I'm a YNAB4 user and checking out Financier. I have searched the forum but don't see an answer.
In the Budget screen, say I have $33.59 budgeted in a category and I want to add another $48.77. I'd like to simply put the cursor in that field and hit the PLUS button on the keyboard and then 48.77 to have it added to the $33.59 already there. That doesn't happen. I only get the new number I type in. I don't want to have to bring up a separate calculator program to do the addition.
Is this feature missing? Or am I using the software incorrectly?
I saw a reference to 'inline calculations' but am not sure what that is, or if it's what I'm used to in YNAB.
Thanks.
If you put your cursor at end of the existing value and type "+" and then the amount you want to add, you should see the new value after hitting <Enter>.
Example: Typing "33.59+48.77" should result in "82.36" in the budget cell.
By the way, a first post requires a warm welcome.
Welcome to Financier! :parrot:
Thanks for the welcome.
And, thanks for the tip. I knew it was probably me that just didn't understand how to use the feature. It's such a basic function of software like this, I would have been surprised if it wasn't there.
I used the import from YNAB4 function. It worked great.
I'm still using YNAB4, but am going to try to run Financier in parallel before fully committing.
Thanks for the great YNAB alternative.
For being a one-man-show,
@Alex put together a fantastic piece of software in only a few months.
One annoying thing is that the calculator does not work in the accounts view. Something I will fix. Thanks :)
Quote from: Alex on January 25, 2017, 10:45:44 AM
One annoying thing is that the calculator does not work in the accounts view. Something I will fix. Thanks :)
How about that un-highlighting the value and moving the cursor to the end automatically when "+", "-", "/", or "*" is pressed thing? ;)
My main gripe with that is if you're changing the budget value to a negative budget value. If you type -1.23, I would expect that to be entered into the field (not x.xx-1.23).
And if it's inconsistent with other operators it's just going to cause confusion.
The right arrow is just one more key to press to do the same thing, though. :)
I get both perspectives but I'd go with Alex on this one.
asromzek's Rebuttal of the Week (And it's only Monday!)
I had a variety of thoughts on this particular topic while driving in to work this morning, and I hope that I can convey them in a way that makes sense. This was after a conversation with my wife where she actually agreed with me (I'm not making that up). I'm going to do my best to describe some use cases, what the expected behavior should be, and why I'm right and you're wrong.
The Issue at Hand
When placing your cursor in one of the budget cells, the value is automatically highlighted. There are then two ways to handle what happens when a math operator key is pressed. Overwrite the value with the operator value, or unselect the budget value move the cursor to the end, add the operator, essentially entering "math mode". The former is a description of how the software currently works which allows you to easily enter a new negative number in a budget cell. I will attempt to explain why there is very rarely a case when you will need to enter an exact negative value.
I'll start by making a simple statement: There is nearly no reason to manually enter a value in a budget cell that will cause the category balance to go negative. Category balances normally go negative due to overspending. I can't think of a single day to day use case where you would want to unbudget a category in a way that takes the value negative. Usually, when you are entering negative numbers, you're either reducing a positive category balance to make that money available elsewhere, or simply taking the balance to zero to use all of the money elsewhere. The budget cell may need to have its value set to a negative number, but I'll explain when you should not be typing that negative value directly (hint: we have a calculator).
Unbudgeting Money
The biggest reason for entering a negative value is to unlock money that carried over from the last month to make available in other categories this month. I'll start with an example category: Clothing. Imagine that you carried over a balance of $100 from the previous month, and you have already budgeted another $50 this month, taking the category to a total of $150 that you intend to spend on clothing. However, toward the end of this month you have not spent any of that money and want to shift it to cover some other negative category balances where you overspent.
You have two options at this point: You're either going to unbudget a specific amount to reduce the category balance to a lower positive number, or you're going to unbudget the full amount to make the entire category balance available elsewhere. Again, you should not be enter a negative value larger than the category balance, which would take that balance below zero.
In the case of taking the value to zero there is already a nice feature in the quick budget options: "Budget to Zero". That is one of the features that I have been using frequently to completely empty a category balance. You should not have to manually enter a negative value that equals the total balance of the category.
The other option is reduce the category balance by a specific amount. To recap: we have $100 left over from last month, we budgeted $50 this month, and currently have a total of $150 as a category balance. We need to unbudget $90 so that we can use it in another category. You place your cursor in the budget cell and the $50 value that we entered is highlighted. To reduce the category balance by $90, we need the budgeted value to go to -$40. That removes the $50 we added this month and unlocks another $40 from last month. There is no reason do the math in your head, and then manually overwrite the $50 budget value with -$40. You should put your cursor in the box which highlights the $50, press the "-" key which will move the cursor to the end, and then type "90". The math is done automatically, and you end up with -$40 in the cell.
Default Behavior
From my experience, the example listed above represents the vast majority of cases where I am setting a budget value to negative amount. I either use the quick budget option to zero the category balance, or let the calculator do the math for me when reducing the balance by the amount needed. There may be some cases where a specific negative value must be entered, but the are few and far between when it comes to how often I'm using the calculator to shift money around.
With that said, I believe that the default behavior should be to go into "calculator mode" when an operator key is pressed for two reasons. The first is due to the frequency using the calculator when moving money around as shown above, and the second is to make the calculator feature easily discoverable. If the default behavior is to overwrite the budget value on key press, there is no indication that the calculator function is even available, unless stated elsewhere. I'm a big fan of making things intuitive, and by moving the cursor to the end and appending the math operator, a light bulb should go off for the user that they can do math right in the cell. The calculator makes life a lot easier, and should be promoted as much as possible to help with math errors.
Conclusion
The current default behavior is to accommodate a situation that happens very infrequently when compared to how often the calculator should be used during normal budgeting. I would say that if it's easy to hit the right arrow key to start math mode, the same can be said for hitting the backspace or delete key when overwriting the budget value. Make the calculator easy to discover, and simple to use with as few clicks as possible.
I rest my case.
This post was so long, I only read
QuoteI rest my case.
Then I laughed. The more you write, the more important and convincing your point is. I concede.
I had a lot of coffee this morning. :parrot:
/s implied? :P ;)
Yeah, I think it makes sense. I'm hesitant though, even after your essay. Might make sense to have this option configurable, or maybe I'll just have to try it out and see if it annoys me. :)
Now I'm forgetting to tell everyone to ignore the /s. ::)
I like the idea of being able to enable the functionality with a setting. Of course, I would lean toward making the calculator default for the reasons above, with the option to turn it off for those that can't handle the annoyance. ;)