Planning future expenditure

[David Carlson]

On 12/2/2012 1:03 PM, Paddy Landau 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.
>
> Or, for annual transactions, to remember to add them each year. And so forth
> for quarterly, bi-annual, every 15 months, every two years, even every three
> years (yes, I do have instances of every one of those).
>
> What happens when the value of a specific set of transactions changes? You
> would have to go through all the future transactions, pick out the ones that
> have changed, and modify them.
>
> It is awfully time-consuming and error-prone when done that way, and
> furthermore does not permit easy "what-if" scenarios. ("What if we cut down
> on our groceries?" "What if we sell the car and buy one that uses less
> fuel?" "What if we purchase this widget on hire purchase?" etc.)
>
> /OK, so here's another question./
>
> *Could this be solved by writing an add-on?* (I seem to remember that
> GnuCash allows add-ons.) If so, it may be worth my while to pay someone to
> program it. (Donations welcome...)
>
> (I would have simply purchased Quicken, but I need this on three different
> computers for three different family members, not all running the same
> operating system, making the cost of Quicken too high for strictly personal
> purposes.)
>
> Frankly, if GnuCash were to have this facility, it would be an awesome
> application, to my knowledge the only one to rival commercial alternatives.
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Planning-future-expenditure-tp4658213p4658260.html
> Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> _______________________________________________
> 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.
>
Paddy,

Perhaps you do not realize that the scheduled transactions wizard (aka
Druid) can be set up to either enter transactions automatically a
certain number of days in advance of the scheduled pay date or to remind
the user that they should be entered.  They can be scheduled to repeat
daily, weekly or whatever, even every few years for your drivers license
or passport.  This handles the problem of remembering when to enter
them.  There is still the problem of whether to use estimated values and
remembering to correct them when real numbers become available. My
preference won't be the same as yours for that.   I download
transactions from my bank roughly twice a month to get the real numbers
for periodic expenditures (usually Debit card purchases) and I enter
real numbers for monthly bills when they arrive.  This can be error
prone as you say, but I have established personal procedures to show
which numbers are estimates and which are real numbers so that by the
time I reconcile, everything matches or gets fixed then.

What If scenarios are a different animal, which usually goes way beyond
cash flow management, and are usually better handled by budget or
spreadsheet.

David C


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 0xDC7C8BF3.asc
Type: application/pgp-keys
Size: 1729 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/attachments/20121203/695bc1aa/attachment.bin>