[GNC] Coloring the Action field

[David Carlson]

Michael,

That is a method that I would never have thought of,  probably because I am
not an accountant.

I like it better than my current method that just uses guesstimates in the
SX.

It does add an account to contain the unallocated funds, but that is the
trade-off to keeping guesstimate out of the primary accounts.

On Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 12:06 PM Michael or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:

> 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
>
>
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