Predicted cashflow analysis to power low balance alert

[Ben Blount]

I'm evaluating Beancount and like what I see so far.

I have variance in my cashflow due to varying income (autosale of stock), and varying expenses (credit cards which autopay on a certain date).

I can write a script which updates these predicted future transactions and include that file in my main ledger.

1. How would I then ask beancount to give me predicted balances over the next 31 days? I want to know if my balance would ever be below X. I could use a date library to iterate the next 31 days and then run bean-query with a CLOSE ON filter. Any better way?
2. How do folks model predicted transactions?
1. Avoiding duplicate transactions when the predicted transaction actually occurs: Ideally the speculative transaction would be replaced by the real one via some configurable heuristics. I saw this was mentioned as a possible improvement in v3.
2. Modeling it in your ledger: I was thinking I'll have a separate file containing my predicted transactions and have an include directive for the main ledger.

Thanks,

Ben

[Justus Pendleton]

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 2:50:06 AM UTC+7, Ben Blount wrote:

How would I then ask beancount to give me predicted balances over the next 31 days?

I don't know if it is the best way but this is how iterate over balances using the beancount API (i.e. python code):

https://github.com/hoostus/fincen_114/blob/master/fin-cen-114.py#L51

1. How do folks model predicted transactions?

I don't have predicted transactions, so I can't help you here unfortunately.