It occurs to me that the blog format isn’t entirely conducive to conversations initiated by you folks out there in big wide world. If you’d like to see particular features implemented for the calculator, this page can be a home to those requests. Tack your comment onto this page for easy reference.
93 Replies to “Feature Requests”
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Hi, RJHancock. I appreciate the input. Do you work for a bank or other financial institution?
You stated in your FAQ that you did not know how the US banks handled bi-weekly payments.
The only time the payments effect the principal is when it is either a bi-weekly amortization or a simple interest loan. Otherwise, splitting the payment in half and paying twice a month is the same as paying once a month to the bank. They treat it the same.
Most banks use either a monthly or annual re-amortization schedule.
Hi, Tony. Yes, there is an upper bound of about $21 million. The limit is imposed by the CPU’s native word size, which overflows when rounding to pennies around that point.
I have plans to do away with this limit, which requires using an “infinite-precision” library. All input, output and all the calculations will need to be re-written, so it’s not trivial. But when it’s done, we’ll be able to do amortizations of the national debt (if we were so inclined, and not prone to despair).
Bret, I meant a $ 30 million loan, not $ 300 million. Thank you. Tony
Bret, thank you for the availability of your calculator. I was using it to figure amortization on a $ 300 million financing,
and it seemed to have trouble performing the calc; it appears to me (although I am probably wrong) that the threshhold for a principal amount is 21,474,836.48 Was trying for 300 million, 20 year, 40 payments, 5% money, no balloon payment. Please advise what I am doing wrong. Best regards, Tony
You’re welcome, thantorp. I’ll keep your suggestion in mind as I consider improvements to the calculator.
I have been using your calculator for years and it is nice to now be able to thank the creator of it. Thanks for a great tool. If you do any additions, the ability to have interest only payments for a time and then start the principal reduction after a set time would be nice. Thanks again. Your calculator makes my job much easier.
No problem, Michael. I don’t intend to remove features. The real challenge is to avoid adding too much complexity to the user interface (though some additional input will be required).
Bret, Thanks for the (very) quick response. I hope that when you make changes to the calculator I don’t lose the ability to solve for the term in months since that is what I use most and is so hard to find in an amortization schedule calculator. I like to have the interest and payment set as nice easy to remember numbers and to solve for the term (with an odd figure for the last payment only).
Thanks again,
Michael
Hi, Michael. See the FAQ, Question #12 for part of the answer.
With that said, I do now intend to make some major improvements to the calculator over time, including the ability to print dates. As this requires an overhaul of the user interface, I can’t say exactly when that will happen, but it’s on the docket.