[Feature] Forecasting with Schedules and Running Balance Reports

[Jademalo]

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• Would you like to implement this feature?

Pitch: what problem are you trying to solve?

Recently #3660 was merged, and with it the fantastic ability to set the schedule length to an arbitrary amount of time in the future. This is fantastic for forecasting, but unfortunately it's use is limited to the accounts view with running balance enabled.

On the software I previously used, MoneyWiz, it was possible to create a report that took into account scheduled transactions to create a graph that projected the state of each account in the future. This was incredibly useful, as it produced a simple chart that clearly showed the status of each account. Using this I was able to quickly figure out exactly how much money I had available to budget, as I could look ahead and see when the graph hit its nadir.

For example, say I had £400 in my current account, £200 expected and scheduled monthly expenses, and £300 expected and scheduled monthly income. However, in 4 months, I have an expected expense of £600, say a preorder or a 0% offer like PayPal Credit.
Even though it seems like I have £400 available in the bank, the actual amount I can spend over the next 4 months is only £200 as that's the lowest point the account will reach with the future transactions. If I was to mark the expected future expense immediately, I would end up going into the red which isn't true as I have plenty of cash in the account.

With a "Balance Over Time" report, it would be possible to clearly see that even though I have £400 right now, in 4 months after the expected expense the account will drop down to only £200. When represented as a clear line graph, it's obvious where the lowest point in the account in the future is, and therefore how much money is actually available to spend at any given time instead of just what the current balance is without any knowledge of the future.

Describe your ideal solution to this problem

Essentially, I would like to be able to create a graph of the Running Balance column to be able to quickly and easily forecast expected account balance based on scheduled transactions.

At present the only line reports available are "x-ly change" reports, and there doesn't seem to be a way to set the timescale of a report to forecast beyond the current month.
I would really like to see the option for a "Balance Over Time" report that shows a hard edged line chart clearly outlining the balance of an account at any given time, and the ability to set a report to continue on into the future using schedules to allow for clear forecasting. If multiple accounts could be overlaid on the same graph, this would show an incredibly clear overview of the expected state of every account going forward and clearly indicate how much is actually available to budget in a given month.

I have attached some screenshots below of the example scenario set up in Actual showing how forecasted information is now visible in a given account, as well as an example of that data represented in a graph in MoneyWiz.

Hopefully this is clear enough, for me it's the one feature missing that is preventing me from switching over to Actual completely. When you start adding in multiple expected incomes and expenses on differing schedules along with 0% offers and credit card statements the whole situation gets incredibly complicated very quickly, and it's incredibly useful to be able to see this information at a glance to know how much you actually have available to spend.

Teaching and learning

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This repository uses lodash style issue management for enhancements. That means enhancement issues are automatically closed. This doesn’t mean we don’t accept feature requests, though! We will consider implementing ones that receive many upvotes, and we welcome contributions for any feature requests marked as needing votes (just post a comment first so we can help you make a successful contribution).

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