2015 Forecaster / Foresight Graph

[AndrewALJ]

Hi Kevin, I've found a problem with Forecaster. I run my current accounts down to only a few £'s by transferring any surplus to a savings account each month. Therefore the Forecast graph to show me where my account balance lands each month, qtr, year is essential to make my money work for me. But is Forecaster only making predictions in the "Upcoming" area where future bill transactions are queued? At the start of this month (June) Forecaster was showing a surplus in my current account for the next 3 months. I decided to pay a bill that wasn't due until the end of June (last week) (to gain an early payment bonus) that was shown in the calendar (as a transaction reminder) but not shown in the "upcoming" line up of bills due to only 3 weeks or so are shown in this window / view. As soon as I entered the transaction into my account Forecaster then showed me I would become overdrawn when before it showed a healthy balance. (WTF??!!). I've now lost confidence in the ability of your program to show true projections. Please can you sort out this issue asap as I'm lost without it.

Kind regards, AJ

(Please note I also posted this under the closed topic by accident).

[Kevin Stembridge]

Hi Andrew,

It might be worth ruling out the possibility raised by @rabel68 on the other thread.

Can you confirm if you entered the transaction in your account register manually or if you opened the dialog for that reminder and clicked on Record Transaction?

Cheers,

Kevin

[AndrewALJ]

Hi Kevin,

I tried using the link you provided in your last comment and it doesn't show me anything to review (post removed or private?). What I can add regarding your question was that the transaction was a reoccurring transaction reminder, it was this I recorded into my current account - original intended destination). All I did was entered the transaction into my account from the upcoming list of bill transaction reminders earlier than it was listed (bill listed for June 27th but entered the transaction from the upcoming list yesterday). I hope this helps regarding the issues i've put forward.

Thanks AJ

[Kevin Stembridge]

Hi Andrew,

Apologies, that wasn't a link to the comment. That was just a tag for the name of the person who posted the comment. His comment is on the thread where you originally raised this issue.

https://bitbucket.org/kevinstembridge/moneydance-forecaster/issue/15/forecaster-for-moneydance-2015

There are different ways that a transaction can be entered in the account register. I need to confirm which method you used.

One way is to click on an occurrence of the reminder item from the list of upcoming reminders on the home page and then click on the 'Record Transaction' button.

Another way is to click on the 'New Transaction' button at the top right (or Ctrl-N keyboard shortcut) when viewing the account register and then manually enter the transaction details. If you create the transaction this way then you will still have an upcoming occurrence of the reminder that has to be 'skipped'. This is done by opening that occurrence of the reminder as above and choosing 'Skip Transaction'. If the next occurrence of the reminder is not visible (which I think is what you are saying) then you can click on the "Upcoming" text and it will open a separate dialog that shows a greater range into the future.

Can you confirm if you have skipped the next occurrence of the reminder?

Cheers,

Kevin

[AndrewALJ]

Hi Kevin,

You are correct on your assumption on how I've gone about this. The transaction that was recorded was by Recording the transaction from the longer list of Upcoming Transaction Reminders (when clicking on the Upcoming Transaction on the calendar from the Reminder page), therefore there was no future transaction for the current month to skip, although I still checked and can confirm once the transaction was recorded the Transaction Reminder had "greyed out" on the calendar view as it should to show the transaction has been entered early and also no longer visible for this month within the Upcoming list when I click to expand the list.

No new or additional transaction was made that could cause this issue, only recording a Reminder Transaction from the calendar view early in the same month caused the forecast graph to then reflect a lower balance than before when the transaction was pending for payment later this month.

Hope this helps,

AJ

[Kevin Stembridge]

Hi AJ,

Thanks for the confirmation.

It might be difficult to tell now but do you know if the amount of the discrepancy is equal to the amount of the reminder transaction that you recorded? If not, does the amount correspond to any other transactions that you know of? After recording the transaction, can you confirm if the forecasted amount is now correct or is it incorrect? In other words, was the forecast incorrect before or after the transaction was recorded?

Cheers,

Kevin

[AndrewALJ]

I'll try and answer clearly to your questions Kevin line by line.

The discrepancy was not equal to the reminder transaction. The bill was £270 and the forecast graph before entry had a + balance of around £20 (what i can remember). Once the transaction was recorded early was the forecast graph showed going OD by around - £115. I'm not seeing the forecast graph fluctuate as more transactions fill the Upcoming list on the home page, as these only show on the homepage 2 weeks at a time I think. The change in the forecast graph was immediate when entering the early Reminder Transaction, showing my current account to then be negative. There is a similar value Transaction Reminder that now appears in the Upcoming £111.85, (which is similar to the OD amount when this happened several days ago) on the home page but this has just appeared, forecast graph has not changed and is stable still. The forecast amount must have been incorrect from the start as I have had to move real money from my savings to my current to prevent an OD situation and recording the transfer in Moneydance too, so the graph became back in the black as a + not a negative when making these changes several days ago.

I've not had to enter any transactions over the last few days and have nothing to record for the next 5 days so I cannot comment if the graph could still behave in this way?

I'm sure this is not the first time (entering an early transaction on a + forecasted account) only to enter an early Transaction Reminder from the Reminder Calendar in the same month just a few days early and the Forecast graph then showed a much lower balance once the transaction was recorded into account register.

Thanks, AJ

[Kevin Stembridge]

Andrew, you're a champion.

I think I've found the problem thanks to your description. I've logged an issue under the Money Foresight BitBucket account and I'll get working on a fix.

https://bitbucket.org/mahanaroad/moneyforesight/issue/11

Many thanks for your help in tracking down the issue. I think it's probably been there for a while and noone else noticed it, including myself. I appreciate you taking the time.

Cheers,

Kevin

[AndrewALJ]

My pleasure Kevin, happy to help!

I look forward to the update in due course and being able to put my faith back into this program like it used to be ;-)

[Kevin Stembridge]

I've uploaded v13 to the Money Foresight server. You should get a notification the next time you start MF. When you get the chance to install it, let me know if you still see any issue with the forecast.

Cheers,

Kevin

[AndrewALJ]

Installed the update and I'll keep an eye on the Foresight graph behaviour.

Thanks again Kevin for a speedy resolve!,

Best regards, AJ

[Brian Taylor]

Hi Kevin,

Just a line to let you know that I am pleased with my purchase of Money Foresight.

However, I would point out that I found difficulty locating your download/purchase page; I had to Google "moneydance/forecaster" and then read all the Bitbucket treads!

Might be worth you thinking about!

Perhaps you could attach a Tab, to Money Forecaster, "About", which included a link to the latest discussion thread, or to a Help/comment page; it would also be useful to have a link to the latest update

Just my two penneth!

Regards

Brian

[Kevin Stembridge]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the feedback.

Sorry you had trouble finding us. I understand this is a bit of a problem at the moment.

Ultimately, I'd like Money Foresight to be available via Moneydance's Extension Manager in the same way the Forecaster extension was, which would solve the problem of MD 2015 users being able to find it. But there are complications around updates for users whose 12 month period of free updates has passed. I still haven't figured out how to handle that without some changes being made to Moneydance itself.

In the meantime, could you clarify your point about a link to the latest discussion thread? Do you mean adding a tab (menu item etc) to the old Forecaster extension or the new Money Foresight extension? Similarly, what did you have in mind for a link to the latest update?

Cheers,

Kevin

P.S. You probably haven't come across the new BitBucket account for Money Foresight.

https://bitbucket.org/mahanaroad/moneyforesight

[Brian Taylor]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your reply.

Reference my point about a link to the latest discussion thread.

If you did add a Tag, "About" (To Money Foresight, in addition to File, View & Options), with a drop down menu, I thought that it would be useful, if, in addition to the update state, of the version, in use, it gave the web link to the most current thread of discussion, or to the web page (Perhaps this could be called Support) were relevant discussions are taking place. I only make this comment, because, I searched for MoneyDance Forecaster and found several threads, within which, I observed that you provided a link, to another thread - Which eventually lead me to the page, where I could download Money Foresight.

No criticism intended, Kevin, it's just that you have a good product, which took me a long time to track down - Now that I have found it, it would be useful to view relevant threads, direct from within Money Foresight, rather than to do a Google search.

The link, which you have provided looks like this meets this requirement, and is noted

Kindest Regards

Brian

[Kevin Stembridge]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the clarification. I think it's a good suggestion to have an 'About' menu option. I'll definitely add that at some point soon.

I very much appreciate the feedback and didn't read it as criticism at all.

Many thanks,

Kevin

[Brian Taylor]

Hi Kevin,

Just to let you know that I keep getting reminders that a "newer version of Money Foresight" is available - Telling me I have version 29, and that version 30 is available.

I have followed the link, several times, and each time, version 29 is downloaded!

Brian

[Kevin Stembridge]

Hi Brian,

That doesn't sound too good.

I've logged it as an issue on the Money Foresight bitbucket account. https://bitbucket.org/mahanaroad/moneyforesight/issues/36/website-is-serving-v29-when-the-latest

Can you add yourself as a watcher to that issue and we'll try and sort out the issue on that thread.

Cheers,

Kevin