Recurring expenses (Page 1 of 2)

Unfortunately I can help you only with specific question.

Adam,
Before a script can be developed, there needs to be a design question answered. Something needs to trigger the creation of a new expense record for a recurring expense. What is that trigger? It needs to be a button click or some sort of event (such as when an expense is paid or something) to cause the next expense record creation for a recurring expense. This needs to be answered first.

After thinking a bit, initial trigger is recurring checkbox is checked then save button trigger when first expense saved with recurring checkbox is checked?

Hi EHW,

Thank you very much for your kind help...................

I get script error message: near "," : syntax error, which I couldn't spot and correct.
when choosing day from recurring every... combo without checking date and time fields
when choosing week, fortnight, month, quarter and annually from recurring every... combo with or without checking date and time fields.

My thinking was that date and time below recurring every... combobox would be the answer.

Currently, it saves and displays two expense record, one for actual current expense and one for recurring expense on creation of an expense record. Tha's fine but could we have recurring one displayed on specified date and time below recurring every... combobox on tGrid?

I used MVD v2.7 and 3.3 to compile. In both, I get the following error:

Thanks a lot EHW.....
You are right, setting Qty default value to zero fixes the error.

You have done a great work on this EHW... Appreciated very much....

Now if only you or anybody else could use combination of
Recurring expense checkbox
Recurrence Date
Recurrence Time
as a trigger, instead of paid label/button and show recurring expense records on the grid when they recur!!!!

Hi EHW,

Thank you very much................
Truly appreciated.........

Indeed, in this case time is not needed. It was intended for defining what time of the selected period and date recurring expense should be created, but I can do without it.

However, application crashes and refuses to re-start.
Steps:
1. Added a backdated expense and marked as recurring on daily basis to test recurrence.
2. Closed the app.
3. Tried to run .exe again and app didn't start. I got windows ... has stopped working. message
4. Deleted database file and re-run but same, app cannot start.

I put this for your info, without any expectation of you correcting it.  Already, you have been very kind with your help on this and many other ones. So, please don't feel under any obligation whatsoever to put any further time into this project. Perhaps others may offer help on this and we can have a working recurring event script.

Thanks EHW,

Cleared old data within app and added new recurring item backdated only for few days as seen on the screen cap below. This time no crash. However, there are no recurring items displayed. I didn't touch the script or any settings.

Either I'm doing something wrong or your latest upload is not the same as one you are testing.

Great stuff EHW...........

I think it works now. I tested back dated 5 days. It display recurring items not after save but after restarting the application. I assume it's due to using back date?

It'd be great if date format read from windows date settings rather than hard coding. I changed my windows7 date format from dd/MM//YYYY to YYYY/MM/DD and it crashed on run.

Hi Adam, Hi EHW,
I was wondering if you could take a slightly different approach to this issue which might eliminate some of the complications.  My idea is as follows:
1.  For recurring expenses, use both an  'expense from' date and an 'expense until' date (I suspect most recurring expenses WOULD have an end date rather than being totally open-ended).
2.  Specify the frequency of expense payment (ie daily, monthly etc)
3.  When you click 'save', immediately create ALL the expense payment records (ie, for a recurring monthly expense that lasts for 12 months, create 12 records where the expense date of the first record = 'expense from' date, the expense date of the second record = 'expense from' date + 1 month etc etc
4.  Filter your main tablegrid to only show expenses due by the current date or earlier.
Using this approach, the whole question of 'when do you generate the next recurring expense record and what is the trigger' simply goes away - they're already there and waiting.
It also has the added benefit of being able to see what future expenses you are committed to but which aren't yet due (ie what are my recurring expense commitments next month etc etc)..
Anyway, have a look at the attachment and maybe it will help.
Please note - I used EXCEL to generate my test data rather than writing any of the script that would be needed to insert records when 'save' is clicked - but the script that EHW has written already does most of what is needed (it looks like you'd basically be using the 'expense until' date rather than 'today').  I didn't have the time to modify it (and I suspect I'd have struggled anyway - it's a really neat bit of coding).
Regards,
Derek.

Adam,  Maybe the attached is a little closer. On initially entering in an expense that is recurring, the system will generate the next recurrence of the expense when saving and show on the grid. From then on, the other process (App Start process) will take over from there to generate the remaining recurring expenses as they are to occur.

The reason for the manually generating the date format in the bulk processing of recurring expenses is because I could not extract the date from the dataset as a date for MVD to recognize. I had to extract it as a string and manipulate it to a date format in order to add days, weeks, months... to it. Maybe Dimitry could assist with this. Here is the line in the project that I was having trouble extracting as a date so instead I used "AsString".

ExpResults.FieldByName('Date(recurDate)').AsString;

Please describe the issue in the one post or create a new topic for the issue.