Viewing the ForecastsYou can display the Forecast View by clicking the appropriate icon in the navigation pane at the left hand side of your KMyMoney window.
The top area of the Forecast View is the Forecast Settings. At the left are several fields to control the forecast calculations. The defaults for these values are set on the Forecast View configuration dialog, as described in the preceding section. The values (with the name used on the configuration dialog shown in parentheses if it differs) are:
Days to Forecast (Number of Days to Forecast)
Days of Accounts Cycle (Number of Days of Account Cycle)
Day of Month to start Forecast
Historic Cycles (Number of Cycles to use in Forecast)
Chart Detail: This item is not set on the configuration dialog. Choose one of the following values to control the results as displayed in the Chart tab.
All
Top-Level
Groups
Total
To the right of these items, KMyMoney shows the Current Forecast Method. To the right of this is a button. When you click this button, KMyMoney calculates the forecast based on the settings to the left, and displays the results in the lower part of the window. Just below these is the History Forecast Method, which is only enabled if the current forecast method is set to “History”.
The bottom area of the Forecast View has five tabs.
The Summary tab has two sections.
On the left is the Account Summary, displaying one row of information for each Asset and Liability, with the columns shows below. Note that if the Forecast is based on Scheduled and Future Transactions, there will only be rows for accounts referenced in such transactions.
- Account
The name of the Asset or Liability account
- Current
The current balance of the account
- Account Cycle Balance
The Forecast period is split into account cycles. The default account cycle length is 30 days, but can be set by the user.
The first account cycle date is the first Forecast date. By default this is the current date plus one account cycle, but this can change depending on the "Day of Month to start Forecast" setting.
The remaining account cycle dates are determined by adding the account cycle length to the previous account cycle date. This is continued until the calculated account cycle date would be beyond the Forecast period,or Days to Forecast.
For each account cycle date the predicted balance is displayed.
- Total Variation
The rightmost column displays the predicted difference in value between the balances at the start and end of the forecast. If the predicted end value of the account (in terms of net worth) is less than the start value the whole row is highlighted in red.
The right portion of the Summary tab displays noteworthy information about accounts. This includes:
- Assets below zero
A message is displayed (in red) for any asset account for which the value starts or will drop below zero during the forecast period.
- Liabilities above zero
A message is displayed for any liability account for which the value starts or will rise above zero during the forecast period. Note that the value of a liability is the negative of its ledger balance, since a positive balance indicates money owed.
The Details tab also displays one row for each Asset and Liability account, but the columns displayed differ from the Summary Tab.
- Account
The name of the Asset or Liability account
- Dates
For each date in the Forecast period a column displays the predicted balance of the account on that date. The date columns are in ascending order from left to right.
- Total Variation
The rightmost column displays the predicted difference in value between the balances at the start and end of the forecast. If the predicted end value of the account (in terms of net worth) is less than the start value the whole row is highlighted in red.
The Advanced tab also displays one row of information for each Asset and Liability account. The information is split into columns as follows:
- Account
The name of the Asset or Liability account
- Minimum Account Cycle Balance Information
For each account cycle number <n> in the Forecast period the following columns are displayed:
- Min Bal <n>
The minimum predicted balance during the account cycle
- Min Date <n>
The date on which the balance reaches its predicted minimum.
- Max Bal <n>
The maximum predicted balance during the account cycle
- Max Date <n>
The date on which the balance reaches its predicted maximum.
Note that all the minimum balances and dates are shown before all the maximum balances and dates.
- Average
The average balance of the account during the forecast period
The Budget tab displays a forecast calculation for all Income and Expense categories. Unlike the Summary Tab, there is one column per month, starting with January of the current year, and ending with the month which includes the end of the Forecast period. The final column is a total, rather than a predicted value or a value calculated based on any predicted value.