Net Worth Program BS418S01

[AnthonyM]

I've just run the above program using the date facility. It appears that for accounts that haven't had any transactions the original balance on the account is not being picked up. All of these accounts are showing zero as their balance. However, when the program is run without a specified date the balances are correct. I've run it with todays date and get zero balances on accounts but run the program without a date and all balances are shown.


Anthony

[ideasguy]

I'll check that out today Anthony.

[ideasguy]

Well spotted Anthony and it turned out to be a tricky one.
I had to go into the full works of the Net Worth program calculations to find out what was happening - not a five minute job!

When a) calculating to a date and b) when the account has no transactions, Bank Genie has no indicator as to when the account was created or when (date) that Opening Balance began to contribute to Net Worth.

The solution is quite logical:-
For ALL accounts which do not have transactions AND are not empty:-

• Use Bank Accounts BS403 to set the Opening Balance to zero
• Use Manage Transactions BS421 to add at least one transaction to the account

The Transaction date(s) now give Bank Genie a reference point to determine what to include and what to exclude when you choose to calculate to a chosen date.
The transaction amount(s) will be the same as the original Opening Balance.

I will add that one to the User Guide. Its something that every user needs to be aware of.
Does that do the job for you?

[AnthonyM]

Thanks yes that's fine.

In future versions of Bank Genie i.e. version 5, it might be useful to make the "opening balance entry" set up an actual transaction which would solve this problem.

Thanks

Anthony

[ideasguy]

Yes Anthony, that is necessary for Net Worth calculations which are to To date with accounts which have no further transactions

Immediately I see a tricky question.
How to assign a date to that opening balance transaction.

Ive done a little test with an alternative product.
It asks me to enter the statement date (of the statement I wish to start with) and its ENDING balance. It then creates the new account and uses that as the OPENING balance (O/B) and the date I entered as the O/B transaction date.
I then added a few transactions and it allowed me to add transactions prior to the O/B date.
It prompted me when I added a transaction a year prior to the O/B date, but allowed me to add the transaction.
If that were allowed in Bank Genie, then if I selected a date PRIOR to the O/B date as the To date, the O/B transaction would be ignored, but could include transactions in the account which were before the To date.

This needs more thought!

[ideasguy]

Ive made an amendment to the program Net Worth - BS418 to issue a warning message when an account causes calculation issues as discussed above.
The message identifies the account(s) which needs user attention, and gives instructions on how to easily eliminate the problem by simply editing the problematic account.

This amendment is in BS418 Version 8.
If your version is below that level, download from the Bank Genie support website:
http://www.bankgenie.net/support/Updates/updates.html