Scenario: I have a Split running with a flatmate. I handle large bills for us at start of each month and he pays back, not necessarily in the same month. Therefore, the split is always either zero or in my favour.
Let’s assume to start that the Split is currently settled / zero value.
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If I buy £100 of groceries and add to split 50/50, I would like that automatically only £50 of my “Groceries” spending target gets used up for the month - even if I am only repaid next month.
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If the next day, he buys £20 of groceries also split 50/50, he no owes me £40 instead. I would like £10 of my spending Target to be used up automatically at this point - even though I’m certainly never going to need to actually send him £10 for this.
Neither of these things currently happens.
Reasoning: Surely “target” within trends is intended to be more akin to your longer term profit/loss account that your actual cash flow? “Balance” and “Spending” are clearly the better places for day to day cash flow (ie for “is it looking like I need to dip in to savings / overdraft this month”), whereas “target” - which specificlally ignores whether you currently have £1 or £10,000 in your account - should answer “are my spending choices and habits financially responsible longterm?”
FYI - the current truly horrendous workarounds I use:
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I set up a custom “split” category which is excluded from Targets. On the first £100 shop, I would - as well as adding to the Split - multiple categories such that £50 is “groceries” and £50 is my custom “split” category.
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If I am owed £50 and flatmate buys something which reduces his debt to £40, I will - every time - manually go back and artificially adjust the included vs excluded split of a previous purchase. So in this scenario, I would now go back to my original £100 purchase (£50/£50 split) and adjust the distribution between “Groceries” and custom “Split” category to now be £60/£40, meaning that an extra £10 of my “Groceries” target has now been used up.
Obviously doing both of these steps is terribly tedious and gets even more difficult when multiple purchases are made in both directions. It would be even harder to manage if the Split alternated between which of the two parties is owed money and/or if I had a third flatmate.
Equally this process seems possible to automate? It would be easy enough to do optionally as well, so you could have a setting somewhere in Split to let the user choose and/or prompt the user if they want this behaviour or not when setting up a Split?
Or am I missing something here?