An empty amount with a task

An empty amount with a task is better than a round figure. A round figure looks finished. An empty field looks like work. In an estate that last is more honest for as long as the document is missing. Do create the item, so that no one forgets that the asset or the debt exists. Put a task with it: which document is missing, who asks for it, and that no amount is filled in until that document is there. The description is concrete. Not item unknown, but what you do know. The amount stays empty on the date of death and empty as current value, unless one of the two does have a source. A field without a source stays open. That way the item counts as a point of attention and not as a figure.

Three items often stay empty and still belong on the list. A foreign account of which you hear the existence, without a statement on the date of death. A gift of which someone tells, without a date and without a document. A private loan from a brother or sister, without an agreement and without a payment trail. With all three the temptation is an amount from the conversation. Do not do that. The foreign account gets the country and, if you have it, the institution, plus a task to request the statement. The gift gets a task to find the date and the proof, and stays without a figure for as long as the date is not fixed. The loan gets the names of the parties and a task to request the agreement. None of the three becomes a round balance.

You do not share the empty item as an amount. The amounts layer stays off for that line, or the line shows no figure. Heirs may know that there is an open question if you put that deliberately in a layer that is right, for example an asset without a value. They may not see an invented balance. The internal version of the story, including who claimed what, stays an internal note. Staff see that note in the workspace. If the story later becomes a decision, you write the decision separately: which document has come in, which field may be filled. Until that day the task is the content of the item. A csv import that overwrites an empty field with a zero, you reject in the preview. Zero is not a synonym here of empty and open.

Ervazo leaves the amount empty and stores the task with the item. Ervazo records and calculates as a worksheet. An empty field does not count as an established figure and is not filled in with an assumption. That is not advice. It files nothing and it pays nothing. The program does not turn a gift you have heard of into a line with an amount and a family loan into a debt on the authority of a telephone conversation. The staff member fills in only once there is a document with a date and a source. The worksheet calculates the rest of the estate inventory without that open guess. Three empty items with three tasks are a usable state. A round figure in that place is an error.