FinanceFerret/HyperMoney
Template:Stub:Woozle Woozle: Projects: HyperMoney
HyperMoney is my attempt to write a money-management program (as in Quicken or Microsoft Money) that is actually usable and has no Stupid Features. It will be Open Source, as soon as I have source worth publishing (as of 2005-08-06, it's all written in Microsoft Access 97). The next step may be to convert it to web-based application, as HTML could possibly overcome many of the interface design issues I'm encountering.
Project Goals
- To avoid shortcomings in existing money manager software: see HyperMoney: Flaws in Other Software
- To minimize the "setup curve", i.e. the amount of preparatory work needed before any useful amounts of data can be entered
- To provide all basic functionality needed for the following:
- Tracking and balancing one's bank accounts, credit cards, and other basic types of money accounts
- Tracking debts and loans involving one or more other parties of varying levels of disorganization (they might or might not send you regular statements or even reliable itemizations)
- To make data entry as painless as possible:
- Easy identification of redundantly-entered transactions -- so you can Just Start Typing instead of worrying about where you left off last time
- Deferred data massaging -- so you can Just Start Typing, and worry about assigning proper accounts and categories to things later; the program should keep track of incomplete data massaging so you can take care of it when you have time
Data Design
There are two main areas of concern: Accounts and Transactions. All other tables are supporting either or both of those, sometimes mainly for user-friendliness and not part of the core data design. User-friendliness functions include Grouping and Pre-entry (deferred data massaging).
Acccounts
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ID | int(4) autonumber | |
| Name | text | short name for account |
| Descr | text | description and notes |
Accounts are in a hierarchical tree, but this is mainly user-friendliness (though it can also be used for reports). The tree is in a separate table, Topics, and the mapping from Accounts to Topics is in [Account Topics].
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ID_Acct | int(4) | Accounts.ID |
| ID_Topic | int(4) | Topics.ID |
Transactions
Every transaction consists of one or more TransParts associated with a master Transaction record. Inforamation about balances will be stored separately.
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ID | int(4) autonumber | |
| Descr | text | description of transaction |
| When | date | date when the transaction occurred, as recorded by user |
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ID_Trx | int(4) | Trxacts.ID of master transaction |
| ID_Acct | int(4) | Accts.ID of account for this part of the transaction |
| ID_Type | int(4) | TrxTypes.ID of transaction type for this part |
| ID_Mode | int(4) | TrxModes.ID of transaction mode (source, target, equity, topic) |
| When | date | date when the transaction occurred, according to the institution hosting the account |
| Amount | currency | amount of transaction; positive = deposit, negative = withdrawal. |
| ||
Grouping
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ID | int(4) autonumber | |
| Name | text | short name for topic |
| Descr | text | longer description of topic (optional) |
| ID_Parent | int(4) | Topics.ID of parent topic; NULL = this is a root topic |
Interface Design
Links
- http://braincore.blogspot.com/2005/05/koding-what-am-i-koding-then.html - A Dutch developer discusses accounting software, briefly. Apparently they don't use checkbooks in Holland.