature was mentioned, but there's no way in it of noting what the 
budgeted amounts are for, and there's only one value per time interval.

I don't like the idea of adding transactions to GnuCash when their value 
isn't known.

I simply run a spreadsheet for our main transaction account with one 
line for each estimate for all the major recurring items. As the items 
are paid, I adjust them to reflect the actuals (to the nearest dollar). 
As unplanned items arise, I add them. Each start-of-month has a Carried 
Forward entry that copies the balance from the previous month and an 
Actual Balance that is filled in at the end of the previous month. At 
the start of each month I change the balance for the month's first 
transaction from being based on the Carried Forward balance to the 
Actual Balance.

I fill the spreadsheet for 6-12 months into the future, using separate 
files for each fiscal year (Jul-Jun in my case). When I set up future 
months, I use the previous year's spreadsheet and the GnuCash 
transaction schedule to remind me about regular costs (and add an 
allowance for inflation).

It's not ideal, but it works reasonably well for me.

Peter

On 3/12/12 06:36, Bert Riding wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Dec 2012 11:03:07 -0800 (PST)
> Paddy Landau <paddy at landau.ws> wrote:
>
>> Thank you for your further comments, Steve.
>>
>>> I enter all transactions
>>> as soon as I know about them even if the date is in the future.  All
>>> future transactions are separated by a blue line in the account
>>> ledger which makes them easy to see.  This way, I can see exactly
>>> what is coming out of my account and what my projected account
>>> balance will be if I take no further action.
>> Entering projected transactions when they are planned could be fine
>> if the transactions were either rare or one-offs.
>>
>> But what about transactions that continue indefinitely? You would
>> have to enter, say, 13 months in advance, and then remember to add a
>> new one of each transaction every month.
> The way I personally handle this is to make scheduled transactions
> which are added 45 or more days into the future.  Then when, say, the
> phone bill comes, I merely change the amount to reflect the actual
> bill.  The basic template of the transaction is already there.  I have
> a close estimate of future expenditures, and it's very simple to adjust
> the actual amounts to reflect reality when the actual amounts are known.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.