[GNC] How to setup a Scheduled Transaction for full current Credit Card Balance?

[Tom Route36]

Hi David and Sherlock,

David, yes I absolutely do reconcile each of my credit card accounts, 
along with my checking and savings too.  That almost always gets done as 
soon as I get each monthly statement.  The issue for me is that I don't 
really want to wait to do a reconciliation. I enter transactions into 
GnuCash on a daily basis as they occur. And what I would like to see in 
my Scheduled Transactions is a real-time view of what those balances are 
even BEFORE the monthly statements happen.

In Quicken I could open my Checking account register and see a list of 
Bill and Income Reminders there showing me the current real-time 
balances of all my Credit Card accounts, along with estimated due dates 
(based on past due dates).  No monthly statement or reconciliation 
needed.  Comparing those Bill Reminders against my Checking account 
balance would let me know on a DAILY basis if I might need to transfer 
money to checking for the upcoming monthly bills or not.  That's a 
Quicken feature that I miss with GnuCash. And it's one that I'm hoping 
can be added to GnuCash, either in a real release (ideally) or via my 
own customization (if needed).

Sherlock, thanks for your explanation about how you ended up having to 
patch the GnuCash code.  I'm actually somewhat surprised that there 
hasn't been enough interest from folks over the years to get variable 
estimate functions implemented for Scheduled Transactions. It seems like 
that would be a feature that more people would like to have -- i.e., 
knowing in advance how much money will be needed in Checking to pay off 
bills later that month.  Anyway, for right now I'll stick with the 
standard GnuCash releases, since I'm still getting used to everything.  
But at some point later on, it looks like I'll probably want to add 
those variable estimates, assuming they don't make it into an official 
release.  Thanks for your help and advice.

Tom


On 12/1/2025 1:51 PM, Sherlock wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> We certainly do reconcile our credit card but that is not the point.
>
> The Quicken functionality Tom is asking for is the ability to forecast 
> the impact of credit card account balances on the payment account 
> further in advance.
>
> I didn't replicate the displaying of the scheduled transactions in the 
> payment register.  Instead, we use a saved Projected Balance report 
> that includes the scheduled transactions.  I did "improve" upon the 
> account balance being applied by including the scheduled transactions 
> and a closing date as opposed to the simply using the "current" 
> account balance.
>
> I also added a generic account balance function which Quicken's 
> reminders lacked.  This enables additional projection.  For example, 
> dividend payments based on the number of shares in an account.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sherlock
>
>
> On 12/1/25 11:18 AM, sunfish62--- via gnucash-user wrote:
>> You can have GnuCash automatically trigger a payment request 
>> following a reconciliation, at which point one could (a) know with 
>> some certainty the valid statement balance and enter it, and (b) 
>> choose a date of your preference for the transaction. I would imagine 
>> that could fit the bill, so to speak.
>>
>> You *do* reconcile your credit card, right?
>>
>> ⁣David T. ​
>>
>> On Dec 1, 2025, 10:48 PM, at 10:48 PM, Sherlock <sh025622 at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>> Hi Tom,
>>>
>>> I'm not aware of anyone else's efforts on this front but we only
>>> migrated our 25 year Quicken file to GnuCash 4.12 on Windows 10 in
>>> September of 2022.  There were a number of WAF issues with GnuCash I
>>> needed to resolve as well as a few functional deficiencies which I have
>>>
>>> carried forward to this day.  Some of these “features” required
>>> patching
>>> GnuCash code.  One of these was to implement the variable estimate
>>> functions in schedule transaction templates for forecast reports I
>>> mentioned earlier:
>>>
>>>
>>> balance(variable)
>>>     forecast balance of the account the day before the next instance.
>>>
>>> credit(variable)
>>>   forecast the credit statement's closing balance for the next instance
>>>     using the earliest notification to indicate the closing date.
>>>
>>> last(variable amounts)
>>>     use the average of the previous amounts provided
>>>    (up to 6 amounts).
>>>
>>> time(variable amounts)
>>>     use month of the instance to determine an index for the amounts
>>>     provided (up to 6 amounts).
>>>
>>> estimate(variable amount)
>>>      use the amount provide.
>>>
>>>
>>> For example, the template for a credit card payment is form:
>>>
>>>    credit card account      credit(balance)
>>>    checking account                              balance
>>>
>>>
>>> When an instance of the scheduled transaction appears on the "Since
>>> Last
>>> Run..." window, it includes the variable name with the editable
>>> estimated amount.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Sherlock
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/1/25 12:50 AM, Tom Route36 wrote:
>>>> Hi Sherlock,
>>>>
>>>> I haven't actually tried that.  I've been trying to work with the
>>>> standard GnuCash releases to better understand what functions and
>>>> features are available as is.  I'm still coming up to speed with just
>>>
>>>> the basics.  But it's sounding like what I'm looking for isn't really
>>>
>>>> available -- at least not in the stable releases.  Have there been
>>> any
>>>> similar comments or requests like mine about Scheduled Transactions
>>> in
>>>> the past?  Has anyone else tried to add such functionality before?
>>>>
>>>> Tom
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 12/1/2025 12:47 AM, Sherlock wrote:
>>>>> Hi Tom,
>>>>>
>>>>> Are you able to build GnuCash yet?
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>
>>>>> Sherlock
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 11/30/25 9:35 PM, Tom Route36 wrote:
>>>>>> I'm still adjusting to GnuCash as a former Quicken user; and I have
>>> a
>>>>>> question about setting up Scheduled Transactions for my Checking
>>>>>> account.  In Quicken it was fairly straightforward to create Bill
>>>>>> Reminders (essentially Scheduled Transactions) in Checking for each
>>>
>>>>>> of my Credit Card accounts. And the amounts in each Reminder could
>>> be
>>>>>> set to track each Credit Card balance.  Those Reminder amounts
>>> would
>>>>>> update automatically as new transactions got entered into each
>>> Credit
>>>>>> Card account.  That was great.  I could look at a list of Bill
>>>>>> Reminders in my Checking account and see in advance how much money
>>>>>> would be needed each month to pay off all the upcoming credit card
>>>>>> bills.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In GnuCash though when I setup a Scheduled Transaction for my
>>>>>> Checking account there doesn't seem to be anyway of doing that. The
>>>
>>>>>> Template Transaction requires me to enter a FIXED amount for each
>>>>>> Credit Card account.  So the list of Scheduled Transactions won't
>>>>>> really reflect my CURRENT Credit Card balances -- not unless I
>>>>>> manually go and update them everyday.  I've looked thru the GnuCash
>>>
>>>>>> documentation; but I don't see any mention anywhere about this
>>>>>> topic.  Is there some way to have Scheduled Transactions
>>>>>> automatically show the full current Credit Card account balances?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tom
>
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