I’m developing a budget planner for myself and do have a table for recurring expenses, as well as a transaction table for my bank account CSV file uploads.
Questions: For the projections forward in time I’m wonder whether to:
(a) keep it simple and just calculate future balance projections on the fly, then feed to gruff graphs
(b) each time a recurring item changes, or transaction, project the future expenses into the one “transaction table” (i.e. one table for actual as well as projected)
(c) create a separate table for future projections (but then have to use both to create a past to future balance plot)?
Comments on best design approach for a very low usage app.
I'd check into the runt or recurrence gems. Both provide a pretty
simple way to manage recurring 'events' (where you have control over
what an 'event' is). runt, for example, allows you to say "give me
all the occurrences between May 1 and June 15". Given that you could
run through the calculated occurrences and build an array of debits/
credits that you feed to gruff.
thanks Andy - I wasn’t aware of runt, it looks excellent. If I have hundreds of data point I wondering if I can let gruff handle this, or whether I’ll have to somehow “smooth” out the points prior to sending it to gruff (the graphing library)?