[GNC] Scheduled Transactions: Monday before the 4th Wednesday

[gnucash at 4forl1st5.slmail.me]

On Wednesday, November 1st, 2023 at 03:32, Stan Brown <stan+gc at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> Every month, I get a direct deposit two days before the fourth Wednesday
> of the month. That's not the same as the third Monday. For example, this
> month the fourth Wednesday was 25 October, so the deposit came on
> 23 October, which is the fourth Monday. Next month, the fourth Wednesday
> will be 22 November, so the deposit will come on 20 November, which is
> the third Monday.
> 
> I have scheduled my transaction for the 4th Wednesday of each month, but
> to be created two days early. Then when the transaction fires, I
> manually change the date the Wednesday.
> 
> That's an inconvenience, albeit a minor one. Just in case I've missed
> something, is there any way to have the transaction appear on the right
> day (two days before the fourth Wednesday) and with that Monday date,
> not the Wednesday date?


This will look a lot better if read in monospaced text: some
of us think that all email would!

Best I could come up with is to suggest that you define a set
of Scheduled Transactions (SchedXn) that all start on a known
Monday before the 4th Wednesday, and repeat every 28 days, but 
start a new SchedXn once you hit a Monday before the 3rd Weds.

FWIW, some UNIX shell commands (apologies to all of the
non-UNIX Shell users out there!) to generate a year's
worth of 28-day apart dates, are

s=0
for n in 0            28              56         \
              84             112             140 \
                     168             196         \
             224             252             280 \
                     308             336         \
             364 ; do \
  s=`expr $s + 1` ;
  echo -n  $s " " ;
  date +'%Y%m%d' --date="Mon Oct 23 2023 + $n day" ;
done

(and, before anyone asks, it's merely a cut-down version of
 something that generates a yearly set of fornightly dates,
 given a starting date, but with the starting date changed)

Here's what that produced, starting with your Mon Oct 23 example:


  20231023
  20231120
  20231218  before 3rd Weds, start from next Monday

  20231225
  20240122
  20240219  before 3rd Weds, start from next Monday

  20240226
  20240325
  20240422
  20240520
  20240617  before 3rd Weds, start from next Monday

  20240624
  20240722
  20240819  before 3rd Weds, start from next Monday

  20240826
  20240923
  20241021
  20241118  before 3rd Weds, start from next Monday


I'd suppose that once you have passed the end of each SchedXn,
you just change the start date to the correct date for the
year after and see where you get to.

Cave: leap years may well stuff things up, but you should
get the jist, of how to think about it, and to take account
of the extra day, I'm sure.


FWIW, each of the five SchedXn-s above would be defined as:

Start Date: 20231023, Freq:  Daily, Every: 28 days, Occurences: For 2 
Start Date: 20231225, Freq:  Daily, Every: 28 days, Occurences: For 2 
Start Date: 20240226, Freq:  Daily, Every: 28 days, Occurences: For 4 
Start Date: 20240624, Freq:  Daily, Every: 28 days, Occurences: For 2 
Start Date: 20240826, Freq:  Daily, Every: 28 days, Occurences: For 2 

HTH