On 08/12/2016 08:04 PM, Michael Siepmann wrote: > On 08/12/2016 08:02 PM, Aaron Wolf wrote: >> On 08/12/2016 06:58 PM, Stephen Michel wrote: >>> <snip> >>> >>> >>> I think that this scenario is really hard to parse. It could also result in >>> a display where you have a carryover from may and a carryover from June >>> displayed in July, and that gets really busy really quickly (especially if >>> one or more are also carried over to august). >>> >>> I suggest that we aggregate all carryover charges. The small loss in detail >>> is totally worth the simplicity, imo. >>> >> Absolutely! Describing the carry-over from several months with separate >> list of carry-overs would be crazy. But the aggregated sum can be >> described as month-month e.g. "March-July carry-over". Effectively, most >> carry-overs will only happen at the early stage of projects and patrons, >> when they first start on the system. A new project with some new patrons >> may have a period of carry-overs, and then no more of that going >> forward. So, it's just this contiguous set of months that will have >> carry-overs in almost all cases. >> >> To cover all possible scenarios, we could just say "carry-over from >> earlier months with charges too low to be worth charging" effectively. >> >> In any case, it should be one sum number. > > That's already what I intended: At most one carry over from the previous > month and one carry over to the next month. I don't even think we > should try to describe what multiple months it may originally come from > (e.g. no attempt at "March-July carry-over" etc) because that will just > get too complicated, particularly in the "widdle-away" scenario when > part of a carry over is paid off in one month but part is carried over > to the next month. > > It would probably be clearer to go back to referring to "next month" and > "previous month" as I'd done previously, rather than naming the specific > last and previous months as I tried in this latest version. >
Let me try to make my view clearer. I think that it is more understandable to think this: "Oh, when things were really low, no charges happened, it just added up and carried over into the first real charge, although it may take a couple months in rare cases getting close to budget limit" Than this: "This is the carry-over from last month even though last month had a charge of my budget limit. So, the carry-over must have been from before because they wouldn't actually bill me more than the monthly budget, right?" To put it another way: I want people to keep in mind that carry-overs all just happen from the early low-level first period. I don't want them to get the impression that carry-overs are a normal occurrence and should be expected to recur often. So, I prefer that people associate the carry-over with the early low-level period. I don't want it to be associated with the most recent month necessarily. Let's say 5 months go by at low level and finally get to a point worth charging. I don't want to present the charge as a one-month carry-over. I want to present it as "we finally have enough for the past 5 months to put in a charge without excessive fees". The common scenario could be: Jan $0.12 Feb $0.34 Mar $1.66 Apr $3.18 So, then we charge in April, and I *like* the idea of saying "this is all the donations for 4 months in one charge." That seems clear and understandable. Having to chain back the carry-overs seems harder to follow or at least risks people misunderstanding what is going on. I hope my concern is more clear now. I'm not sure what the solution is. But I will add that this could be put off for the immediate time-being, so I don't want us to get too distracted perfecting this right now.
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