Re: RFC: A book-close dialog to help auto-zeroize all Inc/Exp accounts
The other issue is the fact not really how traditional accounting would do this. More usual is a temporary equity account (receiving total income and total expenses) which is then closed to retained equity with a single entry, either gain or loss for the year (thus making it clear which the case was). I was planning to close all the accounts in a single transaction. Actually, two, one transaction for income and one for expense. I understood what you were doing. Now let me try to explain why that MIGHT be an issue. The result you have is two transactions, one representing total income and one representing total expenses. But the absolute magnitude of these two amounts is of little interest while the difference between them and especially the sense of that difference is considered of paramount importance (oh the famous lines from Dickens's David Copperfield say that so much better). So yes, your users can see whether the total income amount or the total expenses amount is the greater and perhaps even do a rough subtraction in their head BUT they probably would prefer a single amount clearly labeled as a gain or loss for the year. Which is why the traditional method was as it was (and from that temporary account the profit and loss report easily produced). Now equity accounts are standing accounts. Not entirely crazy for the close the books function to require the existence of a named equity account to be used for the closing process. The closing function would then generate THREE (instead of two) transactions (total income, total expenses, and gain (or loss) for the year). Michael PS: We (MA Chestnut Foundation) will probably agree to adopt GnuCash at the January board meeting after I present my recommendation. After which I presumably will become available to work on some of the things desired. But also likely to at first be working on the special report formats generally used by non-profits (we have so few accounts/transactions that no big deal to close the books manually so an autoclose not my highest priority). If I get involved, would have to be considered a serious resource (retired senior analyst with a few decades experience designing/writing/debugging financial business software). ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: RFC: A book-close dialog to help auto-zeroize all Inc/Exp accounts
Quoting Mike or Penny Novack [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The result you have is two transactions, one representing total income and one representing total expenses. But the absolute magnitude of these two amounts is of little interest while the difference between them and especially the sense of that difference is considered of paramount importance (oh the famous lines from Dickens's David Copperfield say that so much better). That's not necessarily true. The difference between them is certainly ONE piece of data that's of interest to users, but I certainly want to be able to see the total income and total expense for a year. The CoA will perform that subtraction for you if the Income Total and Expense Total accounts are either a) the same, or b) siblings. I completely disagree that you need a third transaction. Also, I should add that the implementation I committed last night to trunk actually creates one transaction per currency, so if you have multiple income/expense currencies it will make sure that it doesn't mix them. So yes, your users can see whether the total income amount or the total expenses amount is the greater and perhaps even do a rough subtraction in their head BUT they probably would prefer a single amount clearly labeled as a gain or loss for the year. Which is why the traditional method was as it was (and from that temporary account the profit and loss report easily produced). I disagree. That single amount can still be labeled as such on the reports but by combining them in a single transaction in the registers you effectively lose data, and it's data that I dont want to throw away. Now equity accounts are standing accounts. Not entirely crazy for the close the books function to require the existence of a named equity account to be used for the closing process. The closing function would then generate THREE (instead of two) transactions (total income, total expenses, and gain (or loss) for the year). As said above, no, it's only two transactions. I don't understand what you mean by standing accounts. Also, the function, as implemented, doesn't require the account to exist a priori -- you can create it as part of the closing process itself. The alternative is to have the process auto-create an Equity account on your behalf, but I consider that kind of thing generally rude to the users. I'll note, however, that it does auto-create sub-accounts if you use multiple currencies. Michael PS: We (MA Chestnut Foundation) will probably agree to adopt GnuCash at the January board meeting after I present my recommendation. After which I presumably will become available to work on some of the things desired. But also likely to at first be working on the special report formats generally used by non-profits (we have so few accounts/transactions that no big deal to close the books manually so an autoclose not my highest priority). Not a big deal -- I've already implemented it. :-D If I get involved, would have to be considered a serious resource (retired senior analyst with a few decades experience designing/writing/debugging financial business software). Everyone is considered serious. Supply good patches that follow the standards and listen to the advice and suggestions given by the existing developers and your patches will be given the same attention as all the others. On the other hand, if you come in with a chip on your shoulder, hey, I'm a retired senior analyst; I've been doing this forever. I don't have to listen to you young whippersnappers then expect to get a very different response from us ;) This is a meritocracy, but it's a closed meritocracy. Prove your merit by submitting good, clean, simple, straightforward patches that fit into the existing framework and architectures. Extend what's there already instead of starting over. Stuff like that. I look forward to seeing your reports and other changes. -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH [EMAIL PROTECTED]PGP key available ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: RFC: A book-close dialog to help auto-zeroize all Inc/Exp accounts
Derek Atkins wrote: Hi, I decided to spend some time this weekend on a simple dialog to help you zero-ize your income and expense accounts. I've come up with a dialog that effective looks like this (please excuse the ASCII Art but I don't want to have to write the code to actually fill in the dialog yet): +-+ | | |++ | | Close Date:| 12/31/2007| | |++ | |++ | | Income Total: | Equity:Retained E| New | | |++ | |++ | | Expense Total: | Equity:Retained E| New | | |++ | | | | ++ ++ ++ | | | Help | | Cancel | | OK | | | ++ ++ ++ | +- Is there anything else needed for this? The idea is that it would iterate over all Income accounts and put the account balance summary as of [Date] as a single transaction to the [Income Total] account.. Repeat the process for Expense accounts and put it into the [Expense Total] account. Any quick feedback would be useful. Please follow-up to gnucash-devel (I've set up the headers so that direct replies to this message SHOULD go there) The Income Statement report has an option allowing you to specify the closing entries pattern. You may want to allow the transaction description to be set in your dialog box so that it can match any currently existing closing transactions. Phil ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: RFC: A book-close dialog to help auto-zeroize all Inc/Exp accounts
Quoting Phil Longstaff [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The Income Statement report has an option allowing you to specify the closing entries pattern. You may want to allow the transaction description to be set in your dialog box so that it can match any currently existing closing transactions. Ah, yes, a Description for the transaction. Good point! Thanks, I'll go add that. Anything else? Phil -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH [EMAIL PROTECTED]PGP key available ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: RFC: A book-close dialog to help auto-zeroize all Inc/Exp accounts
Ah, yes, a Description for the transaction. Good point! Thanks, I'll go add that. Anything else -derek The date for which the closing takes place should be a user set variable (OK to have it default to 12/31/current year). a) You don't know the FISCAL calendar of your users. Not necessarily the calendar year so should be able to close books as of any date. b) You don't know if they close the books for ordinary transactions on the 30th or the 31st and what day, if any, is a no external transactions day. Example: The MA Chapter of TACF does use calendar year. I will probably opt to make Jan 1st (next year) be the day that has no ordinary transactions. The reason is that I expect to have at least a bank interest transaction on December 31st AND will want to be able to produce and Income/Expense report for the year and burn the pre close books. Can THEN do a book closing as of Jan 1st. NOTE that this would take place (real time) about a week into January to make sure that I actually have all transactions for 2007. The other issue is the fact not really how traditional accounting would do this. More usual is a temporary equity account (receiving total income and total expenses) which is then closed to retained equity with a single entry, either gain or loss for the year (thus making it clear which the case was). A minor detail, but you probably do not want to generate a split for those income or expense accounts which have a zero balance as of the closing date. No harm mathematicly, but a zero amount transaction looks odd. Michael -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: RFC: A book-close dialog to help auto-zeroize all Inc/Exp accounts
Hi, Quoting Mike or Penny Novack [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Ah, yes, a Description for the transaction. Good point! Thanks, I'll go add that. Anything else -derek The date for which the closing takes place should be a user set variable (OK to have it default to 12/31/current year). You clearly missed the original message. There was already a closing date entry in the dialog. [non-necessary supporting documentation elided] The other issue is the fact not really how traditional accounting would do this. More usual is a temporary equity account (receiving total income and total expenses) which is then closed to retained equity with a single entry, either gain or loss for the year (thus making it clear which the case was). I was planning to close all the accounts in a single transaction. Actually, two, one transaction for income and one for expense. A minor detail, but you probably do not want to generate a split for those income or expense accounts which have a zero balance as of the closing date. No harm mathematicly, but a zero amount transaction looks odd. Yep, already have that code written. ;) Michael -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH [EMAIL PROTECTED]PGP key available ___ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
