[Obelix]

in reply to: Holidays/ Bank Holiday Marking #3597

OK, this is the third rewriting of this post.  I keep changing my mind on how to best deal with this.  I think you have two ways to deal with this.  One is the managed route where you have to keep up with holidays for different locations/institutions (bank vs credit unions comes to mind).  That makes it easy on the users, but still may require tweaking and fidling to fit each user.  The other is a completely custom solution created by each user that they have to generate.  This is easier on you but requires a bit more work for the user. 

The thing is, either way you have to create some type of entry or structure that holds off automated entries when they are carried forward into the future.  You also have to account for future entries being adjusted after creation for the future years when a holiday changes the day it falls on.  Thats also going to be a factor right out of the gate with anyone who already has entries set up before the holiday entries are available(all the beta testers).

I would go with the completely user setup banking schedule. I would also go with a new “Bank Closed” entry type made available to the user as a fourth radio button below Deposit/Withdrawal/Transfer on the entry creation screen. The sub-options could be changed just as you did for the Transfer type.  Use the nice Repeat setup you have for monthly repeating entries but adapt to years to allow users to set up both dates (Dec 25) or sliding dates (4th thursday in Nov).  Users could also have a choice of a specific day of the week to declare as always a “Bank Closed” day.  That would cover any countries that might have open banks on saturday but closed on mondays or something like that.  Creating one of these BC (Bank Closed) entries should push any preexisting entries backwards in time to the first non-BC day.  I would actually suggest always shoving a withdrawal entry backwards and a deposit entry forwards when encountering a BC day.  As users, we are always checking our account (we have to be or they aren’t that useful for us).  We can manually move entries that might get shoved the wrong way.  This default movement would give a user the worst case cashflow position by default, so things would only get better as they made any changes that were needed.

I think this is your best solution.  2009 only has 10 bank holidays for the US.  Thats not too onerous to enter by hand.  Entering the weekends would be a one time deal for each day since it would always be the same day.  You might could pop up a reminder for users right after the first of the year to check their holidays.  I would also be sure that a user could force an entry onto a BC day to keep total flexibility. 

Well there’s another book of my blathering.  Hope some of it’s useful

[Obelix]

in reply to: Transferring between accounts #3623

Text error on the drop down to select accounts when doing a transfer.  I have a “Money Market” account.  It shows up as a “Money%20Market” account.  Maybe your literal read of the account name field needs a tweek.  It looks like you handle a 2 word option in the “Category” drop list with no problem.

[Obelix]

in reply to: Change Log? #3674

Hey I like the change log.  I also like that you added a way to access it even when it doesn’t show up on the main screen (from help menu).  Nicely done

[Obelix]

in reply to: New Category Type: Savings #3662

Oh.  This is my savings thread.  Duh.

Ok, I stand by everything I said in the last post and disavow all knowledge of of the secondary portion of the original post.  I think having “Goals”  that are free form are much better than trying to tie every penny into some type of “Savings” structure.

Goals should have an easy way to add money to them.  This probably would work best as an entry type tied to the specific goal.  I don’t think that trying to deal with the original goal item entry would be very efficient unless you made it acessible from the category layout area.  Even that would force a change in the current method of operation.  Plus tying goals to specific events would probably fit in just fine with your current data structure.  it would just act as a positive income event does now, only it would relate to the goal only and not the daily amount.

Goals should have an easy way to decrement against them.  This would probably play into the current entry structure.  Just add a drop down list of Goals that the entry can be applied against defaulting to “none”.  Entries apply against the daily balance and against the Goal they have set(if any).

Some issue in my mind as to the best way to decrement a goal if the decrement isn’t a real expense.  Like if I wanted to move money from my “New TV” goal to my “New Clothing” goal because I decided I needed new boots soon for work.  The money didn’t go anywhere yet, but it moved.  Would that transaction require 1 entry?  Two?  Should it be easier than that by letting the user have free reign over the amount a goal contained through a straight text value field they could adjust like the current entry setup has?  A true free form goal would work that way.  Depends on how much structure you want to force the user into to gain the advantage of a money trail to come back to in the future.

You could have a second entry type that only played with goals.  This could be used to move money between two goals, or could be created instead of applying an expense entry to a goal.  This would happen where you had one expense entry but covering two or more goals.  like if I wrote a single check for both my new TV and my new shoes when I go to Sears.  Being able to split the expense will be a necessary function I think.  So having a second entry type that was specific to goals will be necessary.  I wouldn’t force a goal change entry on creating a regular, single goal expense tho.  That way going back and changing the value (or changing a future value that you now know the true value of) also changes the effect on the goal.  Splitting into multiple goal entries still would pose a challenge if there was a change that was applied to the true expense entry.  The user would have to deal with the double goal entries anyways by hand.  I think for now you will have to leave them hanging and make them change the goal entry values by hand to match the expense entry.  Maybe later you could add some type of link from the expense entry to the related goal entries, but that would force you do handle the multiple goal entries from the expense entry setup screen.

Man getting long again.  What do you think so far?

[Obelix]

in reply to: New Category Type: Savings #3661

Hmm I like the “Goal” designation instead of savings.  Also, that makes it a free form entry that doesn’t have to be tied to the actual accounts.  I would like to see the goals have a decrementing option that lets you enter an amount you spent out of the goal amount.  The amount then gets adjusted for that decrement.  I guess if you wanted to take it a little farther you could keep up with the expenses charged against a goal and allow the user to print that out for a certain time frame.  That would work great for any goal that is a running goal.  I keep an “Auto Expenses” goal of $1000.  Now I have never reached that goal, but we allocate money to it as we get extra cash.  We also dip into it for oil changes and tires and such.  Being able to go back for a year and see the auto expenses laid out would be great.  Maybe as a thought a standard expense entry could have a drop list to apply it against a specific goal. 

Would you want to have a total tally for all the goals?  Perhaps in the same manner as income and expenses?

Dang, I’m going to have to go back to my “Savings” thread and rewrite it targeted at goals…

[Obelix]

in reply to: Categories Across Multiple Accounts #3652

Do I know you? :D

So what you are proposing is that ALL projected income for a month should be allocated to some category?  Not sure I like that.  It’s not as flexible as the current free form assignment.

I do like the extra entry option to assign the entry to a particular account even if you aren’t on that account page.  That would let new entries be added from anywhere without having to switch over.  You could possibly show all entries on all account pages just labeling them with $0 or something to help remind users they are there… of course that will start to get messy if the user has a lot of transactions.

[Obelix]

in reply to: Categories Across Multiple Accounts #3649

I’m not convinced that showing the multi columns within the confines of the current page layout are necessary.  maybe others have different experiences, but I pay bills out of one account. But,on the other hand, these are categories we are talking about here, not always specific bills so maybe I can see paying His phone bill out of His checking account and Her phone bill out of Her account.  Both fall under the Phone category. 

What about just changing the way you can view that information.  Instead of changing the entire page layout to enable the columns(which is a huge waste of space if you have to allocate area to empty or non-participating accounts), why not have a hover popup when you mouse over each category that shows quick summary info on that category.  The popup should appear just under the category so the checkbox activation is still enabled on clicking. As you moved down the page, once you leave the actual category area (not the popup) that popup disappears.  If you moved over another category, popup that categories quick summary. 

This would preserve your current layout and functions and simply add a popup feature (which could be used for lots of other things as well).

If you really wanted to provide an account breakdown, do it like the charts where you pop up a window to show the breakdowns for the month.  You could also include a link in that window to download it as a tab-delimited text file or just straight text.

The quick summary popup could include all accounts that contributed to that category for the month, the current amount, the budgeted amount, maybe even a tight/small review of the past couple months for this category.  Size/space used isn’t as important since its going away anyways as soon as the mouse leaves the category label area.

[Obelix]

in reply to: New Category Type: Savings #3657

OK this is a work in progress and may span several posts as I iron out my thoughts.  This will also be planned under the assumption that you can code anything I ask for.  You can, right?

Terminology first:
*Category is fairly loose and I get it confused with category types.  From now on, I will refer to a category as a user defined subaccount.  Examples would be Income, Insurance, Mortgage, Car payment,etc.  These are the daily “units” users work with when defining what’s happening with their money. 
*Category Type is more of a structure applied to categories that defines the way they operate.  Currently there you have Income and Expenses.  CB uses those designations to just place them under the proper Category Heading as far as I can tell.  They work identically behind the scenes.  They count up or count down for the current month.  I would change that slightly to have Monthly and Continuous category types.  Monthly types work just as they do now.  Continuous types would work just like the daily value does.  It moves from month to month, holding it’s value.
*Category Group is simply a heading under which the different categories would fall.  Currently you have Income and Expenses.  I would like to see those become user definable and expandable/contractible in the sidebar.

****************************************************************
EDIT: removed a bit of stuff here about savings that is not as good as the current “Goals” based discussion below
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[Obelix]

in reply to: Categories Across Multiple Accounts #3647

Hmm thats a good question.  If you made them common across all accounts, would allocations made in alternate accounts show up while viewing a different account?  Like if I’m looking at checking and I had allocated $100 towards the mortgage from my moneymarket account, does that allocation show up in the totals shown on my checking page?  Doing that would probably be best, but will make your category space much larger as all accounts will have to share the space if you have special categories that are specific to an account. 

And here’s another pie in the sky suggestion if you go this route.  You have category types – income,expenses(savings *nudgenudge*).  make them collapsable in the category area.  Allow the user to add custom category types and move a category between types if they want to.  This allows user to by default have income and expenses, but by preference they could move some of their expenses to a different category type.  property taxes that only get paid once a year.  Self employment taxes that get paid 4 times a year.  Business expenses vs personal expenses(for the self employed whose personal and business finances are more likely to be intertwined).

All these then being common and available on every account page, you could place the categories for a MoneyMarket account in its own category type(by preference, not enforced).  This structure (assuming you can code it) should provide a highly flexible, easy to get started with, complete(with the savings category type) way for people to keep up with their accounts, cashflow, and specific savings goals.

Erm.. you didn’t have anything else to work on did you?

[Obelix]

in reply to: Categories Across Multiple Accounts #3645

I expected the categories to carry over when I first got started.  I was disappointed that I would have to start over with setting them up. I ended up not even using the categories in my Money market account.  They just sit there hopelessly waiting for the day they get something assigned to them.  I just keep that account to keep track of the money it holds.. that money isn’t really allocated monthly in CB (altho it is in my personal budget and there’s another feature request for you when I get a chance to write it up).  I think you should consider at least asking the user when they add a new account if they would like to carry over the category settings from one they already have.  You could then let them radio button one of their current accounts defaulting to the first one.

[Obelix]

in reply to: Future daily values #3643

That looks pretty good.  I can live with that.  You could still gray the daily value a little if you wanted to, to show continuity with the background graying, just not so gray as it was before.  Is that your planned TODAY color as well?

[Obelix]

in reply to: Business Account #3639

Just to play the spoiler, does CalendarBudget really offer any kind of advantage for business over the other business targeted money management software out there?  Calendar budget is great for individuals trying to tame their cashflow troubles and keep their checkbooks reconciled, but I’m not sure that targeting businesses with specialty features is the best use of Eric’s time at this point.  I can perhaps see a small, one man business using CB, but anything much larger is most likely going to go to something else that’s more targeted towards the complexities of business.

[Obelix]

in reply to: Import format (QIF/OFX)? #3633

yeah I’d rather have that extra security step in there anyway, just as you say.  I’ll have to check with my credit union to see how I can get an OFX file.

[Obelix]

in reply to: New Reports #3608

I think I would skip trying to align categories between accounts.  just show the total balances.  You could even do this from individual accounts, including the local categories and then include only the account totals of other accounts as desired on a trending plot.  That would almost play towards the net worth plots I posted about.

[Obelix]

in reply to: Net Worth #3630

Well maybe it is as simple as letting the user enter a % growth rate. Future stuff is a guess anyways unless you get something with a fixed rate of return or you have some history to back it up.  it would be on the user to make that initial guess and you could help them track the history.  With investment accounts you could have revaluation entries users would add whenever they got a revaluation on the account(weekly,monthly,yearly,whenever) to set the true value on a specific date.  you could then back set the % rate from the last time the account was valued and show it to the user either on the entry bar or just on a chart somewhere.  you could also let them set a estimated rate going forward which is what would be used to calculate the daily valuation for each day going forward.  The default % carried forward could be the last time period’s actual %.  Or you could use radio buttons and let the user select whether they wanted to use the last period’s % or continue to use the estimated % from the previous revaluation entry.  this way if there was an investment that was expected to live in the 7% ballpark and it had an unusual spike or downturn but was expected to level back out , the user could select the previous rate instead of the spike rate.  And of course you would want to have a user entry option in case they chose none of the above.

Using the above method would play right in to paying off debts both fixed and variable.  For a car(or other oddly depreciating items) account you would use two entry types(maybe 3).  One for the loan and its rate.  One for the actual car value and the depreciation rate the user sets.  you could maybe suggest a rate on a simple curve (or maybe just a straight line) and just let the user revaluate whenever they wanted.  If the user is really hyper-serious about networth down to the dollar then they need to revaluate everything they have anyways and then run the networth chart.  Simple depreciation rates would allow them to get a ballpark figure at a glance and make coding much easier.  The third entry type could be for a loan against the account like a lien or a home equity loan.  you could do that third entry type against any asset(home,car,401K)

I think investments and assets are viable account types.  Users wouldn’t have to use them (the simple path), but could start adding them as they got more interested in truly mapping out their value.  i wouldn’t push them too far to the back…

Sorry this got long, hope it makes sense.

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