Custom Balances Extension: Questions and Answers
Stuart Beesley has developed some amazing extensions (Toolbox!) for Moneydance, but I feel one needs a bit more attention and usage - Custom Balances.
It's on my top right on my summary page. To put it simply, it allows you to create balances to view, on your summary page.
But it's much more powerful than that.
It's basically a custom report generator. You can create your own reports to view, and flip through them with the group id filter (i.e. a group id identifies a specific report you made)
It's basically a custom view into multiple reports. You just add another group id (i.e. "CustomView") and you can see important lines from multiple reports you created.
It's basically a warning window - you can place in hidden rows that trigger if a problem value is found (i.e. too low, too high, etc) and it will suddenly show up, and even blink if necessary.
You can change colors, show title bars, separation lines, etc.
You can do ratios, percentages, and so on. You can show categories by timeline - i.e. how much did I spend on gas THIS MONTH, or THIS YEAR?
It's uber powerful.
That said, anything uber powerful might elicit "how do I do this or that" questions. So far, these questions have shown up in "strange places" or in threads with a totally different title. As Stuart's main tester for Custom Balances, I can certainly answer such questions, and Stuart will probably check in as well. We would also entertain suggestions for improvement, but we both think CB is fairly mature at this point.
So, feel free to ask about Custom Balances here. It's a FANTASTIC extension (IMNSHO - in my not so humble opinion)
Showing page 11 out of 11. View the first page
Keyboard shortcuts
Generic
| ? | Show this help |
|---|---|
| ESC | Blurs the current field |
Comment Form
| r | Focus the comment reply box |
|---|---|
| ^ + ↩ | Submit the comment |
You can use Command ⌘ instead of Control ^ on Mac
301 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 12 Nov, 2024 09:15 PM
What happens if you try:
I haven’t tried it and I’m aware of an issue with html and it cutting off…. But let me know what happens?
302 Posted by dtd on 12 Nov, 2024 09:28 PM
Probably obvious, but that text would go into a row name.
303 Posted by he on 12 Nov, 2024 09:44 PM
@stuart that did the trick. That was very quick, thank you. See the attached for yet another request.
@dtd, thanks for the input. It wasn't obvious to me but was able to figure it out, others subscribing to this thread may find it helpful.
304 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 12 Nov, 2024 10:02 PM
@he why is it not configured? Or are you asking for the value field to take on the same formatting?
305 Posted by he on 12 Nov, 2024 10:09 PM
This. (It wasn't configured because I created a test row but it appears the "value" portion of the row remains the original size.)
306 Posted by dtd on 12 Nov, 2024 10:11 PM
the html line is for the rowname.
The value result is separately created [Stuart would have to do some work to make it a different size.]. --- I'm the one who mentioned the <#html> solution to Stuart.
You can basically do anything with the <#html> tag. Even put more than one size or color into a single rowname - I have multicolored rows, multiple sized text, etc, depending on what I want to display. (you couldn't match the size fo the value field with some of my rows, as they have differently sized text)
You said, "It would be very helpful when quickly scanning certain rows." - to me that means the row grabs your attention - so the value should not have to change size as well. - imo
You can still bold/italic/underline/color for value as already exists to set it apart as well from other value results.
307 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 12 Nov, 2024 10:13 PM
The problem is that an html format can contain many sizes. I’m not entirely sure I want the value column to be allowed to change size. At the moment it uses a monospaced font at a known std size and ensures multi line alignment of numbers and decimal points etc.
308 Posted by dtd on 12 Nov, 2024 10:17 PM
I agree with Stuart's comment as well... do you really want to have this in the value column?
23.22
Big 400.44 that doesn't match the alignment of the other values? (make it a different color instead if you must.)
25.24
309 Posted by dtd on 12 Nov, 2024 10:30 PM
Whereas the value should stay the same, (for aforementioned reasons), I even have a few rows with more than one line by using <br/> within the <#html>
I'd send some examples, but not until the truncation issue I discovered (and Stuart is investigating) is figured out.
310 Posted by dtd on 14 Nov, 2024 12:03 AM
Fixed the truncation problem in 1054, testing 1055...
Here's some of the type of row names you can create:
311 Posted by dtd on 14 Nov, 2024 12:06 AM
It can be overkill, of course, and the above is overkill on purpose.
312 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 19 Jan, 2025 06:59 PM
All, a quick update... I have updated Custom Balances (1055) with a few new things:
couple of bug fixes
new formulas: useifeq() useifneq() useifgt() useifgte() useiflt() useiflte()
new option (for rows): 'Disable gray text info'
Enabled right-click popup context menus on some row values and the config screen simulate value field
**revise the row's account method of totalling.
** the biggy is the last one.... Previously we followed MD's method of recursive account balances when using autosum.. When adding in Securities or converting from fx accounts, this could cause penny rounding differences between auto sum and selecting and adding all sub accounts manually... The reason is that: (autosum) adding up all accounts of one currency/security and then converting that total to the target currency, can give a different result to converting each individual account to the target currency and then adding them up.. The latter is more correct and consistent. MD's recursive balance feature is not wrong as that's typically used only for one currency... In the future, I might leverage this new feature to eliminate the issue where sub accounts have inactive accounts and using autosum...
It would be great if all the "testers" could do the following:
1/ load the CB config screen, and from the menu, backup their config.
2/ screenshot the current result of all the rows (if possible)
3/ grab the latest PREVIEW build - see below
4/ install and try it out.. hopefully all the rows are the same.
There should be no problem and all will be the same... OR there is a penny rounding fixed.. If there is a difference, please let me know and share details.....
This is a low risk update, but please do sanity check the above for me until we release it wider.
There is a new feature, but not ready to share information about that yet.
Latest here:
(make sure the name is exactly
net_account_balances.mxtbefore installing313 Posted by he on 19 Jan, 2025 07:16 PM
Stuart, I just installed the new extension and happy to report that nothing is broken. Post-installation rows are identical to previous version of CB. Same goes for that all important net worth amount.
I haven't yet tried any of the new options but will report as I do.
314 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 19 Jan, 2025 07:20 PM
Thanks. Great! With my new / own totaliser I have more control…