Let us say that you signed up for a business internet connection last month and paid the first month's subscription by credit card. One way of entering each month's transaction is to wait for the bill to arrive, make the payment, and then enter into GnuCash by hand. However, there is a better way. This will not only save you a lot of time but GnuCash will also pop up a timely reminder, in case there are penalties for late payment.
- Open the Expenses:Internet account register and create the $99.50 payment for the first month manually. Use Liabilities:Credit Card as the Transfer account. Use a date of a month ago plus a couple of days. For example, if today's date is 07/19/10, use 06/17/10 as the transaction date. (Why? This is because, we don't want to wait for another month to see how GnuCash reminds us for the second month's payment.)
- Once the preceding transaction has been created and saved, right click on that transaction, and select Schedule from the context menu. You can also click the Schedule toolbar button or select Actions | Schedule from the menu. Don't forget to make sure the cursor is on that transaction when you do so. The Make Scheduled Transaction window will appear as shown in the following screenshot:
- Select Monthly in the Frequency list. You should see the same date marked with a yellow dot in each month in the calendar on the right.
- Enter 11 in Number of Occurrences. (We have entered the first month manually and we want 11 more to be scheduled to match our commitment of 12 months.)
- Click on Advanced to open the Edit Scheduled Transaction dialog as shown in the following screenshot:
- In the Overview tab, Enabled in the Options pane will be already checked. Check Remind in advance and type 7 in the box for days. Alternatively, you can click on the up arrow until you get 7.
- In the Occurrences pane, For 11 occurrences and 11 remaining will be already filled.
- Take a look at the Frequency tab and Template Transaction tab to become familiar with the contents. Don't change any of the values.
- Click OK to complete the Scheduled Transaction set up.
You took one transaction that you created and not only made it repetitive, but also set it on a timeline so that it comes up at the appropriate time. By setting up this scheduled transaction in GnuCash, you dropped two mangoes with one stone (we prefer this metaphor to the more popular, but less animal-friendly one. Feel free to swap the mango with another fruit depending on the type of tree you used to throw stones at in your childhood):
- You have saved yourself the effort required to make 11 more transactions.
- You have entrusted the task of keeping track of the bills to GnuCash. As you have probably experienced sometimes, bills go missing. Bills by snail mail get misdelivered or thrown out inadvertently along with the pile of junk mail. Electronic bills may be missed due to system glitches. If you don't pay the bills on time, you are probably looking at penalties at best and disruption of service at worst.
Note
SX is an abbreviation for Scheduled Transaction. You may see this abbreviation used in some GnuCash documentation and messages.
As you have seen, it is pretty easy to take any existing transaction and make it into a scheduled transaction. If you know the number of transactions, then you can set the number of occurrences. If, on the other hand, you know the date when a transaction will end, you can set the end date instead.
Tip
Start and end dates
In the Make Scheduled Transaction dialog, even though there are fields marked Start Date and End Date, you can't enter any value there. If you would like to enter any of these dates, click on the Advanced… button and open the Edit Scheduled Transaction window. You can enter Start Date in the Frequency tab and Repeats Until in the Occurrences pane in the Overview tab.
Setting up a scheduled transaction is the first step of the process. You have asked GnuCash to remind you seven days in advance about the next payment. GnuCash will remind you when you start GnuCash when that seventh day reminder period comes up. In the next tutorial, we will see what your options are when that reminder appears on the screen.
- You need to make a payment twice a month. What selections will you make in the Frequency tab?
a. Select Frequency Daily and Every 15 days.
b. Select Frequency Semi-Monthly.
c. Select Frequency Weekly and Every 2 weeks.
d. Select Frequency Twice-a-month.