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krk969's Avatar
Posts: 754 | Thanked: 630 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ London
#159
Originally Posted by noetus View Post
OK, so first off I want to say, GREAT WORK! I was so pleased I immediately went and made another donation. Keep up the good work!

From trying the new features, here are some initial suggestions/comments.

On currencies.

(1) I tried the new currency capability, but it doesn't seem to support all currencies yet. I'm an annoying case of someone who needs a more unusual currency - Guatemalan Quetzales. It looks like it supports the main currencies found at http://www.xe.com/ucc/ - but the complete list of all currencies is at http://www.xe.com/ucc/full/). In any case, I can't find Quetzales in the list!
Regarding the multi-currency feature, I am currently using the google api's to get the rates, so what currencies that api supports is what buddy has, so if the Quetzales doesn't exist nothing much I can do about it. I will try and see if there are any other free api's around that I could use , not ones with api keys and not paid ones obviously. You are most welcome to suggest. I can't afford the thousands of dollars that xe charges for their feed unfortunately

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
(2) I can't use the new currency function in any case, even with the currencies that are supported. I have bank accounts in more than one currency, but Buddy forces all your accounts to be in the same currency - the 'default' one.

(3) Another reason I couldn't use the currency function is that my bank decides that the conversion rate is going to be, the one Buddy finds online is hardly ever going to be correct when the transaction finally shows up on my statement.

(4) So for me there has to be an easy way of going back and manually changing the conversion rate later. Ideally Buddy would store the original currency, the conversion rate, and the currency converted to for every transaction, and you could update later by changing any one of these. I'm going to have to continue with my old way of managing foreign currencies - writing all the details out in the description and figuring it all out by hand!
yes the currency always defaults to the one set by the user in the setting, I've kept this simple so that the graphs when shown are all in the same currency else if each entry is in a different currency it would be a mess to show any analysis. somewhere I need to convert all of them to one currency which is why the default currency concept is there.
But then having said that the information related to the foreign currency and amount is not list, I still keep them safe in the DB , for display and the graphs I show all entries in the default currency . I could not think of redesigning my display interface to provide more screen estate to display the foreign currency and amount, perhaps I can display it in the amount field with the currency code if the user wishes to see the foreign currency amount rather than the default. Will try to implement this if that helps.
Hope that is a good enough answer.

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
On the new accounts feature:

(1) Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I can use this new feature, either! I want to use the accounts feature to keep track of how much money is in my accounts, and how much I've rung up on credit cards. It seems the new account feature isn't set up for that - the main issue is that Buddy forces every category to be associated with an account, and only one account. So if I pay my grocery bill with cash one day, credit card the next, and bank card the third day, there's no way of entering this into Buddy. It wants my groceries to be paid always with the same account, the same for all the other categories.
Will give this a thought and come back to you if I can make changes to support multiple accounts for a category.
Currently the savings report show the budgets/expenses linked to this account, now if we have budget entries for different categories linked to different accounts and same for expense I need to see how to make sense for this graph and how to relate it all.
As of now I get a feeling this can be done.

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
(2) I haven't actually figured out what the new accounts feature is for. If not for keeping track of what's in your accounts, debit or credit, then what? There is no display of your current balance, so I guess the intended use is different. But I can't figure out what it is!
The screen that displays entries in an account shows all entries by default irrespective of what month or year it is.
But there is a filter there to display for current week, month, year or specific period. I can try and display the balance based on the period the user has chosen to view as default when entering this screen.
Think that will help ?

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
(3) There also isn't a way of handling debit/credit accounts differently (with a debit account, transaction amounts are removed from the balance; with a credit account, they are added).
can add support for negative amounts.

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
(4) I can't seem to move money between accounts with Buddy. So if I want to set up a savings account, I would like to be able to move money from my current account into my savings account. There doesn't seem to be a way of doing this.
just change the account name , if you want to move an entry between accounts.

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
(5) Interest on debit/credit accounts is not supported.
same as (3) if you meant the amount itself, but if its automatic interest calculation that feature does not exist in buddy as of now.

Originally Posted by noetus View Post
(6) What I have figured out a use for accounts in Buddy is to use them as a sort of 'supercategory' so I can keep track of groups of categories. That's actually turned out to be quite handy --'household' for all my household categories like bills, rent, and groceries, 'entertainment' for all my entertainment categories like eating out and the gym, and so on. But surely this isn't what the accounts feature was intended for!
not really, its about linking where your budgets from various categories are sourced from and the expenses out of the account.
but you could use it in the way you suggested above as well.
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Last edited by krk969; 2011-02-28 at 20:14.