Hi Kevin, I am a new user of MoneyWell and I am liking things so far. I have been on the search for personal finance software for six months on-and- off now and finally took a leap of faith that I didn't need software to do things exactly "my way." I just wanted to voice that I too would really appreciate an accrual feature. I too would prefer to save up for certain future purchases; rather than rely on a credit card. I use this with my wife to pay for our vacations, car insurance, life insurance and any other big purchases. I have tried numerous workarounds; however, the best would be to wait for a new feature. Right now I just log in a spreadsheet my accruals so I know exactly what portions of my savings account is allocated to accruals.
Regards, Alfred K On Dec 17 2008, 8:56 am, Kevin Hoctor <[email protected]> wrote: > On Dec 13, 2008, at 10:34 AM, Dan Harrison wrote: > > > I have used MoneyWell for the past five months and really like the > > design and cash flow concepts. Great work Kevin! > > > I have one area where I would like your (or the user community) advice > > and this deals with an area I call accruals. The concept is that we > > all have expenses that do not occur regularly but need to be in our > > budget. Examples would be automobile, landscaping, medical, and other > > expenses. I initially defined a monthly amount in my spending plan > > that flowed to the appropriate expense bucket. This works and the flow > > of non-used expense money to the next month would handle the so called > >accrual. What I found dangerous was the temptation to move this money > > to other buckets which would not leave enough money when the actual > > expense occurred. > > HI Dan, > > I'm very aware of this temptation and I am looking at ways to help > users manage this better. This also plays into a 2.x feature we have > planned for "Wish List" items. In switch from a reactive spending plan > to a proactive one, it would be nice if I could say that I want to buy > a new computer without using credit so I'll need to save $2000 and > have MoneyWell track that for me. It should give me a thermometer type > display for these items and alert me when I have enough set aside for > this purchase. The trick is for MoneyWell to help me from dipping into > this wish list money. > > This is being worked on because I truly believe that we are empowered > when we walk into a store and pay cash for something instead of > handing over control to Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. > > > My second attempt was to create income buckets where I would then > > allocate theaccrualamounts leaving the expense accounts for the > > actual expenses when they occurred. I would transfer money from the > > incomeaccrualto pay the expense. This works well but I had to > > create split transactions for all theaccrualaccounts when income was > > deposited in the bank. I defined my income transaction as repeating > > every month but it doesn't look like the application wants to repeat > > split transactions (only the master transaction amount). Is it > > possible to repeat split transactions? > > Sorry about the splits not repeating. In 1.4, we added recurring > transfers but splits didn't make the cut. That'll happen in the 2.x > range. > > > Do you (or anyone in the community) have an approach for allocating > > income into a holding bucket (accrual) and then transfer this to an > > actual expense when the expense occurs? > > Peace, > > Kevin Hoctor > [email protected] > No Thirst Software LLChttp://nothirst.comhttp://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
