[kde-doc-english] Loan documentation

[Jack]

On 2015.07.15 16:04, RW Wood wrote:
> Most of the documentation that I've had occasion to use for KMyMoney  
> is very good, however the section for loans is very sparse. I have  
> been trying for days to set up a mortgage loan for my house and am  
> still without success. There may actually be a bug in the software  
> since, if I try to set a beginning date prior to today's date, it  
> isn't recognized and todays date is used. Apart from that, in  
> stepping through the setup screens, it's uncertain what should be  
> used for the various fields other than the loan term screen that  
> calculates the payment or whatever field is left empty. Everything  
> else is kind of nebulous.
> 
> It would be good if there were a tutorial somewhere that walked the  
> user through the various screens with instructions an what to put in  
> them, or if there were more complete docs in the user manual, perhaps  
> with context sensitive help for each screen. In the event that I'm  
> able to figure this out, I'll try to put something together to submit.
> 
> Thanks,
> Richard Wood

First, this is the list for KDE documentation writers; you are more  
likely to get help at the KMyMoney Users' mailing list - so I've  
included them. (https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kmymoney)  You  
could also use the KMyMoney forum at  
https://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=69.

However, as I am responsible for the KMyMoney documentation, have you  
read the manual  
(https://docs.kde.org/stable4/en/extragear-office/kmymoney/index.html)  
and found it insufficient?  I'd love to get specific suggestions for  
improvement.  I do see there are no screen shots in the loan section of  
the manual, and I will try to add some for the next release, as well as  
reviewing the overall presentation.  By the way, which version are you  
using (although I don't think there have been recent changes to loans)  
and what platform are you using (although I don't think it should  
matter)?

(Note the rest of my comments are from memory, I have not looked at the  
loan schedule page in a while.)  There are two potential issues with  
dates.  First, the program will not create any transaction with a date  
prior to the opening date of the account.  I'm not sure if that is your  
problem or not.  In addition, I'm not sure if it is possible to setup a  
schedule starting in the past.  The load wizard should give you a way  
to indicate previous payement amounts so it calculates the amounts  
starting with the next payment.  If you really want to enter all the  
details of a loan which started in the past, it is possible, but could  
be a bit tricky.  I would start by setting it up as if it were starting  
now, and we can discuss modifying it once you have done that (and I  
have reviewed what it would actually take.)

There may also be responses from other readers of the KMM users mailing  
list.

Jack