Re: [GNC] The two modules
John, Just to clarify. While I have accounting qualifications, I am not a practising accountant and my judgement is primarily an opinion based on my formal studies and my accounting experience in a small business in my particular country. We all need to keep in mind that accounting, while adhering to broad general principles, is also subject to local legislation and different tax laws which varies considerably and even cultural practices. Some processes may not always be treated the same way and there may not always be one unique way to approach representing particular transactions. Fortunately the move towards consistent international standards has gathered considerable momentum making the task easier in the longer term. I'm happy i did describe the Placeholder operation correctly. My early training as a physicist in working out what is in black boxes still comes in handy. David Cousens - David Cousens -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] The two modules
Sorry. I misunderstood, and I appreciate your correction and clarification. On June 28, 2018, at 10:30 AM, John Ralls wrote: David T: No, he didn’t. He said that it’s poor accounting practice and since unlike you and me he’s a licensed accountant we should respect his judgement. He also said explicitly that GnuCash doesn’t enforce that and he correctly described how GnuCash handles placeholder accounts having transactions. Regards, John Ralls > On Jun 28, 2018, at 6:39 AM, D via gnucash-user > wrote: > > David, > > You've now misstated twice that Placeholder accounts cannot have > transactions, and I feel it is important to make it unambiguously clear to > anyone reading this thread that there is nothing in Gnucash that prevents > placeholder accounts from having transactions. > > Setting an account as a placeholder only prevents further transactions from > being added to that account. Many of us use the placeholder setting to > prevent accidental creation of transactions in closed accounts, for example.I > > David T. > > On June 28, 2018, at 4:58 AM, DaveC49 wrote: > > Stephen, > > As an accountant I would prefer to have parent accounts as placeholder > accounts which cannot be the target of transactions directly (this can be > set in the edit Account dialog and marks the account as read only) as the > placeholder total should then be the sum of its active child accounts. This > will give clean easy to read reports which make obvious sense. > > Before you convert an existing parent account to a placeholder (by checking > the placeholder checkbox in the Edit Account dialog), you will need to > transfer any transactions into it to an appropriate child/sub-account. My > experience is that a placeholder account can have in turn child accounts > which are also placeholders as well as child active accounts, which is OK > and makes sense. > > An active non-placeholder account should not have child/subaccounts, > although I don't think GnuCash actually prevents this. In this case, the > parent account total is the sum of the child subaccount totals plus the sum > of any transactions into the parent account itself. This will make a report > look to be incorrect as the sum of transactions into the parent account is > not presented separately and its total will not be the sum of the child > account totals. I can't think of a use case where this would be desirable, > but some people may be happy with that behavior. I don't think this behavior > has changed since I first checked it out in an earlier version (around 2.2 I > think). > > The report is a different beast but it should reflect the above behavior and > a placeholder parent account should only show the total of its > child/subaccounts totals. If it doesn't tha indicates that it may have > already been the target of transactions when set as a placeholder and these > were not transferred to a sub-account. > > If a parent account is not a placeholder account, it should behave as > described above and add the total of any transactions into it to the sum of > any child account totals. I haven't got time at the moment to check all the > reports out but I have never noticed any problems with the Balance Sheet and > Income Statement with all parent accounts set as placeholders. There are > enough accountants using GnuCash that this would have been picked up pretty > quickly if it was not behaving as expected. > > Hope this helps make sense and helps you to get GnuCash working as you want > > Cheers > > David Cousens > > > > > > - > David Cousens > -- > Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by
Re: [GNC] The two modules
David T: No, he didn’t. He said that it’s poor accounting practice and since unlike you and me he’s a licensed accountant we should respect his judgement. He also said explicitly that GnuCash doesn’t enforce that and he correctly described how GnuCash handles placeholder accounts having transactions. Regards, John Ralls > On Jun 28, 2018, at 6:39 AM, D via gnucash-user > wrote: > > David, > > You've now misstated twice that Placeholder accounts cannot have > transactions, and I feel it is important to make it unambiguously clear to > anyone reading this thread that there is nothing in Gnucash that prevents > placeholder accounts from having transactions. > > Setting an account as a placeholder only prevents further transactions from > being added to that account. Many of us use the placeholder setting to > prevent accidental creation of transactions in closed accounts, for example.I > > David T. > > On June 28, 2018, at 4:58 AM, DaveC49 wrote: > > Stephen, > > As an accountant I would prefer to have parent accounts as placeholder > accounts which cannot be the target of transactions directly (this can be > set in the edit Account dialog and marks the account as read only) as the > placeholder total should then be the sum of its active child accounts. This > will give clean easy to read reports which make obvious sense. > > Before you convert an existing parent account to a placeholder (by checking > the placeholder checkbox in the Edit Account dialog), you will need to > transfer any transactions into it to an appropriate child/sub-account. My > experience is that a placeholder account can have in turn child accounts > which are also placeholders as well as child active accounts, which is OK > and makes sense. > > An active non-placeholder account should not have child/subaccounts, > although I don't think GnuCash actually prevents this. In this case, the > parent account total is the sum of the child subaccount totals plus the sum > of any transactions into the parent account itself. This will make a report > look to be incorrect as the sum of transactions into the parent account is > not presented separately and its total will not be the sum of the child > account totals. I can't think of a use case where this would be desirable, > but some people may be happy with that behavior. I don't think this behavior > has changed since I first checked it out in an earlier version (around 2.2 I > think). > > The report is a different beast but it should reflect the above behavior and > a placeholder parent account should only show the total of its > child/subaccounts totals. If it doesn't tha indicates that it may have > already been the target of transactions when set as a placeholder and these > were not transferred to a sub-account. > > If a parent account is not a placeholder account, it should behave as > described above and add the total of any transactions into it to the sum of > any child account totals. I haven't got time at the moment to check all the > reports out but I have never noticed any problems with the Balance Sheet and > Income Statement with all parent accounts set as placeholders. There are > enough accountants using GnuCash that this would have been picked up pretty > quickly if it was not behaving as expected. > > Hope this helps make sense and helps you to get GnuCash working as you want > > Cheers > > David Cousens > > > > > > - > David Cousens > -- > Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
