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 < [email protected]> 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 > > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > [email protected] > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
