[GNC] Coloring the Action field

[Michael or Penny Novack]

It might perhaps be better to describe WHAT you want to accomplish 
instead of asking about possibilities for the first HOW that came to 
your mind. Why? Because there might be other "hows" even simpler.


On 12/16/2021 2:25 AM, AC wrote:
>
> For example, I have a couple loans that are paid fixed amounts each 
> month but the split of principal and interest varies (of course). I 
> have automatic payments at the bank set up to pay those fixed amounts 
> regularly and I have a matching scheduled transaction in GnuCash that 
> is a placeholder for it so I know how much comes out of my checking 
> account. What I don't know at that moment is the split between 
> principal and interest.
I'll reword that -- you don't have access (in advance) to the 
amortization schedule and even if you did, would not help with an 
automated transaction (but would if a manual transaction_
>
>   When the payment has gone through I will check the loan records 
> wherever the loan is held to see how they distributed the payment and 
> then go back and update the splits to reflect that.
>
> I do a similar thing for my paychecks, setting up a scheduled 
> transaction with an estimated amount across splits and then go back to 
> update the splits with the various amounts withheld from the check (I 
> mark these as "Deposit"). 

Let's stop here for a second to describe your PROCESS. In either case, 
you first need to be able to have an automatic transaction (unsplit) 
that you later need to go back to in order to split once you have the 
information to do that. You think you need a "marker" of some sort to 
find the transaction later, to mark the ones you have not yet done.

But what was the other side of the transaction?. Let's do the loan one 
first. That was an automatic (scheduled) transaction, credit to your 
bank account and debit to (there are always tow sides in double entry 
bookkeeping) what? Let's say for am moment you had an account under 
Expense with a name like "unallocated loan payments".

Every so often you look. Is the balance of this account zero? No, then 
you have a loan payment you have not yet allocated to principle and 
interest. Assuming enough time has passed that you have that 
information, Enter split mode. Change the account "unallocated loan 
payments" to "interest" and the amount to what that portion is. The 
remainder will now have an account Imbalance which you change to "loan 
principle".

Now THAT transaction will no longer appear in "unallocated loan 
payments" << and if there are no other payments still not allocated the 
balance of the account  will be zero >>

In  other words, the very presence of a transaction in "unallocated loan 
balance" can serve as your "marker" and is the transaction you want to 
split. You can do the same for your paychecks, except you would use an 
account under Income "unallocated paychecks".

Michael D Novack