accrued interest Interest that is due on a bond or other fixed income security since the last interest payment was made. This often occurs for bonds purchased on the secondary market, since bonds usually pay interest every six months, but the interest is accrued by the bondholders every month. When a bond is sold, the buyer pays the seller the market price plus the accrued interest, for which the buyer will be reimbursed at the end of the six-month period. Accrued interest is calculated on a 30-day month for corporate bonds and municipal bonds, and on actual-calendar-days for Government Bonds. Income bonds, bonds in default and zero-coupon bonds trade without accrued interest.
Here is the function definition as gnumeric has it.
N_("@FUNCTION=ACCRINT\n"
"@SYNTAX=ACCRINT(issue,first_interest,settlement,rate,par,"
"frequency[,basis])\n"
"@DESCRIPTION="
"ACCRINT calculates the accrued interest for a "
"security that pays periodic interest. The @rate is the annual "
"rate of the security and @par is the par value of the security. "
"@basis is the type of day counting system you want to use:
I was thinking that issue should be the date of the last
interest payment, settlement should be the date of the next interest
payment, first_interest should be the date that you are accuring
on, and frequency would be the number of interest payments in the
year.