The first and last transaction date look like useful additions.

At first sight this also goes for amount and total amount. However after thinking these through better I figure it's nearly impossible to come up with a scheme that will consistently show a useful value.

The assumption behind your request is that all scheduled transactions are for simple payments ("outgoing amount") and that the transactions in themselves are very simple in structure.

For this use case one could indeed easily deduce the amount.

However scheduled transactions are much more universal in nature in GnuCash. You can also create one for example to create periodical amounts receivable, or income if you like. So there is not always an "outgoing" part.

In addition this only takes a basic scheduled transaction in mind:
One single transaction, consisting of two splits. In that case the amount is fairly easily found as both splits have the same amount (with inverted sign). However should the positive or the negative split be considered ?

Further if you have 3 or more splits, which split then indicates the transaction amount ? The "outgoing" split or the sum of the "outgoing" splits ? What if the SX was for income or accounts receivable ? What if it was a mix of income and expense in one SX ?

And one scheduled transaction can even create multiple transactions at once. What should be the amount to display in that case ? Each balanced transaction sums to 0, so just summing all splits is not useful. Which splits in both transactions will make up a sensible sum ?

As for total amount I have yet another reservation (assuming you can come up with a universally valid formula for amount in the first place): IMO that only makes sense if all SX use the same frequency. Suppose you have 2 SX"s: 2 which are monthly and one quarterly. What sense would there be in calculating a total for these 3 ? It's not the amount you have to pay per month, nor the amount to pay per quarter. It seems to me total amount only makes sense in the context of a period. Not specifying a period for a total amount would create a very deceiving number if not all frequencies are equal.

This is a subject close to my heart too.
Here are some comments.

Displaying the amounts in the Scheduled Transaction window:

I think the simplest and most flexible way to chose what to display is to add a Check Box to each line in the Edit Transaction Window -> Template Transaction tab.
Which ever line is chosen, that amount should be displayed.
Of course, there should be a limit such only one line can be selected.

Technically, this could be implemented perhaps as a column (kind of like the "Action" column)?

To make it nicer and more 'telling', could it be implemented such that if the transaction selected to be displayed is on the "Tot Funds In" column (a deposit) it will display with a + sign or even better in Green or Blue, and if the transaction is on the "Tot Funds Out" column (a payment) the transaction would show with a - sign or in Red?

This would totally satisfy my needs.


Now, if one wants to have a running total of all the scheduled transactions, that would be a bit more complex we would need to have two totals, one for the Total Out, and one for the Total In columns selected (so one Green, one Red).
I suppose that would be harder to make, but it would be awesome!

What do you think?

I think that there's already way too much going on in the register to want to add anything more to it. Besides, the net value of any transaction is of course 0, so that's no help.

Beyond that, amount without account is meaningless, regardless of direction. That's not determinable at the transaction level because any particular transaction will contain at least two splits pointing to at least two accounts. 
What we could do calculate the net impact of all transactions in an SX to a user-selected list of accounts. That introduces the possibility that some transactions would report 0 if they were solely transfers between accounts in the list and not 0 when the transactions transfer between asset accounts some of which aren't on the list. Either will be confusing to a naive user, so the default should be that nothing is displayed.

Projected total requires quite a bit of calculation and the user might need to adjust the accounts involved, so it would probably make more sense to make that a report. I can't think of a reasonable way to display a running balance over time outside of a report and one would the option of a grid display -- dates down the side and accounts across the top -- for any sort of running balance report.

Hi John/Everyone.
I think we have two requests/ideas here:
- one was to show the amount of each scheduled transaction.
- the second was to provide a running total.
How about if we forget about the running total part and focus only on displaying the amount of each transaction?

Please forget about the split transaction for a second because indeed they total zero.
The idea was: when one enters the Scheduled Transaction in the Edit window would chose the split line whose amount wants displayed.
Then that specific line's amount would be copied to the Scheduled Transaction and displayed there in a new column.

You can add a column after the "Next Occur" named "Amount" of something where the selected amount would be displayed.

In theory that seems feasible to me. 
I wish I had the time (and brain?) to learn whatever programming I would need and try this myself. I am technical but unfortunately I am a hardware guy, not software. 
:(

(In reply to Dorel C from comment #4)
 
> Please forget about the split transaction for a second because indeed they
> total zero.

All transactions total zero. That's what "balanced" means.

> The idea was: when one enters the Scheduled Transaction in the Edit window
> would chose the split line whose amount wants displayed.

Ah, mark the split, sorry I misunderstood. That would at least work, but I still don't think that adding a column to the register is a good idea, both because it already has a lot of columns and because that one wouldn't be part of the actual transaction which would be confusing.

More workable I think is a variation on my earlier suggestion, from alavarre: On the overview tab of the SX Editor, add an account selector. The total column in the SX summary would reflect the net change to that account; I think we'd want to display the account in the summary as well.

> Then that specific line's amount would be copied to the Scheduled
> Transaction and displayed there in a new column.

Calculated, not copied. SX splits can contain strings which

Sorry.
SX splits can include strings which represent formulas rather than amounts. The mortgage wizard works by creating a formula which calculates the interest payment each month.

Please allow me to back-up a bit and state again why and what I would like to see.

One of the main reasons for me to use an accounting program is to make sure I pay the bills in time (and boy, have I got bills...) and therefore the Scheduled Transactions function is crucial to me.

So I am not talking about adding a column to any of the account registers... all my discussion revolves around the Scheduled Transactions window.
That is the first screen I look at when I turn on GNU Cash, and I see all my bills in the order of the Next Occur date (which is perfect for me).

Now, on the same screen, I would love to see for each of these Scheduled Transactions the amount scheduled for each of them. My idea was to bring this number from the Edit Transaction screen from the Template Transaction tab.
Displaying this number would be no more than looking up in the Template Transactions table the Split Line that one would select when setting up that particular reminder and just display whatever number is there.

Now, I have no idea how GNU Cash stores the Scheduled Transaction information, but I would guess that is in a table format? If so, this table would need to allow one to select one of the splits (perhaps another column in this table may be needed). 
Then bringing that amount to the Scheduled Transaction screen would be a matter of looking up the data from a selected line in a table... wouldn't it?

Please forgive me if I don't make sense and I will try to not troll this discussion anymore.
:)

Dorel, thank you for your elaboration. I believe both John and I understood what you are looking for though and John was giving his direct feedback on a possible implementation of that request.

The "register" John refers to several times is the part of the source code that is used by both the typical account registers (which you refer to) and the transaction template editor in the SX editor (which you would like to see changed).

Making changes there such as adding a way to mark one split will affect many areas in gnucash. This has too much impact on other areas of gnucash compared to the benefit it brings. And so we want to avoid it.

Instead John offered an alternative way which would allow you to get to the same end result.

*** Bug 542632 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reassign version to 2.4.x so that individual 2.4 versions can be retired.

GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. The new URL for this bug is https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647343. Please continue processing the bug there and please update any external references or bookmarks.