[Lucas]

in reply to: Changing Recurrence Day & Child Entry Management #3693

I just had a thought in regards to the child ones… Evidently this is a hard thing to manage, but maybe you could treat orphans not as true separate entities, but rather as “transposed” entry. Say you have a regular payment on each second friday, but because of an event you know is going to happen in the future, one of those payments will be on the Thursday instead, and the amount will be $50 less.

Instead of separating the entry, it could be still part of the recurring series, however it would be transposed one day before and the amount added $50. So the default values of any given recurring series is always +0days, +0$, but one particular entry could have -1days, -50$ and another one be +3days +150$ for example.

Then, changing the series would change the default values, but the transpositions would still hold… I’m not sure how these exceptions could be handled, perhaps a notification mechanism asking you to review changes. I was actually thinking that a separate “notification” page might be an idea for other things…

You could have a page that would indicate things like:

• [!] Your

XYZ Internet bill is overdue” (see my bills payment thread :P)

[Lucas]

in reply to: [FEATURE REQUEST] Credit Card / Loan / Credit Margin integration #3705

I’ll look forward to the feature in the future then :)

[Lucas]

in reply to: [FEATURE Request] Bill payments #3702

I think maybe because I’m seeing a bill as something that repeats, but not necessarily always at the same precise date, and with a variable amount (but generally around the same price). Examples would be internet (some providers charge extra for bandwidth), cell phones (minutes and SMSes), home phone, etc. I see it as different than rent and car payments, as those are generally always on the same day (and often pre-authorized) and with the exact same amount. On the other hand, variable amount bills aren’t the same as one-time payments which are entered manually… So it’s kind of an in-between – an amount that recurs but isn’t always the same.

Also, even though I understand that it’s not CB’s job to make sure people pay their bills, having the NetX time of days is something that would help people manage their money as they would know on which paycheck they could make the payment (and I think that’s the whole point, right?). How that visual indication could be done however, I’m not completely sure… Maybe in the bill itself it could be indicated which of the “next” paychecks would be available for the payment and create a reminder for it?

Another thing is, I think I will take on the habit of “making” my payments in CB before I actually do the real payment, as it’s very useful to see that “oops, if I pay this bill now, next week I see a red amount which means a payment won’t have passed”.

[Lucas]

in reply to: Mouse Wheel #3587

You could potentially deal with this in 2 ways.

First would be a visual indicator (a small colored bar with an arrow pointing down saying “more entries in this month”, giving a cue that there is more information to be found. That indicator could also be in the category budget box (like a little warning icon and a small text).
or
“Snap” to a month, where scrolling the mouse would always show the full active month, and scrolling down would basically be going monthly. This would probably almost always result in one month per scroll however, so maybe that’s what you should do, simply (on a visual note, it would be great to actually “scroll” it in a smooth/bouncy way, not just to refresh the page).

[Lucas]

in reply to: Why the end date? #3696

I think 2 years as a default would probably be alright, as long as there is a possibility to extend it. Going into more advanced future options, if you’re putting in an entry for a mortgage you could need up to 25 years of entry (1300 database entries!) where as if I’m just putting in a 1 year lease agreement for my apartment, a shorter term is fine.

It’s not quite possible to really plan for the future like this, because there is always changes in budgets – be it a raise or job change, getting a new car or whatever luxury item.

I do understand that your system doesn’t work quite the same way, I kind of went “Duh!” and realized how different, programmatically, your website is when compared to Google Calendar.

Thanks for the information and details.

[Lucas]

in reply to: Future Feature List #3559

As far as I can tell, Google Gears already has these kind of features enabled in its API, so I’m not sure just how much actual coding would be required for this specific feature… I might be completely wrong though (I’m not a programmer).

[Lucas]

in reply to: Changing Recurrence Day & Child Entry Management #3691

I see what you mean, and I did wonder about that distinction. Now that you mention it, I think that probably the best way to do it would be to detect what generally requires you to recreate the whole series (like a date change in my case) and either do it seamlessly in the background (remove the option) or quite simply to put the default to Recreate in the case where it needs to.

It just felt very counter-intuitive to see something not happen when you expect it to, with no warning or indication of what might have gone wrong.

[Lucas]

in reply to: Future Feature List #3557

As a “Work Offline” feature is in that list, I’d like to bring to your attention (if you weren’t already totally aware of it) the great tool that is Google Gears.

Check out http://gears.google.com/

Services using this:
Google Reader, Zoho Writer, Remember the Milk and Google Docs.

[Lucas]

in reply to: Mouse Wheel #3585

I like this idea, and I’d like to throw in a possible solution for the little dilemma….

Just indicate which month is being displayed in the box (Categories – February 2009), and decide which month is shown simply by determining which month has the more visible daily boxes on the screen. As you’re scrolling down, the number of daily boxes for the next month increments by 7 for each week while the number of boxes decreases by 7 per scroll… When the number of boxes for the next month is higher than the one for the “current” month, you change the values to the “next” month and it becomes the current one.

For February for example, currently you’re seeing 28 boxes for february, 14 for March. Scroll down once and you have 21 for Feb, 21 for March (when equal keep the current one), and then you scroll down again you have 14 for Feb and 28 for March – then you change the active month to March, display this in the summary on the left, change the background colors for the boxes and such (don’t forget the month drop-down on the top).

What do you think?

[Author]

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