Formula Parsing Error with Scheduled Transaction WAS: Limit on Scheduled Transactions Since Last Run?

Elwood elwoodblues at bellsouth.net
Tue Mar 4 00:45:47 EST 2014


Ok, I worked out how to do this by referencing an amortization table for my loan, and creating multiple sets of scheduled transactions through the Mortgage & Loan Repayment interface.  Basically a new set for every 50 payments, each time starting with a new loan balance and a shorter length.  Sadly, this will not work either, at least on my installation.  Once the scheduled transactions are processed, they are entered for the correct dates (which are in the past, per what I selected in the UI), but the principal and interest amounts appear to be for the next ten months from today.

So, unless you are setting up a brand new mortgage going forward from the current month, it appears there is no point fighting with the Mortgage & Loan tool currently.  You can not win. ;-)

To summarize for future GC converts trying to setup existing mortgages (in 2.6.2 at least):
1.  The start date parameters you enter, the transaction preview, and the actual scheduled transactions do not align.
2.  When working in the past, it seems to limit the schedule to 50 transactions from the start date.
3.  In 2.6.x, you can not edit this limit (or any other SX parameter) due to the parse error with the interest and payment formulas.  (Not an issue in 2.4 I think)
4.  Even if you work around 1, 2, and 3, you end up with the wrong principal and interest values.

> On Mar 3, 2014, at 3:27 PM, Elwood <elwoodblues at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> 
> As a workaround, does anyone know if it would be possible to construct this as multiple individual scheduled transactions, each no longer than the "default" limit GC seems to be applying?  Or is that crazy talk?
> 
> 
>> On Feb 28, 2014, at 7:06 AM, Elwood <elwoodblues at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I've gone ahead and entered this as a bug.  Details duplicated here for anyone interested:
>> 
>> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725366
>> Standard formulas for principal and interest from the Mortgage and Loan Setup
>> Tool fail to parse in the Edit Scheduled Transaction interface in 2.6.1.  Error
>> says:  "Couldn't parse debit formula for split "xyz"."  Formulas in the debit
>> column are the typical ones generated by the Mortgage tool:  ppmt( 0.05000 /
>> 12.00 : i : 180.00 : 100000.00 : 0 : 0 ) and ipmt( 0.05000 / 12.00 : i : 180.00
>> : 100000.00 : 0 : 0 ). The scheduled transaction will run, but you can not adjust any of the
>> parameters of it, because it will never parse, and therefore never save your
>> changes. If you edit the scheduled transaction formulas and replace the "i" with an
>> actual number, the parse succeeds and the changes can be saved (after
>> confirming the "cannot automatically balance this transaction" warning). Seems to work fine in 2.4.11.
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Elwood <elwoodblues at bellsouth.net>
>> To: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> 
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2014 12:13 AM
>> Subject: Re: Limit on Scheduled Transactions Since Last Run?
>> 
>> 
>> Ok, stalled again.  Apparently this works ok on the test system in 2.4.11, but not in 2.6.1.  After editing the scheduled transaction, 2.4.11 prompts to say "The Scheduled Transaction Editor cannot automatically balance this transaction.  Should it still be entered?" and allows you to pick Yes or No.  I assume this is because of the formulas for the mortgage payment, principal, and interest.  For some reason in 2.6.1 it prompts with 'Couldn't parse debit formula for split "Acme Mortgage - Interest". ' and then it only allows you to click close, leaving you in the editor.  After that, all you can do is cancel without saving your changes.  So close, yet so far.  :-(
>> 
>>> On Feb 25, 2014, at 11:45 PM, Elwood <elwoodblues at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Never mind.  I think I found the cause. 
>> Apparently, if I look at the transaction in the scheduled transaction editor before trying the Since Last Run, you can see that it was created with the Occurrences to Repeat Until 7/1/2007 for some reason.  If you manually change it to repeat until the end date of the loan, it will create all transactions up through today's date.  Not sure if I'd call this a bug or not, but definitely confusing.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Feb 25, 2014, at 11:27 PM, Elwood <elwoodblues at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I've been playing with the Mortgage and Loan Repayment Setup tool, trying to recreate my existing mortgage.  (Ultimately, to replace my current bad practice of simply chucking the mortgage payment into a Housing expense account.)  After much trial and error, I can finally get the tool to not skip the first payment, BUT
>> because the mortgage started in 2003, it creates a backlog of scheduled transactions.  When I go to use the Since Last Run feature, it will only show 50 transactions pending in the "To-Create" status, with dates from 2003 to 2007.  If I go ahead and process them, I indeed get only the first 50 mortgage payments.
>>>> 
>>>> Is there some limitation on the number of scheduled transactions that can be queued up at one time for the Since Last Run feature?
>>>> 
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