Operations

Operations are any operation you make on an account, be it an expense, income, transfer, sales, purchase, etc. This is where you will probably spend most of your time when using Skrooge.

In order to enter operations, you need to have at least one account created.

The operations view

Operation Properties

Account

The account the operation is made on. Select it from the list of existing accounts.

Date

The date when the operation was made. A calendar is accessible using the down arrow right of the field.

Amount

The amount is how much you spent or earned with this operation. Skrooge requires you enter this in two separate fields: Quantity and Unit.

The quantity is negative for an expense (-30, for example), and positive for an income (+250, or simply 250). This field acts as a calculator, i.e. entering an expression such as 10 + 3.23*2 will result in the field containing 16.46.

If the sign of the quantity is not specified, then Skrooge will use the category to find the most appropriate one.

Skrooge requires you to enter the unit because an operation is not necessarily made in your main currency. For example, when you buy or purchase shares, the unit of the operation is the share unit.

Payee

Who did you pay this to, or who gave you the money.

Mode

What was the payment mode used for this operation. Something in the line of Credit Card, Cheque, Deposit... You name it!

Associated with the operation mode, it is an optional number. It is mostly used to enter the check number, or a transfer number.

Category

Which Category this operation belongs to. If you need to affect more than one category to an operation, use the split mode.

You can either choose an existing category, or type a new one. In this case, Skrooge will create it for you along with the operation.

The separator between a parent category and its children is the > character. If you type Clothes > Shoes, Skrooge will create the category Clothes if it doesn't exist yet, and its child category Shoes.

Of course, you may create entire category trees, such as Transport > Car > Fuel > Unleaded, Skrooge will happily create all the hierarchical structure.

Comment

Any comment you'd like.

Tracker

If you want to track refund for this operation, enter the name of the Tracker here. If you need to affect more than one tracker to an operation, use the split mode.

Operations list

The operations list takes the form of a table showing all operations that match the current table filter and search terms, with a row for each operation. In addition to the standard operation properties and any other properties you defined for this account, Skrooge displays the following columns:

Status

A filled square means this operation has been confirmed during account reconciliation. A half-filled square means this operation has been pointed, and reconciliation is ongoing.

Bookmark

Mark this operation as Bookmarked, a synonym for Favorite.

Scheduled

When an operation is scheduled, this column shows a chronometer icon.

These columns also have some specificities:

Mode

When the operation is part of a transfer, the mode is preceded by a double arrow icon.

Category

When the operation is split, the category is preceded by a triple arrow icon.

As with all Skrooge list views, you can fully customize the table appearance.

Create an Operation

To create a standard operation, you may use the Clear button to clear all fields and start a new operation from scratch. You can then fill its attributes (manually or using fast editing), and click on Add.

If the appropriate setting is enabled, then the category will be set automatically when the payee is set.

You may also select a similar operation from the existing operations, modify what needs to be changed, and then click on Add.

Split Operation

A split operation is an operation that has several dates, categories, comments or trackers. You switch to the split operation editing mode using the Split Button at the bottom of the Operations view. When switching into the split operation editing mode, the fields Category, Comment and Tracker are replaced by a table.

The split operation editing panel.

To edit a cell in this table, double click on it.

You can add as many lines in this table as you need. When changing the quantity in a line, Skrooge will compute the difference with the operation global quantity, and display the remaining quantity in the last table line. If you changed the quantity in the last line, a new line will be added with the remaining quantity.

The fields here have the same behaviour as in the standard operation editing mode:

  • The split by Date can be useful, for example, in a hypotheical scenario where you paid your sport training for three months. In this case, you can split the payment by three months - this will have an impact on reports.

  • The Category is a drop down box of existing categories. You can add a new category structure, Skrooge will create it when creating the operation.

  • The Amount acts as a calculator.

  • The Tracker is a drop down box of existing trackers. You can add a new tracker, Skrooge will create it when creating the operation.

Transfer

A transfer operation is effectively a dual operation: when creating a transfer, Skrooge will create two operations of opposite amounts (one positive, the other negative), on two different accounts. The attributes to provide here are slightly different from a standard operation:

The transfer operation editing panel.

You will find a "To Account" list where you should select the account receiving the money.

Since a transfer means "Take some money from account A and put it account B", if you put a sign in the quantity field (+ or -), it will be ignored. The operation for account A will always be negative, positive for account B.

Shares

First, you have to create some units with the shares you want to track, from the settings you can choose to update the data automatically when the file is opened. It is also recommended to create a different account (e.g. "ETF") in order to keep the investments separated and be able to see them from the dashboard.

Now you can add your operations as "shares":

The shares editing panel.

  • Amount is the number of shares you've bought (positive value) or sold (negative value)

  • Symbol is the previous unit you created

  • Amount of shares is the total price you payed for the shares / the amount you got from the selling, excluding commissions and taxes

  • Commissions is the amount you payed your bank for that transaction

  • Tax is any amount you paid (usually when there are earnings)

Schedule Operations

If an operation is known to be repeated on a regular basis, you may want Skrooge to automatically enter it for you in the list of operations. This can be done by scheduling an operation, using the Schedule button .

The default scheduling parameters are:

  • Repeat every month

  • Remind me five days before term

  • Automatically write on term

You may change the default parameters in Skrooge settings.

You may also change each scheduled operation parameters in the Scheduled plugin.

Skrooge uses values from the last entry of the scheduled operation for writing the next one. If you increase, for example, the amount of your monthly contribution to the KDE effort from 100$ to 200$, the next operations automatically written by Skrooge will have an amount of 200$.

Fast Editing

Regardless of the chosen editing mode, there is a nifty function called Fast Editing that may speed up the work while creating new operations. It will fill the operation's attributes based on previously entered operations. Enter a value in any field of the editor, and press F10, or click on the Fast Editing Icon (without leaving the selected field).

Skrooge will look for the first (i.e. the most recent one) operation that has the same value in the same field, and fill all other fields with values from that operation. It will continue to do so with each call.

Warning

Fast Editing has no effect on the date, since it is rather unlikely that you want to create exactly the same operation, complete with the same date.

If you modified a field's value before calling Fast Editing, its content will not be affected. This is materialized by a different background color in the field, so you know it is "frozen".

Below are the differences when compared to similar functions in other personal finances software:

  • It is called on user demand

  • It loops in all past operations with the same field value

And it even works on split operations !

Reconciliation

Reconciliation is the process by which you ensure that all operations in an account match the bank's view of that account. It will involve you, your account's position, and a pen. Reconciliation can happen only for an account at one point in time.

First, enter all the operations for the account up to that point in time; if you can, download transactions from the bank and import them into Skrooge to minimize data entry. Then, in the Operations view, select the account you wish to reconcile from the drop-down box; or in the Accounts view, double-click the account name or bring up the contextual menu and choose Open operations.... Switch into reconciliation mode using the Switch Information button below the operations table.

The reconciliation mode information.

Enter the position of your account as provided by your bank in the dedicated field. Now, you can proceed to pointing in Skrooge every operation that appears in the bank's statement: you can either click on its checkbox in the status column or bring up the contextual menu and choose Point. The check box for this operation will appear partially filled until you complete reconciliation.

As you point operations, you will see Skrooge display in the information zone:

  • Delta: the difference between the previously entered account position and the sum of all checked operations

  • Expenditure:the total amount of Pointed debits

  • Income: the total amount of Pointed credits

These running totals help you spot operations you may have forgotten to enter in Skrooge. Many bank statements provide similar totals such as "Withdrawals" or "Deposits and Credits", although they may have separate totals for "Interest", "Fees". When the Delta is equal to 0, you may have pointed all operations matching the bank's record. For example, you may have mistakenly pointed a debit of 8€ and a credit of 2€, and overlooked a bank debit of 6€ - the net is the same, minus 6€. When the Delta is 0, the Validate pointed operations button is enabled. Click on this button to complete your reconciliation: all pointed operations are now checked.

Tip

can automatically point all imported operations for you.

If the option Hide checked operations for the table is selected from its "Show" menu (see Filter the table), then all these operations will now be hidden.

If the reconciliation is not possible for any reason, you can create a fake operation that in combination with the other operations you pointed sets the Delta to 0, thus allowing you to complete the reconciliation. To do so, click the "add" button in the reconciliation mode toolbar. You can set the default values of this fake operation in the application's settings, in the Operations section. During reconciliation, if you enable the appropriate setting, Skrooge automatically points all created operations.

Template Operations

Skrooge allows you creating template operations, i.e. operations that can be reused whenever you need it. For example, say that you frequently rent DVDs to watch at home. The operation is always the same :

  • Amount: -4.99

  • Mode: Credit Card

  • Payee: Acme Video

  • Category: Leisure > Video

However, you cannot make it a recurring operation, because you rent a DVD when you feel like it, not every week. The idea behind template operations is that it gives you a basic skeleton that can be quickly inserted in your operations list.

Since Template operations are just another kind of operations, you can access them through the operations tab, using the dedicated option in Show menu:

Switching between templates and operations.

Creating a template is strictly equal to creating an operation by defining its attributes. Note that you can also create a template from an existing operation (bring up the contextual menu on an operation). In this case, the template will have the same attributes as the operation.

To use a template and create a new operation from it, double click on it. A new operation will be created with the same attributes as the template, at the current date. You can then modify its attributes if needed.

Templates can also be scheduled.