Problem with averaging expenses or income

[degraham18676]

I started fooling around with this because it didn't seem to be working properly -- that is, I had actual values in both January and February, but the plan amounts did not update automatically to what should have been the new average. Is this because the average for February will not update until I am into the NEXT month (e.g., March)? The averaging seems like a wonderful idea, but the implementation (or my understanding of it) seems to be problematical.

I had just started my use of Cashculator, and noticed that if I select the FIRST month for averaging (turns out to be this January), it fills in all following months with the current month's absolute actual value. So far so good. But if I then select the current month (February), which has actual values in it, and select average in the CURRENT month (e.g., February, which was the ONLY option), the application breaks. That is, the amount shown in the months following (March, April, etc) is the value of minus 92,233,720,368,547,760 ... obviously not correct. And it is always this number, regardless of the values I am working with. And I cannot (for example), set the "average from" date to January 2010 when I am in the February month. The popup shows only the February month, and drops down to blank for the "other" value.

The same issue was encountered with expenses and incomes. Also, if I attempted to work backwards in time, but had already set a plan value for January, the averages from prior months never could override the plan value set for January, which seemed wrong, as well.

I love this program and think the averaging is a wonderful addition to it, but I think either the manual or the function needs a bit of polishing.

[degraham18676]

On carefully re-reading the manual, I can see that the issue that threw me initially (that is, only the past months can be used for averaging, which makes sense) was my fault in not understanding what the issue was (the averaging not yet updating for the CURRENT month).

On the other hand, the issue with the weird numbers still exists (e.g., an error message should come up instead, indicating this is an incorrect action - and the plan should be unchanged for the following months) and the issue with "stuck" plan values* not updating is still valid. 8)

* To reproduce. Within a given year (all past months) (heh heh), select one in the middle. Set plan value (average, perhaps) in that month. Then go to an EARLIER month, say 2 or 3 months away, and set plan value to average for THAT month. Averages will be set UNTIL you get to the one you originally set, at which point it will start over with that month's actual value. (The same things happen if the middle month was set to FLAT -- its plan value does not update to average or to a new flat value set by an earlier month.) While I realize that this may in fact be a correct functionality for the program as designed, perhaps an *option* to clear all values from a certain point and into the future might be really useful. I suspect that most of us, however, will only need to have access to such functionality while we are still learning how to use Cashculator properly.

[Kosta]

Hi,

Thank you for a detailed report.
As you already found out, current month isn't used in average calculation, because it may contain only a partial income/expense for the unfinished month, thus skewing the average calculation. The value in February column will be taken into account as soon as February ends.

Regarding the second issue with changing the value in past months - it is also intentional, as both flat amount and average are replicated only until the next entered value, without overwriting it. For example, if I have a roadmap to receive an income of $100 for each month of first quarter of 2010, and $200 for second quarter, I should enter a flat value of 100 in Jan, 200 in April and 0 in July. This way, the values roadmap shown in Cashculator will be 100,100,100,200,200,200,0,0,...
Now, if I would like to change the expected income for first quarter to $150, I should just change the value in Jan from 100 to 150, and the roadmap will become 150,150,150,200,200,200,0,0,...
That is usually what users want to achieve, rather than overwriting the 200 value with 150.
We will consider your offer regarding adding an *option* to clear all values from a certain point.

And, last but not least, the weird value of minus 92,233,720,368,547,760 is really a bug. We will fix it in nearest release of Cashculator.

Thank you for helping us make Cashculator better.
Don't hesitate to contact us if you find additional issues / improvements.

Best regards,
Kosta Rozen
Apparent Software

[Apparent Software]

Also, if I attempted to work backwards in time, but had already set a plan value for January, the averages from prior months never could override the plan value set for January, which seemed wrong, as well.

Actually, as Kosta said this is not a bug. But Kosta was wrong too.
There's no problem with deleting the plan that you entered on February, as you wrote:

As you can probably see, some plan values are displayed in black text and some are in gray.
Black ones are the actual changes to plan that you inserted. In your case, both January and February will be black and later months will be gray (propagated, calculated).
To delete the Feb setting, just select the cell and press Del or BackSpace key or select Delete from Edit menu. The plan that you started on February will be deleted and the January plan will propagate into Feb, Mar etc.

Jacob.

[degraham18676]

Note, this refers to Cashculator version 1.1.4 (360)

Update to averaging issue. It still seems to be broken. My understanding is that it will be based ONLY on PAST months. OK. So that's the data I am providing here.

For January, February, March, here are some actual data (averaging from January) and the calculated "averages" compared to what they should be:

30 60 300
30 180 120 <=== Cashculator calculation of averages
30 45 130 <=== cumulative month aver (e.g, this last number is based on (30 + 60 + 300) / 3)

and another

678 441 694
678 568 378 <=== Cashculator calculation of averages
678 560 604 <=== cumulative month aver

and another

1053 469 370
1053 420 310 <=== Cashculator calculation of averages
1053 761 630 <=== cumulative month aver

To attempt to fix this, I have:

deleted the method, re-added it
restarted Cashculator

No joy, erroneous data remains the same.

[Apparent Software]

Note, this refers to Cashculator version 1.1.4 (360)

Update to averaging issue. It still seems to be broken. My understanding is that it will be based ONLY on PAST months. OK. So that's the data I am providing here.

Hello.
Indeed the data that you present show that something is wrong with the average calcuations. I'll try to validate the problem here. If I won't be able to do this, I might need to see your database file. In the meantime, there's no need for that.

Thanks for the report,
Jacob.

[degraham18676]

Happy to assist. Let me know if you need anything to help with resolution.

[degraham18676]

Great, thanks. The latest version (1.1.5) fixes the averaging problem. I did have to delete all the prior averages and have Cashculator do a re-average, but that was no big deal. Thanks again for a great product (and really really fast response time, too)

[Apparent Software]

Great, thanks. The latest version (1.1.5) fixes the averaging problem. I did have to delete all the prior averages and have Cashculator do a re-average, but that was no big deal. Thanks again for a great product (and really really fast response time, too)

Right, a refresh of prior average calculations might have been needed. Either by removing averages and applying again or reentering actual data for one of the months in the plan.

Continue to enjoy using Cashculator!
Jacob.