Calculated

Bonsai Outliner for Windows > Preferences > Calculated

This tab has options that control the calculation of parent values. When the option is checked the value of the parent will be calculated based on its children. Once the option is checked, the parent value is read-only and cannot be edited.

There are three field types you can calculate:

Completion Status

Check this option to calculate the percent complete or check box status based on the children items. All children are weighted equally, so a parent task will not be complete until all the children are 100% complete. Duration (date values) and complexity of the child items have no impact. Typically a parent item should be a task so it can display a percentage complete rather than the to-do's checkbox status.

The calculation is based on the average of the children's status. For example, if you have 2 task children (one at 20% and one at 30%) and 2 to-do children (both complete), your completion status will be 62.5%.

Dates

Check this option to calculate the Start, Due and Completion dates based on the children items. The start date of the parent will be the earliest child date. The due date and completion date of the parent will be the latest date of the children.

The completion status field and the date fields are separate and the calculations are not effected by one another.

Custom Numeric Field

Check this option to calculate the parent's custom numeric value based on the children items. There are several options for the calculation.

PrefsCalcWin

The first configuration for the custom numeric field calculation is for selecting the formula used for the computed value.

Sum	Displays the sum of children item's custom field value
Count	Displays the count of children
Average	Displays the average by summing the children custom fields and dividing by the count
Minimum	Displays the smallest value of its children
Maximum	Displays the largest value found in its children

The second configuration is for controlling which children are used when computing the custom value.

All children	All children are used for the calculation
Completed children	Only completed children are included in the calculation
Incomplete children	Only incomplete children are included in the calculation
Weighted % complete	All children are used for the calculation, however, each child value is weighted based on its completion status. For example, a child with a custom field value of 200 that is 25% complete would have a weighted percent complete value of 50. This number would be used for this child when summing, averaging, etc.
Weighted % incomplete	Very similar to the weighted percent complete but using the incomplete percentage. For example, a child with a custom field value of 200 that is 25% complete would have a weighted percent incomplete value of 150.

Below are some typical uses of the custom numeric field:

1.	The outline is being used for maintaining a parts inventory. The custom numeric field is used to hold the value of each part in your inventory. The outline should be configured to "Sum" "All children" so the parent's custom field will represent the total value of the inventory.

The outline is being used to track task progress. The custom numeric field is used to store the length or duration of the task in days. The parent item reflects the work remaining expressed in days. For example, your task is to update a website. First you have to learn HTML and that will take 2 days. Next you will spend 1 day becoming familiar with the current website. Thirdly you will update the existing pages and that will take 5 days. To show how many days are left in your project, the outline should be configured to "Sum" "Weighted % incomplete". Also note that the custom numeric field label has been configured as "Duration".

Outline using "Sum" of "Weighted % incomplete"

DTCustNum2

After one day into the first task, there are 7 days remaining.

DTCustNum1

Same outline with the first two tasks complete and 35% complete on the last task, there are 3.25 days remaining in the project.

3.	The outline is being used to inventory a collection such as comic books. The parent items could be used to group the collection, in this case organized by publisher and then by series. To track the number of items in the various groups, the outline should be configured to "Count" "All Children".