As David said.

In Australia, mortgage accounts can be quite complicated to represent. They are often variable-rate; it's common to pay at 4-weekly intervals while interest is calculated daily, but debited from the account at the end of the calendar month; and advance payments (and sometimes withdrawals against advance payments) are allowed.

It's also common for mortgage offset accounts to be attached to mortgages, which, instead of paying interest, the offset account's balance is subtracted from the mortgage accounts balance when the daily mortgage interest is being calculated. This gives an effective interest rate for the offset account equal to the mortgage interest rate, and is tax free, because no money is actually paid.

It all meant that when I had mortgage account, the interest calculation was way beyond my ability to convince GnuCash to calculate (and I didn't even use an offset account).

Instead, I ran a spreadsheet that calculated estimated interest due, and used that to make sure there weren't any gross errors in the bank's calculations. I simply copied the actual interest in the monthly bank statement into GnuCash, so that GunCash's balance would reconcile.

I do something similar for our on-call higher-interest savings accounts. The interest on our current account is so pitiful it's not worth calculating.

That's probably good enough for personal finances, but may not be good enough for your business use.

Peter

On 3/12/2018 23:03, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:
Hal,
Most such calculations are devilishly difficult to represent with 100% 
accuracy, which is why I have always opted to base my transactions on the 
statement, rather than try to anticipate what the finance company is going to 
come up with.
David T

On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 12:10, Hal Vaughan<hal@hal.dance> wrote: For the past few years, for my business that is mostly about renovating or restoring houses and reselling them (not flipping - this work takes time), I’ve used a Python library I wrote myself to handle accounting.  It was basically made up mostly of stuff I had, with a few new things added in.

I would like to switch over to GnuCash.  Luckily, since I’m at a slow point and 
between projects, I can do that without worrying about converting old data for 
older LLCs and projects.

There’s one issue I’m not sure can be handled by GnuCash, so I’d like to find 
out about it before trying to switch over.

I use a line of credit.  Luckily the interest rate is basically constant.  (There’s a 
slight flux, but not much.)  The problem is its compounded and, of course, every time I 
withdraw money from the credit line or pay any back, the principal amount changes.  I’m 
hoping, at this point, people are saying, "Oh, yeah, just do this…."

But just in case there’s a need for clarification, if I withdraw $50,000 to 
purchase a house on January 1, then, on the 15th, withdraw $10,000 for roofing 
work, need to figure out the total owed to that credit line on 1/31, and the 
interest rate is 3%, then I have to figure compound interest on $50,000 at 3% 
from 1/1 to 1/15.  Then I have to add $10,000 to that amount to calculate the 
interest on the $50,000 plus 15 days of interest, plus $10,000, plus the 
interest from the 15th to the 30th, at 3%, to get a clear number for what I owe.

Can I have this done automatically on an account?  If not, how can I easily 
keep track of this in GnuCash?


Thank you!


Hal
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
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
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
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
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
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.

Reply via email to