Re: Cash Method and write off's

[DaveC49]

Hi Martijn,

Gnucash is capable of supporting both cash and accrual accounting. The
business features (accounts receivable and accounts payable) are explicitly
accrual accounting based however as they record the income at the time the
invoice is created  normally on the date the service is rendered to the
client. 

The difference is primarily one of the date of the recording of the
transaction. In accrual accounting the timing of reporting the transaction
in your accounts is set primarily by when the transaction is entered into
i.e. when the agreement to perform the transaction is reached whereas cash
accounting is based on when the cash actually changes hands which, as in
your case can frequently, be some time later.

To do cash accounting in Gnucash you would have to not use the business
features and only record the transaction in your accounts when the payment
is received from the medical insurers. This would require a separate system
for recording your invoices to customers. It would be possible to maintain
two sets of books one on a cash basis and the other on an accrual basis but
this would require a lot of extra work.

Whether you can use cash accounting  will normally be determined by the
business and tax legislation in your jurisdiction(country). Some
jurisdictions have a threshold in turnover, below which you can apply to use
cash accounting and some require use of accrual accounting. 

Writing off the balance of the invoice seems like a reasonable approach
after receiving the medical insurance payment if the balance is
uncollectable. Again your local business and tax legislation can impact on
how this should be done and when and it would be a good idea to consult an
accountant locally who is experienced in your industry about how to best
handle this in your jurisdiction.

Have you looked at other reports other than the P e.g. Cash Flow to give
you a better idea of money flow particularly from a business management
point of view rather than just the tax perspective.

Your account of the treatment of a business loan is correct with regard to
the tax treatment in most juridictions. The principal component of the loan
repayment is still taxable as income. The principal component is recorded as
a reduction in the liability the loan represents to the business. As this
matches the reduction in assets that the principal component represents, it
does not affect your equity in the business. Income and expense accounts are
in practice temporary equity accounts used to record the change in equity
during an accounting period and as this component of the loan repayment
transaction does not result in a change in equity it does not appear in the
expense account.  

Another way of looking at it is that when you first take out the loan, your
bank account balance is increased and the liability account for the loan is
correspondingly increased, so there was no resulting change in equity
associated with taking out the loan amount for the principal. This means
there should no change in equity in repaying the principal. The interest
component however is not balanced by any change in equity when the loan is
taken out which is why it appears as an expense (a reduction in equity in
the current acoounting period). I hope the above makes it clearer rather
than further confusing the issue.


David Cousens





-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Cash-Method-and-write-off-s-tp4692826p4692932.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: how to balance a loan to a director against expenses made by him?

[DaveC49]

Hi,

The most direct transaction to record this is:
  Debit
Credit
Liability:DirectorsBusiness Expenses      
Asset:LoansToDirector   .

The most important thing is to annotate the transaction description field to
indicate that a reimbursement of the expenses incurred by the director has
been offset against the loan to the director. 

To record the loan to the director, if you had a need to record the original
value of the loan as well as repayment of the loan and the outstanding
balance you could use a header account with two child accounts as follows 

Asset:LoanToDirectorBalance
Asset:LoanToDirector:InitialLoanValue
Asset:LoanToDirector:LoanRepayments

The InitialLoanValue sub account which is debited by the amount of the loan
when the loan is first made and a second child account which is credited by
the amount of the repayments/reimbursements of expenses  incurred as in the
transaction shown above. 

If the loan had interest payments one could use a third child account to
record the interest payable on the loan (a debit split to this account would
record the interest with a corresponding credit split to an
Income:InterestonLoans account). The child accounts as described above would
all sum into the header account, which then records the current balance of
the loan.

Which you would choose really depends upon the level of detail you are
required to report to the company and external reporting requirements and
the  level of detail you need for your internal management of the loan.

David Cousens 



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/how-to-balance-a-loan-to-a-director-against-expenses-made-by-him-tp4692636p4692639.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Double Entry History

[DaveC49]

Hi Michael,

This one takes accounting back to 7000BC and traces the major historical
developments from there forward to the GFC in 2010. It would appear that
writing may have developed from ancient accountants methods of keeping
counts of goods traded. The first cheques were written by Arab traders to
China around 900AD and a trader could write a cheque on his account in
Baghdad that would be honoured in China. The Reaissance features heavily in
the development of accounting. Da Vinci's mathematics teacher Luca de
Paciola produced the first known treatise on accounting methds and double
entry. I have really only read the introduction and first chapter which is
an outline of the historical development so far but that has sucked me in.

David



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Double-Entry-History-tp4692728p4692733.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Double Entry History

[DaveC49]

This is a bit off topic but for anyone with a historical interest in
accounting "Double Entry" by Jane Gleeson-White (Allen & Unwin 2011) is an
interesting read.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Double-Entry-History-tp4692728.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: shared expenses/IOU accounting

[DaveC49]

Hi

To my knowledge Gnucash does not have the ability to generate splits between
accounts for sharing expenses automatically. When you enter a transaction it
is usually in the register for the account you are drawing from. A default
account for the other split of the transaction is generally suggested and is
selectable from a drop down list. The default for any transaction is a two
split i.e one debit entry and the corresponding credit entry. Additional
splits to other accounts are created by tabbing to the next line, selecting
an account and entering the amount which is debited or credited to that
account.

There is a new CSV importer being developed for the next release to replace
the current fairly simple csv importer which may be able to import
multi-split data. Maybe one of the developers can comment on that . If it
is, then you could generate the splits in a spreadsheet,  and then import
them.

There is also the ability to use formulas in scheduled transactions which
may be ok in dealing with recurring expenses. i have not used this feature
at all so i don't know if it will meet your needs The following FAQ has 
links to the documentation
(https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Scheduled_Transactions) and some discussions
on this which may help
(https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_How_do_I_use_variables_and_formula_in_scheduled_transactions.3F).

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/shared-expenses-IOU-accounting-tp4692799p4692835.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Interest / late penalties on invoices

[DaveC49]

Macho,

>From an accounting perspective, the interest charge is not incurred until
the original invoice is overdue past the agreed date and should be recorded
as such at that time, while the original sale is recorded at the date at
which it occurred.

On this basis, I think it would be most appropriate to issue an additional
invoice for the interest charges referencing the original invoice at the
date those charges become applicable and then forward a copy of the original
invoice along with the invoice for the interest charges to the customer. If
the invoice remains outstanding, then you would have to periodically e.g
monthly or quarterly send  new invoices for the accruing interest charges. 

In mananging this for low value sales, the additional cost of issuing and
mailing the additional invoice may outweigh any additional gain from the
interest charge, so it may be wise to have a threshold in the sale value,
above which you change the terms of sale to include the interest charge for
late payment, or more simply, not pursue the interest charges for sales
below an appropriate threshold while keeping the provision in the terms of
sale. 

You may also need to consider any constraints on policy imposed by any
consumer protection legislation which may apply.

It would be interesting to compare the effectiveness of offering a discount
for early payment with the imposition of an penalty interest  (or using
both) in encouraging prompt payment of invoices. Carrot or stick cf carrrot
then stick?


David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Interest-late-penalties-on-invoices-tp4693055p4693057.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: company invoices from director - Accounts Payable

[DaveC49]

Hi Marc,

Don has answered your first question fairly completely. Whether you treat
payments you have made on behalf of the company as a loan or a contribution
to equity really depends on your intention to pay back the amounts and the
timescale on which you intend to do it. 

If it ASAP (e.g. you are just waiting for the cash from a startup loan/bank
account to the company to come through), treat it as a loan to the company.
If however you expect it to be some time before you can recover the amounts,
then it would make more sense to consider the payments as a contribution to
equity.

Although you could record what the company owes you by raising an invoice
and treating yourself as a creditor of the company, it would be reasonable
practice to simply set up a Liability:LoansFromDirector account to record
the transactions as Don was suggesting and then simply recording the
repayment of funds as a payment of the loan (i.e. a debit entry to the
liability:loan acoount and a corresponding credit entry to the company's
bank account).  If instead you had recorded it as a contribution to equity
you would have a similar transaction on the relevant equity account when you
withdraw the funds.

If you do raise an invoice (Bill to the company) it is automaticlly posted
to the Accounts Payable when posted. The account for the other split would
be the Liability:LoanFromDirector account or Equity:Director'sContribution
depending on which choice you made about recording the loan.

In Australia, I know it is possible for Director's loans to a company to be
secured in much the same sense that a bank loan to the company would be
secured, but this requires specific action to take out a security at the
time the funds are advanced to the company to register it on a government
securites register.

This would provide you with security in the event of liquidation of the
company as you would be treated as a secure creditor by the liquidators.
Whether this is also the case in Scotland will depend on local legislation
so if this is an issue with funds of any significance involved, it would be
advisable to consult a local accountant. 

David Cousens.



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/company-invoices-from-director-Accounts-Payable-tp4692936p4692949.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: gnucash can't find tutorial & concepts guide

[DaveC49]

Hi Morris,

On Linux Mint 18.2 the help files are located in
/usr/share/docs/gnucash-docs. The display of the tutorial guide and manual
by Gnucash uses the gnome Yelp help browser. It may be this is not installed
in the raspberryPi Linux version.

http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs-museum/snapshot-20121101/blfs-20121102/xsoft/gnucash.html
has some information about compiling and  installing the help files which
seems to be still current

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/gnucash-can-t-find-tutorial-concepts-guide-tp4692956p4692976.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Methods to Track Gift Cards and Similar Items

[DaveC49]

The gift card is clearly an asset. When you receive it it is income. In most
jurisdictions one would expect gift income to be not taxable however this
may not always be the case.

I generally have income streams that are both taxable and non-taxable so I
already have placeholder subaccounts of Income for Taxable and Non-taxable
income. When you receive a gift card the transaction would look like:

  Db  Cr
Asset:Giftcards$50
Income:NonTaxable:Giftcards 50

and when you use the gift card it is like any other expense

  Db  Cr
Asset:Giftcards $50
Expense: ...50

If the income was taxable you would place the giftcards account under a
taxable placeholder instead of a non-taxable placeholder.

The treatment for a credit card issued for a returned item is slightly
different though. It is still an asset but instead of having the associated
income split it will have an credit entry to an expense account cancelling
the previous debit entry for the purchase.

"Rigorous, double-entry accounting is not essential.  Imbalance on one side
of a transaction is OK. "  

As Gnucash is a double entry accounting system it is unlikely that any
method which has an imbalance is likely to produce a satisfactory result and
may result in inaccurate reports. 

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Methods-to-Track-Gift-Cards-and-Similar-Items-tp4692966p4692972.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Where to record business equity in your personal books

[DaveC49]

Hi Adrein,

I apologise if my comment appeared a bit flippant. The intention of my
comment about choosing any name was really that the actual name is less
important than the structural aspect of it being an asset account. The
general expectation would be that an investment in a business would
hopefully be an asset rather than a liability otherwise it would be very
unwise to make the investment in the first place. 

As long as the name is descriptive of the function of the account, then as
Liz has pointed out, it can be easily renamed should your accountant wish to
use a name that fits better with local accounting/legislative practice.

The beauty of standardized names is however that one can quickly make sense
of and understand a balance sheet or profit and loss statement produced by
someone else which is important for public accounting but perhaps less of an
issue for one's own personal accounts.

Cheers

David



--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Where-to-record-business-equity-in-your-personal-books-tp4692248p4692274.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: How to close a financial year

[DaveC49]

Anita

The Wiki has a secion discussing it at 

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Closing_Books

and the documentation tells you how to use the built in routine for it at

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/tool-close-book.html

David Cousens



--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/How-to-close-a-financial-year-tp4691662p4691794.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: When does GnuCash create .log files?

[DaveC49]

To be useful the logfiles should be being written as each transaction is
recorded rather than only at the end of a session. In the latter case if a
crash/programming fault causes Gnucash to exit abnormally the log file would
contain no useful information. Autosave should only be working on the main
data file and not the logfiles.

I have just closed down gnucash at 09:39:54 local time. 
  
date Modified
The logfile is named:TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170517093954.log 
Tue 16th May 2017 18:49:11 AEST
The last backup is named:TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170517093954.gnucash  
Wed 17th May 201709:39:54 AEST
The current file is :  TestBooksBudget.gnucash  
   
Wed 17th may 2017 09:39:54 AEST

The previous logfile:TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170516184911.log 
Wed 17th May  2017 09:39:39 AEST
The previous backup: TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170516184911.gnucash  
Tue 16th May 2017 18:44:10 AEST.

If I now open Gnucash the backup file remains the same as the above at this
point.
A new log file is opened  TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170517095417.log 
Wed 17th May 2017 09:54:17 AEST
The previous data file is renamed: 
 
TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170517095918.gnucashWed 17th May 2017 09:59:18
AEST. ( the time difference is most likely that required to open and read
the previous data file.

A file TestBooksBudget.gnucash.a8c00400.13920.LNK Wed 17th May 2017
09:54:17 AEST is also created when the file is reopened along with the lock
file,  TestBooksBudget.gnucash.LCK Wed 17th May 2017 09:54:17 AEST. Have no
idea yet what the first file does? 

This tends to support the view that the logfile is opened at the start of a
new gnucash session and then transactions are written to it as they occur.   

I have an autosave interval of 5 mins.

A new back up file TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170517095918.gnucash Wed 17th
May 2017 09:39:54 AEST and a new log file
TestBooksBudget.gnucash.20170517095918.log Wed 17th May 2017 09:59:18 are
created at the end of the autosave interval.

(Gnucash 2.6.16  on Linux Mint 18.1)

David Cousens



--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/When-does-GnuCash-create-log-files-tp4691667p4691675.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Issues with Importing Invoices

[DaveC49]

Hi Buster,
Customer jobs are not meant to be the same as Vendor jobs at least according
to
the Gnucash Help manual entries which seem to indicate that they are
separate
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/busnss-ar-jobs1.html and
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/busnss-ap-jobs1.html.
 
However the Find Jobs dialog does not seem to distinguish between customer
and vendor jobs. If you enter a search term (anything will do, e.g. "*"),
hit Find ( returns nothing or anything matching what you entered) and then
hit Find again all jobs are listed. (This shifts the radio button on the
left to the refine search option after doing a new search which returns all
the jobs both customer and vendor). I could not find this behavior
documented anywhere, but I presume it does a regex search to match any
character on the second Find. You can also select "matches regex" instead of
"contains in the search option and enter "." in the text field as documented
in the find documentation referenced  below, however I find the double Find
is quicker than altering the search citeria ( at least for a small number of
customers/vendors/jobs). You cannot allocate a vendor job to a customer
invoice as the find jobs  dialog for setting the job in the invoice edit
dialog is limited to customer jobs (and I presume similarly for Bills
/vendor jobs but I have not tested this).

The Find behavior is documented at
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/busnss-ar-customers1.html#busnss-ar-custfind2
in the Help Manual.

David Cousens.



--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Issues-with-Importing-Invoices-tp4691904p4691921.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: linking internet banking in Australia

[DaveC49]

Ananda,

The last post in this archive from Whirlpool forums mentions having created
a PHP script to download OFX files . I doubt he was using the HBCI interface
but was simply using the standard Netbank interface and supplying the data
needed to get the banks website to download the OFX files.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2228273 . 

There is also a discussion here which suggests the same approach

http://www.nominal.com.au/blog/entry/online-banking-feeds-are-here-anz-nab-a-bankwest-

and a discussion on a CBA support site 
https://community.commbank.com.au/t5/NetBank/API-access/td-p/5071

The dcousens in this discussion is not me. 

Cheers
David



--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/linking-internet-banking-in-Australia-tp4691978p4691999.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: (no subject)

[DaveC49]

Hi Eneko,

The full accounting equation is
Assets = Liabilities +Equity+(Income -Expenses) where Income and Expense
accounts are temporary Equity accounts which record the changes in equity
during the current accounting period (usually a financial year). 
You can rewrite this as Equity = Assets - Liabilities, which possibly makes
more sense to non-accountants.

It is not necessarily that an increase in assets is matched by an increase
in liabilities. This is only true if you purchase an asset using credit.
I.e. If you buy a piece of equipment on credit ( your credit card for
example), the balance of the asset account for Equipment is increased by the
amount of the purchase and the balance of your Accounts Payable ( a
liability account) is also increased by the same amount. (Gnucash refers to
these entries as splits) and a transaction recording an event in your
account generally consists of at least two splits, each affecting one
account, and can consist of more splits where a transaction affects more
than two accounts ( atransaction which has a sales tax , VAT or GST
component for example). For the above if the purchse price was $500, the
splits would be 
  DebitCredit
Asset:Equipment $500  
Liability:CreditCard  $500.

The transaction which records this is a debit entry to the Asset:Equipment
account and a credit entry to the Liability:AccountsPayable account. This is
why accountants write the equation in the first way above since in this form
increases in accounts on the left hand side(LHS) of the equation are debit
entries (and decreases  in the accounts on the LHS  are therefore credit
entries) and increases in accounts on the right hand side are credit entries
(and decreases in accounts on the RHS are debit entries).

If your equipment purchase was by cash however, there is no liability
created as you are paying from an existing asset, your bank account. As your
bank account balance is decreased when you make the purchase, then entry to
your bank account is a credit entry for the value of the purchase. I.e. the
splits would now be

  DebitCredit
Asset:Equipment $500  
Asset:Bank Account  $500.

What has to balance for any given transaction is the sum of the debit
entries (splits) and the sum of the credit entries (splits) for each
transaction. 

More clearly an increase in a given asset account either has to be balanced
by 
 *a  corresponding decrease in another asset account; or
 *a corresponding increase in a liability account; or
 *a corresponding increase in an equity account; or
 * any combination of the above in which the sum of the decrease in
the asset account and decrease in 
 the liability and/or equity accounts totals to equal the
increase in the first given asset account.

I hope this helps make this section a bit clearer. Wikipedia also has some
fairly good entries on double -entry book keeping/accounting.

David Cousens





--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/no-subject-tp4691972p4691976.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Basic Register - Removing Unwanted Columns

[DaveC49]

Keith,

The use of debit and credit is usually a little bit confusing until you get
a handle on the basic mathematics behind double entry accounting. The actual
meaning of a debit (or credit) depends upon the type of account it is acting
upon. The whole basis of double entry accounting is based on the
relationship between classes of accounts: Assets, Liabilities and Equity
expressed in what is called the Accounting Equation.

Assets = Laibilities + Equity.

To allow easy calculation of profit/loss  (or surplus/deficit for non profit
accounting) over  what is referred to as the Accounting Period ( this can be
weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annually depending on how often
you need for internal management or are required to provide information for
external reporting on your profit/loss) two additional temporary Equity
classes are introduced, Income for increases in Equity and Expenses for
decreases in Equity to give the full Accounting Equation:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity + (Income - Expenses). These are
temporaryaccounts in classical accounting because at the end of the
Accounting period their balances (more correctly the difference in their
balances) are normally transferred to an Equity Account (often called
retained Earnings or something similar).

Any transaction affects two or more accounts and the individual components
of a transaction are referred to in Gnucash as splits with each split either
debits or credits one account from one of the above classes of accounts.

A debit split affecting an account on the RHS of this equation, i.e. an
Asset account produces an increase in the balance of that asset account and
correspondingly a credit split to an Asset account will decrease the balance
of an asset account.  

On the other side of the Equation in Liability, Equity and Income accounts a
credit split affecting an account produces an increase in the balance of the
account while a debit split reduces the balance of the account.

Because of the negative sign before Expenses, a debit split to an expense
account increases the balance of that Expense account while a credit split
decreases the balance of that account.

Confusion often arises when we get a statement from a Bank (or supplier or
vendor). They are doing their internal accounting from their perspective
using the convention described above.  Your bank account, an asset to you is
a Libility account to the bank because the money in the account is money
they may have to provide to you at any time. Hence when you deposit money to
your bank account your statement for that account has a credit to it and
when you withdraw money from your bank account your statement will have a
credit, the reverse of how debits and credits affect your asset account from
your perspective.

Using the above you can easily translate between the column headings
Debit/Credit and Increase/Decrease for the various asset classes.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Backup help

[DaveC49]

Hi Colin,

i agree with both you and Bram there. It is not a reliable backup of the
database but really only useful for sharing a database across several
machines and worked well for the use case where my laptop was generally
connected to my LAN and I worked away from home occasionally.  haven't had
any experience with how it copes with simultaneous access and locking
issues.  There is also the MYSQL Cluster as another approach. You also need
to check that the replication is up to date and completed before assuming
the databases are identical.  I use a cron job and mysqldump to dump  the
databases  to an NAS for backup.


David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Vendor Bill - Invoice Entries

[DaveC49]

Hi,

The facilities you are requesting are likely to require an inventory
management system. At present Gnucash is an accounting package and currently
does not incorporate any features for inventory management. As far as i know
there are no plans to incorporate such features in the near future. To do so
would reuire a developer(s) interested in developing these features.
Similarly while it can handle the accounting specific side of payroll
management it does not handle the calculation of payrolls, deductions, taxes
etc. You may need to took at ERP software if you require these facilities.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Vendor Bill - Invoice Entries

[DaveC49]

Hi Michael,

Point taken. I was really commenting specifically on the in package
capability of Gnucash to meet fellow_travellers's needs. It might be useful
to have a list of external software that does provide additional capability
to extend Gnucash somewhere on the wiki page.

One of the disadvantages of an external software approach is in the lack of
ability to readily exchange data between the various components. I am
thinking specifically of customer/vendor information, product listsetc.. 
While this can be done with data import/export, there is always the problem
of ensuring the data import/export is upto date in both packages. 

I do remember seeing someone mentioning a POS plugin under development
sometime ago but haven't seen any more on it. As you have pointed out a POS
system is largely useless without an integrated inventory system.  The
current plugins wiki page doesn't list anything like this though.  

The plugin capability of Gnucash would be one way of supporting integrated
inventory, payroll, POS systems in an integrated fashion but each of these
is likely to require a team of developers to support and maintain
compatability as Gnucash and each of the packages develops. I think this is
one reason such plugins haven't been developed yet. 

I have tried developing a fairly simple mod for Gnucash and I found finding
my way around the code base required a considerable effort and investment in
time to work out where to insert the relatively simple code needed. Still
working on that, but it does make me really appreciate the efforts the
current developers put in.

If Gnucash does shift towards SQL database backends in the future, separate
packages could have the required data integration through the use of a
common shared database minimising the need to interact at the code level.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Announcement: GnuCash 2.6.18 Release 2017-09-24

[DaveC49]

Congratulations to John and the rest of the team. 

Builds and installs and runs nicely on Linux Mint 18.2 and installs and runs
on Windows 10 on a TabProS.



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: How to deal with the cash flow and the credit card.

[DaveC49]

I am not sure how the cash flow report deals with credit cards/liabilities.
Even then a cash flow statement can only deal with already recorded
transactions as you have indicated with your phantom transactions. Where a
cash flow report is really useful is in looking at seasonal variations from
past years and using that to predict the current year.

The difficulty with the credit cards is you don't know in advance how much
you are going to spend in a given month. Relaitively easy if you have a
fixed income and regular expenses but not so in general

Maybe using the business features to record the Bill from the credit card
company when it arrives to move the liability into Accounts Payable then
running a cash flow report might do the trick without having to advance
record the payment of the bill? 

David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Chart of Accounts cannot be uploaded to Android

[DaveC49]

Hi Colin and John_Mike,

"Gnucash has no relationship with Nabble".  This is not quite correct. As
well as replying to the mailing list emails from gnucash direct to your
email, the posts by email are also displayed in a Nabble version of the
Forum at http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html.
You can both post messages and reply to messages using this interface to the
forum as well as the email mailing list response.

The CoA can be exported from the desktop GnuCash as a xml file using the
'File->Export->Export Account Tree' menu entry ( not the "as csv" option ).
I saved it in my Downloads folder on my PC(Linux Mint), connected my S7Edge
to the PC with a USB cable, entered Alloow in the popup on the phone
requesting USB access. This opens up a file explorer window on the PC
showing the phones folders. I selected the SD card and the Downloads Folder
on the S and then cut the exported gnucashCoa.gnucash xml file from the
Downloads folder on my PC and pasted it into the Downloads folder for the
S7Edge which had opened on the PC.

I don't know if the procedure is the same for Windows but I guess it will be
very similar if not the same apart from file locations and perhaps slight
differences due to the OS.

In the Android Gnucash app click on the 3 horizontal bars next to Accounts,
select Settings then Accounts and then Import Gnucash XML. Select the SD
card from the dropdown menu which is displayed when you touch the "down
arrow" symbol and then select Downloads folder and then the file you pasted
into the  Downloads folder and your CoA should be load. Mine just did

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Chart-of-Accounts-cannot-be-uploaded-to-Android-tp4693438p4693445.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: On Nabble (was Re: Chart of Accounts cannot be uploaded to Android)

[DaveC49]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for the clarification re Nabble. I am very grateful to Nabble for
taking the mailing list on as I find it much easier to follow threads on
Nabble. My reference to "relationship" was really only about the ability to
access  the mailing list from Nabble and not with respect to its operation
or who has responsibility for maintaining that, but I did not make that
clear.

Cheers
David



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Chart-of-Accounts-cannot-be-uploaded-to-Android-tp4693438p4693449.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Chart of Accounts cannot be uploaded to Android

[DaveC49]

 This thread gives some info on syncing data.


https://gnucash.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1120894-how-to-sync-data-from-gnucash-android-to-desktop

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Chart-of-Accounts-cannot-be-uploaded-to-Android-tp4693438p4693447.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Chart of Accounts cannot be uploaded to Android

[DaveC49]

Greg, Mike,

I have no problem accessing the gnucash export files in Dropbox from my
Android phone as I indicated in an earlier post. 

Dropbox has a daemon which you have to download and install on Linux to sync
with the server. There is usually a version available via the Software
manager on Linux Mint and presumably on Ubuntu and Debian versions and
dropbox have said it can be downloaded from their site. Last time I used
Windows it was working fine on that OS.

If you use Google Drive , it requires a third party app from Insynchq to
sync Google Drive on Linux to the server but otherwise it works seamlessly
too. 

Best wishes 
David



-
David Cousens
--
View this message in context: 
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Chart-of-Accounts-cannot-be-uploaded-to-Android-tp4693438p4693455.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Newbie question .

[DaveC49]

Hi George,

How you record these items will depend a great deal on the exact nature of
the item and the nature of the future benefit you receive from them.

In the case of a pension  the future value may be different from simply the
paid in value of the contributions. Depending on the nature of the pension,
there may or may not be employer contributions and/or in the case of some
government pension contributions from the government and/or payment of
interest earned by your contributions. Whether you are able to record this
information will largely depend upon whether it is reported to you by
whoever runs the pension scheme.

One could treat  a pension, particularly if you know what its future value
is, as an asset which you have purchased instead of treating it as simply as
an expense. In this case you could treat the the payments as simply
exchanging one asset for another. A sample transaction in this case might be

Asset : Bank Account  Credit( decrease)$200
Asset: PensionFund:My contributions  Debit ( increase)   $200  

In this case an accountant would say you have capitalized the expenditure on
contributions, rather than

Asset: Bank Account Credit (decrease)  $200
Expense: Pension Contributions Debit  (increase)   $200

where that expenditure is expensed. Capitalising the expenditure is normally
reasonable where the benefit of the expenditure is unlikely to be consumed
during the accounting period, normally annually for personal finances.

You could then also record other contributions (employer , government ,
interest etc) under sub accounts of Asset:PensionFund if and when they are
reported to you. My superannuation fund reported to me annually any
cumulative gais/losses associated with their investment strategies.
Generally such contributions in most jurisdictions would be tax-free (but
not necessarily and may depend on your local laws) and the transacion would
be a debit to the asset account and a credit to a non-taxable income account
for the amount of the increase in such contributions.

If the above is not clear particularly the idea of at least one debit and
one credit entry associated with each transaction, you may need to read up
on the basics concepts  of double entry accounting

Similarly a life insurance is an asset which is purchased by your regular
payments. Some insurance policies are simply term insurance, i.e. they only
apply for the term you are paying the premiums and you are only entitled to
the payout if the insured event occurs during that period (the premiums on
these would most likely be treated as an expense) whereas others are
cumulative products where you may be entitled to a specified amount at a
specific time in your life as well as the insurance payout should you die
earlier than that.  In this case you have  an investment component often as
accumulating bonuses to the policy face value. This can be treated as an
investment. 

It is almost impossible to give general advice in detail as you also have to
know the legal framework in which these asset products are created and how
they are treated in terms of taxation  to record them properly.  If you are
in any doubt,  it may pay to consult a local accountant as any guidance here
is really only about how you might potentially use Gnucash to record a
transaction in general and not specific circumstances.


David Cousens





-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Issuing a refund: how to record it and have it show up in the Customer Report

[DaveC49]

Robert,

Would the Credit Note facility not suit to record what essentially becomes a
reversal of part of an Invoice which would be included in the Customer
report? The discussion of the implementation is not all that clear in the
manual
(https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/busnss-ar-invoices1.html#busnss-ar-invoicenew2)
but there is a little more in the Wiki mainly about it's future
implementation in 2012? I gather it was been implemented in 2.6. The
Tutorial and Concepts guide mentions it in the section on Invoices but does
not discuss what it does in any detail
.
What a Credit Note should do in principle is to credit the Accounts
Receivable by the amount of the repayment and debit any Sales Revenue
(Income) and any associated Tax accounts to reverse the corresponding parts
of the original transaction. The implementation of the business features is
normally pretty rigorous in GnuCash so I think this is what will occur.

Frequently in accounting practice  th reversal of the Revenue componentis
done by debiting a contra account to the Sales Revenue often called Sales
Returns and Allowances. I.e. you have a Summary placeholder account Nett
Revenue  which has Sales Revenue and  Sales Returns and Allowances as child
accounts summing into it. Accountants generally prefer this way of doing it
as it makes clear how much of the total revenue has had to be refunded which
most managers would want to control. You could also simply debit the Sales
Revenue account directly with a note in the Description/memo fields if this
is not something you need to manage

I have not yet checked out whether the Credit Note does actually reverse
both part of the original Sales revenue account and any Tax accounts
affected, but as it uses the Invoice structure to implement it, it should do
so using any tax tables you have in place for your Invoices. 

When you make the actual repayment to the customer, the transaction will be 
a credit to your Check/Bank account for the amount of the refund and a
corresponding debit to the Accounts Receivable for the amount of the refund
which reverses the credit entry made to Accounts Receivable when you post
the Credit Note. 

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: bank entries

[DaveC49]

Christine,

Gnucash is a double entry accounting system.  What this means is that any
transaction affects at least two accounts. For example when you purchase
something your bank account is credited by the amount of the purchase any
purchase is also an expense so an expense account has to be debited by the
amount of the purchase in the second component of the transaction. These two
components of the one transactions are referred to in Gnucash as "splits".
The same methodology is applied to any other sort of transaction, it will
always consist of at least two components ( and sometimes more) affecting at
least two accounts. In any single transaction the sum of the debit and the
sum of the credit components of the splits of that transaction must be equal

The Gnucash Tutorial and Concepts guide
(https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/) along with the
Wikipedia articles on double entry bookkeeping
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_system will give you
some background information. Gnucash follows what is called the Accounting
Equation or American approach in this article. The article on the Accounting
equation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_equation) also provides
some useful background.

That said, it is possible when you are entering a transaction and create the
deposit split to your bank account (this will be a debit to that account if
you use the accounting terms) what you are seeing is the other
component/split of the transaction being automatically created. If you have
not yet created  appropriate income accounts, it may be assigning your bank
account as the default account for this second split which will be  a
credit. If you click in the account field in the second split, you should be
able to select a different account from your chart of accounts. 

For a deposit to your bank account, the account for the second split would
normally be an income account for money coming from an external source or
another asset account if you are transferring money between accounts ofr
example.


David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

RE: bank entries

[DaveC49]

Christine,

I don't think the program itself is your problem. You will require some
fundamental knowledge of accounting procedures and theory no matter which
program you use. It is also a process of learning the jargonused in a
particular program's interface. I know of no accounting program which is not
a double entry under the hood although some do simplify procedures by only
allowing you to perform certain actions from the  appropriate accounts.
Gnucash is generally far more flexible that most accounting packages - but
it's default ways of doing things are designed to make it easier

Using the Dr and Cr terminology is good. It is the default for accountants.
Gnucash provides an alternative for people who are not comfortable with it.
That may be setup as the default if you are not getting Debit and Credit
column headings at the right when you display an account. Is so, to set up
Gnucash to use Dr/Cr go to Menu->Edit->Preferences then select the Accounts
tab at the left hand side in the popup dialog which comes up. About half way
down you will see a check box Labels - Use formal accounting labels. make
sure it is selected. You will then get Dr (Debit) and Cr (Credit) columns
when you display an account from the main Accounts window in a tab.

For a start, I would create a dummy set of accounts ( I call mine Test - no
imagination) you can play with while getting used to the program (I am an
accountant and I still use this regularly after using Gnucash for more than
five years) separate from any sets of personal accounts for yourself or
business set 
 of accounts. I usually put each set of accounts in its own folder.  Section
2.5 of the guide explains creating files for each set of accounts.

I would read  through sections 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 of the Tutorial guide before
attempting too much but have the program open, particularly for section 2.3
which deals with the interface - how you do things in Gnucash.  Section 3 on
Accounts next and then Section 4 on Transactions are good to read next.

>From your description, it would appear you are handling a simple business.
If you buy and sell only with cash, then you can ignore the business
features section for now as they are mainly for buying from suppliers on
credit (when you pay at the end of the month or quarter) and selling to
customers on credit ( where they pay you later on some agreed basis (again
ned of month/quarter etc). Even if you do need to use these, it is better to
get a good grasp on the cash processes first.

Debits and Credits as they appear in your own account will be reversed from
how they appear in a bank statement for your account from your bank. This is
because a bank views your account with it as a Liability (money they may
have to pay to you or to others on your behalf when you request it). In your
own accounts your bank account is an Asset (a resource you have available to
use at your discretion).

I am also not sure what you mean by "balance one of the accounts". The
column labelled Balance on the far right in a given account register gives
the balance of that account which for an Asset account, e.g. a bank account
is the sum of all the debits to that account minus the sum of all the
credits to that account. Gnucash maintains the balance for that account
automatically. There is no having to balance an account when you enter a
transaction. Another good rule of thumb is if you are buying or selling
something where the funds either come or go to your bank account, then start
the transaction in the account register for your bank account (double click
on the Asset:Bank account in your Accounts display tab and it will open the
register).  Changing the register defaults can also make things a lot
clearer.  Menu->Edit->Preferences and then select the Register Defaults tab.
If you set the Default Style to Autosplit Register (select the checkbox) and
the Other Defaults check the Double line mode checkbox. You will then have
to close any open account registers and reopen them for these options to
take effect. It will then appear as follows:

. 

The first two lines are an unopened transaction, the next 5 lines are the
currently open transaction and the final two are another unopened
transaction. The two yellow lines are a summary of the transaction as it
affects the account register in which it is displayed. The three lines in
brown are the components or splits of the transaction - the third line is a
blank. The screenshot is from the reister for one of my bank accounts
Assets:Current Assets:David:Streamline 2576 ( each of the : separated items
is a sub account of the previous level). Gnucash always presents the debit
entries of a transaction first followed by the credit entries when you open
a transaction in the register. The second brown line (Credit entry) records
money being taken from my account. The first brown line (Debit entry)
records that money 

Re: Invoice & Bill Posting Date Issues Across Multiple Periods

[DaveC49]

Hi Adrien,

I am assuming here you mean when you are pre-billed by a supplier of a good
or service. What follows is not necessarily restricted to insurance or even
to prepayment but just uses these to illustrate the principle. If you mean
that you are pre-billing a client, my apologies and please ignore.

I think the issue is not that there is a single event associated with things
like prepayments but that there are multiple events. If one wishes to meet
the full requirement to provide an accurate reflection of events in your
accounts, for example to handle the issue of pre-billing of insurance for a
future accounting period you have (at least) the following events which you
record in your accounts as they occur unless of course
regulations/legislation specifies otherwise.

1. Insurer issues an invoice to you.  You have no knowledge of this until
you receive it. This doesn't appear in your accounts.

2. You receive an invoice from the insurer. It will specify a due date and
terms and conditions, possibly a discount if paid in advance or interest if
not paid by the due date and an amount to be  paid at a future date.  You
raise a Bill in your accounts. I would choose the date you receive the
invoice from the insurer 
as the post date as this is when you become aware of the obligation to make
that future payment and receive in return insurance cover for an agreed
period, which may or may not be from the due date even though it generally
is.  You would record the bill with a debit to an Asset:PrepaidInsurance
account and a corresponding credit to Liability:A/P created by posting the
bill. You could equally use the date on the invoice issued by the
insurer/supplier, unless there is a significant difference between the date
it was issued and the date you received it, but the latter is really the
most significant event associated with the bill for your accounts. (Dates on
line items in the invoice from a general supplier to you may be relevant
however if you are matching a particular expense to specific items of
revenue of course).

3. You pay the Bill at or before the due date. (Ignore the discount
possibility.) Again I would use the date I raised a cheque, authorised a
transfer from my account, handed over cash etc. depending on how I paid the
bill. In the case of a cheque or where there may be a significant delay in
an electronic funds transfer after you have authorised it, you may use a
temporary clearing account to record that you have made the payment and then
clear that account when the funds are actually transferred (cheque cleared
or electronic transfer from your account recorded if this level of detail is
of importance to you). In the simplest form this would be a credit to your
Asset:Bank account and a debit to the Liability:A/P at the date you made the
payment.

4. The final step would be to expense the prepayment at periodic times
during the period of the insurance with a credit to Asset:PrepaidInsurance 
and a debit to Expense:Insurance. 

By capitalising the insurance prepayment, it can be carried through over
into a future accounting period and expensed in that period.

I am not sure what you meant by "My issue isn’t the idea of a pre-paid
asset, my issue is that it is increasing when I post the bill, not when I
pay it."  I guess you mean the A/P balance by it or do you mean the Expense
account (or an Asset account if it is prepaid). If it is the A/P balance,
then that is the correct expected behavior as Derek has pointed out. If the
posting date is not relevant to matching particular income then capitalising
it to an asset account then expensing it at the relevant date wil do the
trick. Next issue is whether the asset account should be under current
assets, if it is to be expensed within the current period or in non-current
assets where it is to be expensed in a succeeding period.



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Adding Fixed Assests

[DaveC49]

Kevin,

If you are entering an existing asset rather than a new paurchase the credit
entry should be to an Equity Account:Opening Balances rather than to a Cash
or bank account and the debit entry to thr Fixed asset account.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: GL Accounts

[DaveC49]

Hi Maf,

Just a slight clarification on what accrual accounting means. 

The GAAP contains certain principles about when income is considered to be
earned and when expenses are considered to be incurred and when they are to
be recognized/recorded in the accounts. These are not necessarily coincident
in time with the receipt of payments for income or the payment by you for an
expenditure for reasons which may be unrelated to you offering or accepting
payment under terms of credit.

In accrual accounting income is for example considered to be earned at the
time when you perform the work that entitles you to receive that income even
though you may not actually receive the payment until some time later (for
example after submitting a report). 

Similarly you may incur an expenditure in accrual accounting terms at the
time you enter into an agreement to purchase something, not necessarily when
you actually make the payment. This can of course complicate the accounting
and can be important in the tax accounting for many business. This is what
defines accrual accounting.

Most tax jurisdictions allow use of a simplified form of accounting (usually
under a specified turnover threshold and under other specified conditions)
where you record in your accounts income at the time you receive the payment
and expenditure at the time you make the payment. This is usually referred
to as accounting on a cash basis or Cash Accounting.

The difference is in the timing of the recording of an event, e.g. the
issuing of an invoice, and is not necessarily related to the use of A/R or
A/P per se. 

These (A/R, A/P) relate specifically to a business providing credit to its
customers under certain terms it specifies or accepting credit from its
suppliers under the terms they specify and they can be used both with
Accrual or Cash accounting. 


David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Cannot edit opening balance

[DaveC49]

My bad John, 

I replied to the wrong post.  

David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Cannot edit opening balance

[DaveC49]

John,

That is exactly what the Opening Balance dialog actually does in Gnucash (it
creates those entries) and once the entries have been created they are
easily edited either from the Opening Balances register or from the register
for the account for which you set the opening balance,  just as you can edit
any other transaction. 

David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Invoice & Bill Posting Date Issues Across Multiple Periods

[DaveC49]

Hi Adrien,
Add ressing this point: 
"Pre-paid expenses are a special case, but I should think it possible to
address it with the business features somehow. I’ve thought of using special
clearing accounts but I can’t seem to figure where they might go. Posting a
bill for a pre-paid expense (but not yet actually paying it) produces a
liability balanced by what exactly? You don’t yet have a new asset because
you haven’t paid the bill yet. You don’t have an additional liability. You
haven’t realized any income or expense and your equity position hasn’t
changed. What should balance Liabilities:AP for an as yet un-paid pre-paid
expense? "

I think this goes to the differences between accrual accounting and cash
accounting as a separate issue from sales/ purchases made on credit which is
the real purpose of the A/R and A/P accounts. They are not specific to
accrual accounting but may apply for both.

If for example you purchase insurance in advance to cover a specific period
with a specified start date and end date for the cover but you are to be 
invoiced at a later date by the insurer, then you actually purchase the
insurance at the time you enter into the agreement to buy the insurance.
Under accrual accounting you would record the purchase at that date.

At this point I would debit an Asset:Prepaid Insurance for the agreed amount
and credit a Liability:PrepaidInsurance for the agreed amount to record that
purchase in your accounts. 

When you enter the period which the insurance provides cover, you would then
expense the insurance. Depending on the nature of the business you might do
this monthly, for example. Each monthly transaction would be a credit of the
appropriate fraction of the agreed amount to the Asset:PrepaidInsurance
account and a debit to an Expense:Insurance account for each month of the
period of the cover. This satisfies the matching principle by matching the
timing of the expense to the timing of the income earned as a result of
incurring that expense. 

When you receive the invoice for the insurer then an appropriate action
would then be to raise a Bill crediting Liability:A/P for the agreed amount
with a corresponding debit to Liability:PrepaidInsurance for the same amount
as the balancing split of the transaction.

The final transaction would be when you pay the bill with a credit to An
Asset:Bank account and debit to the Liability:A/P account.

I haven't tested how Gnucash's business feature, particularly the reporting
handles the above, specifically as yet but will try it out.

For a Cash Accounting treatment, you would still raise Bill when the insurer
sends you their invoice debit the Liability:A/P and crediting
Expense:Insurance posting it at the date of the invoice. You would then
record the payment as above when the payment is actually made to them. Where
this runs into problems in calculating profit and loss is when the period of
insurance does not match the accounting period (and particularly if premiums
were increasing significantly annually). 

One appropriate treatment for this would be to then capitalise the value of
any unexpired insurance at the end of the accounting period and then expense
it in the next accounting period. A pair of transactions, one transaction
debiting an Asset:UnexpiredInsurance account and crediting the
Expense:Insurance account in the current period with a corresponding
reversing transaction recorded during the next accounting period, would
achieve this. This would have to be allowable under the applicable
legislation which authorises the use of Cash Accounting of course.

"When entering a bill or invoice, each line item allows you to put a date. 

When posting that bill or invoice, only the posting date is used - not the
individual line-item dates. "

You would in principle adopt a similar approach in accrual accounting for
recoding income earned but not yet invoiced.

When you perform the work debit an Assets:UnbilledWork account for the
amount of the work and credit a sutable  Income: account. This records the
income in the accounts at the time the work is carried out.

When you bill the customer and raise the invoice and post it, you debit
Assets:A/R and credit Assets:Unbilled Work with the line dates matching the
dates of debits to this account as the work was performed covered by this
invoice. 

Then when payment is received from the customer your Asset:Bank account is
debited and the Liability:A/R account is credited for the amount of the
payment.

I think the above treatment meets the income recognition principle and the
matching principle in the GAAP and is necessary to do so, not just as a
carry over from paper ledgers, but an essential part of meeting those
principles. 

One of the difficulties is that what is meant by GAAP may be defined
differently in different jurisdictions. Not all countries, notably the US
and with Brexit possibly the UK, have adopted the IFRS standards specific
version or equivalent of the GAAP and some who have may 

Re: loan account issue

[DaveC49]

The bank considers its loan to you as an asset, the fees and interest charges
to the loan account are income to the bank, so the offset account for the
bank for these transactions is an income account. These transactionsto the
asset :loan account of the bank will increase the value of their asset, i.e.
they will be debits.

Your payments to the bank on the other hand decrease the value of one asset
of theirs, their loan to you, and increase the value of of another asset of
theirs, their cash holdings. As these decrease their asset they will be
credits to that account

Their statement to you only contains the parts (splits in Gnucash parlance)
of these transactions that affect their  asset account for the loan to you.
Using the values for 1 Aug, the transactions in the bank's acconts look
like:
  Debit  | 
Credit
  
--
Asset:Loan   68.40|
Income:Fees & Interest |68.40
Asset:Loan  2392.66 |
Income:Fees   |2392.66
Asset:Loan   |   
3936.94
Asset:Cash 3936.94  |

In your hands, the same loan is recorded as a Liability and the Fees and
Interest charges increase your liability. An increase in a Liability account
is recorded in a split with a credit to that account and a corresponding
debit to your Expense account for Fees and Interest. 

Your loan payment decreases your Liability to the bank, i.e. it is a debit
to that liability account, but decreases your cash in your bank account
asset, i.e. it is a credit to that account in your accounts. Using the same
transactions for 1 Aug you should see in your accounts after importing into
the Loan:Liability account ( note you will have to select the
Expense:Fees and Asset:Bank:Cash accounts as the transfer accounts
for each component while importing.

Debit   |
Credit

-
Liability:Loan   |  
68.40
Expense:Fees68.40 |
Liability:Loan   |   2392.66
Expense:Fees2392.66 |
Liability:Loan  3936.94 |
Asset:Bank:Cash |   3936.94

If the QIF does not import as above, I would compare the QIF files for an
import of your bank savings/cheque account with the QIF file for the loan
above and check the signs associated with deposits and withdrawals from your
savings/cheque account. For the bank your savings/cheque account is a
Liability. I would expect that your deposits should appear as positive
amounts and your withdrawals should be negative amounts in the QIF file (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicken_Interchange_Format) for
yoursaving/cheque accoount statement/QIF file if the bank is following this
format. 

Correspondingly for the loan account QIF file, the fees and interest should
be positive(or unsigned) and payments should be negative in the QIF as they
appear in your statement.

Hope this helps sort this problem for you rather than confusing the issue
further.


David Cousens.



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: [GNC] new v3.0 install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[DaveC49]

Dennis,

You are missing the third part of the cmake command when you type

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/dennis/.local 

which is why you are getting the cmake error. 

You need to append either

../gnucash-3.1

or

/home/dennis/Applications/gnucash-3.1

on to the end of the cmake command separated by a blank when you enter it,
i.e.

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/dennis/.local ../gnucash-3.1

The first option above is a relative path from the build-cmake directory to
the sources directory. the ".." part works like cd .. and places you in the
applications directory then the /gnucash-3.1 places you in the gnucash-3.1
directory. 

The second is an absolute location relative to the root of the filesystem.
Either of these can be interpreted by the cmake command.

David

T



-
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] new v3.0 install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[DaveC49]

Dennis,

The obvious place to put the build-cmake directory is in the Applications
directory. I personally would not name it build-cmake but build-gnucash-3.1.
The reason for that is, to uninstall Gnucash there is no need to retain the
gnucash-3.1 source directory which can be deleted, but you will need to
retain the build directory. 

Then there is nothing to identify the build-cmake directory as the build
directory for GnuCash if you call it build-cmake and if you subsequently
compiled another program from the Applications directory using the same
naming convention, you could end up with several build-cmake directories not
knowing which programs they are for, so you would have difficulty
uninstalling them, if you wanted to later. The name is more than likely a
hangover from when the developers were initially testing cmake against the
autotools configure script. They would probably have used a build-cmake and 
a build-autotools or something similar to distinguish the parallel builds.

To start the whole process you would after extracting the tarball to
/home/dennis/Applications
Open a shell then

cd /home/dennis/Applications
mkdir build-gnucash-3.1
cd build-gnucash-3.1
"cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/dennis/.local 
/home/dennis/Applications/gnucash-3.1" 
make
make install

Don't type the quotes in the above. They are to indicate that everything
between the quotes goes on one line and there is a single space between
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/dennis/.local  and
/home/dennis/Applications/gnucash-3.1.  Part of the confusion may be that if
your screen resoluition is not the same as mine the wiki may be wrapping
lines. I have three different size screens so i will check that out and try
to find a way to ensure the cammands do appear on the one line.

That should install GnuCash 3.1 in your local directory. To run it you could
type in a terminal:

 /home/dennis/.local/bin gnucash %f

I am not exactly sure but I think the %f causes gnucash to open with the
last file it had open. It appears in the installed menu item for gnucash.

You could also add /home/dennis/.local/bin to the path variable by adding
the line 

export PATH=$PATH:/home/dennis/.local/bin

to the file /home/dennis/.profile.  This should create the PATH variable
with /home/dennis/.local/bin added to it when you log on to the system. 
Then you should only have to type 

gnucash %f

at the terminal.  

When you ran make install and installed in a user directory, I don't think
the install process creates a Menu item accessible from your Desktop but I'm
not totally sure about that as I install to /usr/local normally.

If you look up the procedure for installing Menu items for Ubuntu 18.04, you
could create a Menu item which will start Gnucash. I would use the full path
to the executable in this i.e.  /home/dennis/.local/bin gnucash %f. You will
find an icon in 
/home/dennis/.local/share/gnucash/pixmaps/gnucash-icon.ico which you can
attach to the menu item as described in the procedure for creating new menu
items in Ubuntu 18.04.

Good Luck

David





-
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] new v3.0 install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[DaveC49]

Hi Dennis,

I updated the BuildUbuntu16.04 page after having similar problems while
building Gnucash3.0. My apologies for any errors and lack of clarity in a
few areas and thanks for reporting the problems. I will edit the page to try
and make some issues clearer as I or other users uncover my mistakes.

$HOME is usually defined in Ubuntu and Linux Mint distributions as
/home/ where  is the logged in user name. If you want to install
in $HOME/.local/ you may need to check that these directories
$HOME/.local/bin, $HOME/.local/etc, $HOME/.local/lib, $HOME/.local/share
exist. This was John Ralls preference for an install for a single user to
avoid creating bin, etc, lib and share directories directly in the users
home directories. The use of a hidden directory avoids these appearing in by
default  and cluttering up your file browser (unless you enable  hidden
directories).

The correct option switch for Cmake is

-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local.

My understanding is that the default value for this switch is /usr/local and
if you use cmake without the switch at all that is where it will install.
This along with /opt is the location most Linux distributors place their
packaged versions of applications like GnuCash in. In these locations
GnuCash would be available to all users with accounts on the computer and
not just the user installing it, but this requires administrator privileges
during installation. The distributors versions are often considerably out of
date which is the primary reason for building GnuCash yourself. If you use
the Software Manager or apt to install the Ubuntu distribution version for
example, it will overwrite your up to date built version if it is in this
location. I use this location, but I take care not to install the packaged
version from Linux MInt. (I have done so in the past while getting more
familiar with Linux, distributions , repositories etc.).

I have tried to fix the issues with the build instructions. I would
appreciate any comment on the changes to see if they have clarified the
issues you had. 

Cheers

David





-
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] new v3.0 install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[DaveC49]

Hi Dennis,

I recently updated the Ubuntu 16.04 build instructions so I am glad to get
your feedback on issues which may be unclear and any errors I may have
incorporated. I will try to modify the instructions to make it clearer and
eliminate errors. If you find any issues that are specific to Ubuntu 18.04
please flag them as I am running Linux Mint based on 16.04 and I will add
them as specific notes for 18.04. I started this after my own difficulties
building Gnucash 3.0 from the original page. I have added a couple of
breakout pages which give more detail about the build directory location. I
noted that there is an inconsistency between the notation in the main page
and the breakout page re using  in two contexts so I will fix that. 

There is a breakoutpage also listing the CMAKE option switches.
Unfortunately you do have to type the whole CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=... .
Fortunately most of the option defaults are sensible. I think for
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX the default is /usr/local so if you use the command
without  that switch it should install in that location. 

$HOME is usually defined as /home/ where  is the logged in
username.
Adding the $HOME/.local/bin is best done with 

$export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin. My apologies I copied that from another
page and stuffed it up.  This only changes the PATH variable as defined in
the currently open terminal/shell. To make the changes permanent, they
should be included in either the .profile file or the .bashrc file in your
home directory. 

Cheers

David




-
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] Advice needed, how to handle a medical reimbursement account...

[DaveC49]

I think you are overcomplicating the issue by recording the appllication for
the refund from the MRA account. No money chnages hands at this point so you
could record paying  the Doctors bill as

Asset:Check  Credit $100
Expense:Medical   Debit $100

When you receive the refund

Asset:Cheque  Debit $100
Asset:MRA   Credit $100

If you really want to record applying for the refund, then the easiest way
to do it is to use the accounts payable structure.  The transactions then
become:

Asset:Check  Credit $100
Expense:Medical   Debit $100

On claiming the refund:
Asset:Accounts Payable   Debit $100
Asset: MRA   Credit $100

On receiving the refund
Asset: Check   Debit $100
Asset: Accounts Payable  Credit $100

Since Accounts Payable is usually associated with the business features, you
may want to give it another name e.g. Asset:MedicalRefundsClaimed  or
something similar, particularly if you use the business features for normal
invoices from suppliers. It is the accounts payable type structure that you
need to complete the cycle of transactions so you record having made and
received the claim.

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.

Re: [GNC] New User-Clueless on Investments

[DaveC49]

The best place to start is the Tutorial and Concepts guide.
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/invest-setup1.html is the
link for V2.6 documentation. There will be a similar section in the V3 docs
if you are using that version. While that is mainly aimed at stocks and
mutual funds, the general priciples will be similar.

You will also find some info in the archives of the mailing list
(http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/) for 401K and 529 setups if you
search for those terms.



-
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] Up grade from 2.6.xx to 3.1

[DaveC49]

Dennis

It is probbaly a good idea to uninstall the previous build of 2.6.x before
upgrading. With the changes between 2.6 and 3.1 there may have been changes
in the libraries/library names such that some older libraries may not
necessarilybe overwritten.

How to remove it will depend upon how you installed it and in which location
you installed it. If you built it from sources and you have retained the
source directory, try changing to the top level source directory or a build
directory if there is one in a terminal and then type 

make uninstall

if it was installed under your home directory

or sudo make uninstall

if it was installed to a system directory like /usr/local or/opt.

If you didn't retain the source directory and/or build directory then things
get a bit harder. One strategy would be to download the sources for that
version again. Follow the instructions for buidling that version apart from
the "make install" or "sudo make install" at the end. This will recreate a
manifest file. Then issue the "make install" or "sudo make install" in the
top level source directory (if you built them with a build directory then
issue the command in that build directory.)  Both Cmake and autotools can be
used on the later 2.6.x versions.

You can tell where Gnucash is installed using
whereis gnucash 
in a shell to list the locations that gnucash was installed to. If the first
part of the path is /usr/local or /opt or another system location ( that is
one not under the /home/dennis tree) then you will need to use sudo as a
prefix to make uninstall. I am not sure if whereis locates installs under
your home directory however.


If you installed using apt then

sudo apt-get remove gnucash
should do the job.

If you installed from a debian package you downloaded

sudo dpkg -r gnucash

should also remove it

There are instructions on the 

The BuildUbuntu16.04 wiki page has a section for Uninstalling Gnucash as
above. It also has a link  and a link to another which has instructions for
manually removing Gnucash. I need to add more to that page but the manual
removal instructions there do work. Note you need to use sudo before any
commands if installed in a system location.

I would try the instructions above first however as manually deleting things
from system directories 
can be hazardous to your system.

Cheers

David



-
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] Up grade from 2.6.xx to 3.1

[DaveC49]

Dennis,

The instructions for v3.1 should work. The only problem I had when i
compiled 2.6.21 after upgrading to 3.1 was that I had installed guile 2.2.3
and v 2.6.21 looks for guile-1.8 or guile-2.0. It is possible to have
several versions of the guile libraries and headers installed as they
install individually under a directory labelled with the version number in a
directory labelled guile. I am having a problem running it however as I am
getting an error related to being unable to override PYTHONPATH which I find
a bit strange as I ran CMake with the -DWITH_PYTHON=OFF switch. I'll work
that one out tomorrow. It is likely a library conflict as I am compiling it
on the same machine I run 3.1 on. 

David



-
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] new v3.0 install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[DaveC49]

Hi Dennis,

Almost there but not quite. In which directory in your home directory
/home/dennis have you extracted the gnucash-3.1 directory from the tarball
gnucash-3.1.tar.bz2 which you downloaded. Can you tell me the full path to
that directory and the full path to the build-cmake directory you have
created? 

Next chack that $HOME is defined, type echo $HOME into a shell/terminal. It
should return "/home/dennis".

With the "-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local/gnucash-3.1", the install
process will create the following directory structure:
/home/dennis/.local/gnucash-3.1/bin/gnucash
/home/dennis/.local/gnucash-3.1/etc/gnucash
/home/dennis/.local/gnucash-3.1/lib/gnucash
/home/dennis/.local/gnucash-3.1/share/gnucash

It will also create those same four directories underneath a parent folder
for any other application you install with a similar prefix.

If you use the "-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local" as the install location
you will get the structure:
/home/dennis/.local/bin/gnucash
/home/dennis/.local/etc/gnucash
/home/dennis/.local/lib/gnucash
/home/dennis/.local/share/gnucash.

The latter is normally the preferred arrangement  as when other applications
are installed their files will also go in the same
/home/dennis/.local/bin
/home/dennis/.local/etc
/home/dennis/.local/lib
home/dennis/.local/share
directories. 

Both of the above will work as if you want to uninstall Gnucash you issue
"make unistall" command in the build-cmake directory you created and that
uses the contents of a file "install_manifest.txt" which records the
locations in which the files were installed. The latter is the structure
that is normally used by most Linux developers in the system directories
/usr, /usr/local and /opt, so mirroring that makes it a little easier in
translating instructions that are written with a different base location in
mind.

CMake and make are different tools. CMake is a precompiler which checks that
any dependent libraries and headr files are installed and available for the
build system to use. It also creates in the build-cmake directory a parallel
structure to the source directories containing files named Makefile which
are used separately by the make tool to compile the program. It also
contains bin, etc, lib and share directories into which the compiled sources
are placed ready for installation. 

Entering the "make" command in the shell/terminal starts the process of
building these directories within the build-cmake file.

The final command "make install" ( or sudo make install if you are
installing to a system location) copies these directories to the install
location specified by the -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX switch applied to the cmake
command.

In the camke command as you had it specified
"cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local/gnucash-3.1 make"

"make" is not a legitimate part of the cmake command. It is a separate
command which follows the cmake command, as explained above. Instead of
make, you need in that position in the cmake command a path reference to the
guncash-3.1 directory. You will remember I aksed you above to tell me the
locations of it in your home directory structure. It may be something like
/home/dennis/Applications/gnucash-3.1. In this case you would simply use the
string "/home/dennis/Applications/gnucash-3.1" (without the quotes) where
you have "make" in the cmake command. That is known as an absolute reference
to the location of the gnucash source directory. That is probably the
easiest to use as relative path from the build-cmake location to the
gnucash-3.1 location can be a little more difficult to work out. Assuming
the above location(substitute the correct path if not) the cmake command
would be:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/dennis/.local
/home/dennis/Applications/gnucash-3.1

The problem with writing instructions is that you generally have to assume a
base level of knowledge on the part of the reader and unfortunately many of
us do not have the assumed base level when we first try something, myself
included. For the Gnucash User list, I think the assumed knowledge when it
comes to building the software itself would be something like (but it is not
clearly defined):

Knowledge of the operating system you are using;
Knowledge of its file system and structure;
Knowledge of navigating the above;
General familiararity with building software for the OS and the tools used
to do it;

The transition to GnuCash 3.1 is a bit more difficult than usual as the
developers have made changes to how the software is built, introducing cmake
instead of the configure script used by the autotools system so that it is
more flexible and more easily maintained in the future. make itself is one
component of the autotools used for building software on Linux systems.  
Add to that that there are many varieties of Linux which are all evolving
along different paths with different sequential versions within each
variety. Each variety often has its own system tools with different names.

Re: [GNC] Reconciliation

[DaveC49]

Bill, 

This is not the case for GnuCash v3.1 on Linux Mint 18.3. You can readily
check and uncheck the boxes. The only hassle I have had is that by default
the credit and debit entries are not ordered by date but by reconcile status
and when you check a box, it is automatically placed at the end of the list,
which can be off the page.

I also personally don't like that items are matched and preselected as
reconciled but with Ctrl-A and unreconcile transactions from the right click
menu to undo the automatic selection, I can live with that.  

Clicking on the date header for the table will order the contents by date
rather than the status which is much more useful for checking off against a
date ordered statement. As Dennis suggested your GnuCash version Number and
OS details may be useful.

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] Editing Scheduled Transaction

[DaveC49]

Robin,

I'm also using 3.1 on Mint 18.3. I have tried to duplicate your problem
without being able to. I am able to edit the fields in the template
transaction without any diffculty and I don't receive that error message at
all. I can create 2 scheduled transactions and edit them both at the same
time. If I try and edit an already open for editing transaction again it
just brings the open window to the front.

That message seems to indicate that you may have an instance of that
scheduled transaction open editing in one of the account register windows
that the scheduled transaction creates entries for at the same time as you
are editing the scheduled transaction in the. That would likely cause a
conflict as you could be changing the values in two places simultaneously.

David





-
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] Ubuntu 18.04

[DaveC49]

Hi Geert,

I think one of the reasons people are not finding the Build#Ubuntu
instructions and main build instructions in the wiki is that the main page
is identified as Build Instructions for Developers rather than a general
GnuCash Build Instructions page which gets listed in the top level directory
of the wiki. I noted this when i rewrote the Build#Ubuntu page recently and
have been meaning to attempt a reorganisation with a general Build
Instructions page with breakouts for the various OS andLinux distributions
and then perhaps link a page specifically for developers build instructions.
The move from make to CMake has meant that the developer's build
instructions are possibly more relevant as general build instructions. I
will try and get that done asap. Perhaps if we can link to that info in the
Wiki from the documentation and or Gnucash webpage it will make it easier
for people to access. That can be difficult as the wiki tends to be a bit
free form and specific pages may come and go but a link to the wiki main
page with a note that more information is available on builds in the wiki
might help.

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] Wiki:Installation/Building; was: Ubuntu 18.04

[DaveC49]

Hi Frank & David T ,

Thanks for the info re the main page. I will try and hook into the Wiki
Installation page as you suggest and have a go at making the build
instructions friendlier for general users and split off a more specific page
for developer builds. i will then link that back to the pages on the maint
and master branches, pull requests etc for mods etc. It is possibly better
to leave the building from git with the developers pages. I'll  reformulate
a version of the disclaimer for the user build pages. It will possibly be
the weekend before I get to it unless insomnia strikes

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.

Re: [GNC] copying files

[DaveC49]

Varda,
I travel with a laptop and use a desktop at home. If you have internet
access while travelling I have had no problem with putting the GnuCash files
in a Dropbox account synced to both the desktop and laptop. You can work
without internet access and it syncs next time access is available.  Only
problem is it doesn't cope well with GnuCash open on both machines
simultaneously to the extent that the file copy in the Dropbox on the
machine where GnuCash is last closed will overwrite any changes made on the
other machine. Mitigates against losing a USB.
I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon basd on Ubuntu 16.04 and have had no problems
with USB's being mounted readonly with it so as Adrein suggested it may be a
Mate problem.

David 



-
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] Associated Files in 3.1

[DaveC49]

Christian
V3.1 compiled on Linux Mint using the XML backend works fine with associated
files/locations setting them, retrievingthem after closing and reopening the
program and opening the locations without any problems so it is possibly
associated with the sqllite backend or perhaps the DB backends in general. I
think there was a post a few days ago about retreiving Notes/Descriptions
from the DB's which was similar in that they were present in the DB but
could not be retieved into Gnucash. Comments on that post may be relevant.

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] Credit Card Charge Decreasing Account Balance

[DaveC49]

What version of Gnucash are you using and what platform is it running on.

When you look at an individual charge transaction, the balance after the
transaction should be larger than the balance before the transaction with
the reverse for a payment. Whether that balance is shown as a negative or
positive number will depnd on the Reverse Balance Accounts setting in
Edit->Preferenes on the Account tab.

Changing the preference to have Reverse Balance Accounts-None checked should
result in the balance being shown as negative value, which increases in the
negative direction when a charge is added (where the sum of the  charges is
greater than the sum of the payments to the account) and should become less
negative when a payment is recorded I.e. for a liability account the normal
balance is negative with this preference selection.

With the Reverse Balance Accounts preference Credit Accounts checked (which
is the default setting), the balance value will be positive (when the value
of all charges to the account is larger than the value of all payments) and
a charge to the account should increase this positive value and a payment
should decrease the value.

One other comment is if you change the preference settings you may have to
force the register to be redrawn with the new settings. A simple way to do
this is to change to another register and change back.  The redraw seems to
be done automatically for the change of the above settings, but not if you
change the preference for formal accounting labels.

David Cousens
If this is not the behavior you are observing 

David Cousens

If this is not the case, what version of GnuCash are you using and on what
platform



-
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] Error Message on trying to Open a gnucash file "There was an error parsing the file...."

[DaveC49]

Francis,

If you look in the folder which contains your gnucash file there should be a
set of backup files. Gnucash creates a backup file. I am assuming you are
using the XML format files and not a database. The file will have a name of
the form 
.gnucash
  and the backups will have the form 
.gnucash..gnucash . 
There will also be logfiles of the form 
.gnucash..log .
 is a number with the format mmddhhmmss eg
20180529153426.

You should be able to open any of these files using the File->Open menu item
provided the GnuCash program is opening. If it is not, if you start gnucash
from a shell opened at the directory which contains your gnucash data files
and then enter at the prompt 
gnucash ./.gnucash..gnucash
you should be able to start GnuCash with the specified file substituting as
appropriate for  and 

You could look at opening the most recent backup to see if that opens and if
it doesn't move back through the backups until you find one that opens
successfully. You may then have to examine the log files to see whether you
recorded any transactions after the last backup file you can open was
created and reenter them. You can also use the log files to recover any lost
data as described in the guide:

see https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/basics-backup1.html  for
more information.

If you are using a database, someone else who uses the database backends may
be able to help.

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] A/P: invoice not displayed and payment is displayed

[DaveC49]

Rich,

How are you creating the payment of the Bill? 

If you open the Bill and then use the payment icon in the Toolbar (no need
to search for the bill to pay) or alternatively use the
Business->Vendor->Process Payment and search for the Bill by Vendor and
select the Bill the transactions for the invoice and payment all appear in
the Accounts Payable. They are not physically linked in any way and invoices
posted on the same day all appear before payments on the same day. If the
invoice and payment are not posted on the same day, the may not be anywhere
near each other in the Accounts Payable register list. 

(A nice feature perhaps would be the ability to jump to view the associated
invoice from either the payment or the transaction associated with the
invoice just as you can jump to the register of another split in the
transaction which would help tracking down which transactions and invoices
are linked and also perhaps jump from an Invoice/Bill to the transactions in
A/R and A/P associated with the Bill and Payments to that bill). 

If the payment is created as above, the Ref column contains the Bill Id
Number of the associated Bill. In my early days using GnuCash business
features I managed to get bills associated with the wrong payments and it
was quite tricky working out what bill was associated with what payment
where they are posted on different days. In the end I deleted the payments
and then reentered them from the correct bills.

I am using a default CoA in a test business file in which Accounts Payable
appears directly under Liabilities i.e.
Liabilities:Accounts Payable and the account type spefcified in the Edit
Account dialog (right click on the account in the account tree and select
Edit Account) is of Type A/Payable.

I noticed that your account is under Liabilities:Current Liabilities:...  
It may be possible that either the account type is not set at A/Payable
particularly if you created the account yourself rather than using one of
the pre generated account structures. 

I have noticed in the past that the business features are very sensitive to
the setup of Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable and won't function
correctly otherwise. As far as I know there can only be one of each file
type for A/R and A/P in the CoA (post from Derek several years ago when I
experimented with creating separate accounts payable for each vendor -
didn't work). 

I don't think there are any limitations on where A/R and A/P can be located
in the CoA structure under Liabilities as long as it is of the correct
account type but I am less sure of that and haven't determined whether that
is the case.

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] Cash Flow report

[DaveC49]

Martijn,

I can't really comment on the Cash Flow reportas implemented in GnuCash and
it's options but the doubling of accounts in the selected list when the show
subaccounts is selected  does appear to be strange and may be a bug. My
understanding of a Cash Flow Report is that it includes:

cash receipt and cash payments from the operating activities of the business
   cash collections from customers
   cash receipts of interest ( on accounts receivable)
   cash receipts of dividends (current assets- short term trades)
   payments to suppliers (including via A/P
   payments to employees
   payments for interest expens and income tax expenses ( on current
assets)
   depreciation and amortization expenses

cash flows from investing activities ( i.e interest and dividends received
on non-current assest and cash from sale of assets, investments and
collection of loans)

Cash flows from Financing activities 
 proceeds of share issues and bills payable
 payments of bills payable and share buybacks
 payments of cash dividends

Even though Accounts Receivable (and Accounts Payable) are in the income
statement for the period, only payments received against A/R and payments
made should be included in the Cash Flow statement. A/R and (A/P) are not
included in the set of default selections in the GnuCash CashFlow report
which is correct. Similarly neither are Credit Cards accounts and other
Liability accounts are not included as payments to them will be captured as
payments from the current asset accounts.

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] Cash Flow report

[DaveC49]

Adrien,

I think with the default account selection, the Cash Flow report seems to do
the right thing. The double selection of accounts seems a bit strange, I
haven't really got a proper set of business accounts to check it out on
anymore and the dummy set I have put together have been for testing a few
specific features so are not general enough. I'll try running it on my
personal accounts to see how it handles them as I run a couple of small
business ventures through them, but don't really use the business features
with them. It should really only need to access Asset and Equity accounts to
construct a cash flow report. 

David



-
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] GnuCash 3.2 Released

[DaveC49]

Stephen,

It is generally a good idea to remove the previous version before installing
a new one. Gnucash will generally overwrite any existing files of the same
name, but you may be left with unnecessary files in some cases. Going from
3.1 to 3.2 should be OK as there are unlikey to be major changes in the file
structure, but between major version could be problematical There are
instructions on the Wiki in the build instructions for Ubuntu 16.04 for
doing uninstalls in a variety of circumstances including manually deleting
all the files which will be the same for 18.04. I'll put a note in there re
uninstalling previous versionsbefore the build instructions to make it
clearer.

If you still have the 3.1 build directory:
 open a shell and cd to the build directory then type 
 sudo make uninstall

then do the install of V3.2

This uses a manifest created when Gnucash was installed to uninstall all of
the program files. It leaves user preference files untouched.

David



-
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] GnuCash 3.2 Released

[DaveC49]

John,

I'm using CMake v 3.5.1. Presumably the same or similar could be used to
create an uninstall target for Ninja. Their argument for providing a default
uninstall target seems a bit weak to me as you are not going to be issuing
the command in a build directory unless you really intend to uninstall those
useful files. 

The cmake_uninstall.cmake file contains a reference to

# This is taken from
https://cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ#Can_I_do_.22make_uninstall.22_with_CMake.3F

which has now been moved to Kitware
https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/FAQ

which has a very slow server by the look of it but eventually i found 
https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/FAQ#can-i-do-make-uninstall-with-cmake

Can I do "make uninstall" with CMake?

By default, CMake does not provide the "make uninstall" target, so you
cannot do this. We do not want "make uninstall" to remove useful files
from the system.

If you want an "uninstall" target in your project, then nobody prevents
you from providing one. You need to delete the files listed in
install_manifest.txt file. Here is how to do it. First create file
cmake_uninstall.cmake.in in the top-level directory of the project:

if(NOT EXISTS "@CMAKE_BINARY_DIR@/install_manifest.txt")
  message(FATAL_ERROR "Cannot find install manifest:
@CMAKE_BINARY_DIR@/install_manifest.txt")
endif(NOT EXISTS "@CMAKE_BINARY_DIR@/install_manifest.txt")

file(READ "@CMAKE_BINARY_DIR@/install_manifest.txt" files)
string(REGEX REPLACE "\n" ";" files "${files}")
foreach(file ${files})
  message(STATUS "Uninstalling $ENV{DESTDIR}${file}")
  if(IS_SYMLINK "$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}" OR EXISTS "$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}")
exec_program(
  "@CMAKE_COMMAND@" ARGS "-E remove \"$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}\""
  OUTPUT_VARIABLE rm_out
  RETURN_VALUE rm_retval
  )
if(NOT "${rm_retval}" STREQUAL 0)
  message(FATAL_ERROR "Problem when removing $ENV{DESTDIR}${file}")
endif(NOT "${rm_retval}" STREQUAL 0)
  else(IS_SYMLINK "$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}" OR EXISTS "$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}")
message(STATUS "File $ENV{DESTDIR}${file} does not exist.")
  endif(IS_SYMLINK "$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}" OR EXISTS "$ENV{DESTDIR}${file}")
endforeach(file)
Then in the top-level CMakeLists.txt add the following logic:

# uninstall target
if(NOT TARGET uninstall)
configure_file(
"${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake_uninstall.cmake.in"
"${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/cmake_uninstall.cmake"
IMMEDIATE @ONLY)

add_custom_target(uninstall
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P
${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/cmake_uninstall.cmake)
endif()
Now you will have an "uninstall" target at the top-level directory of
your build tree.

Instead of creating an "uninstall" target, Unix users could enter this
command in the shell:

xargs rm < install_manifest.txt



-
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] Dark theme on Windows

[DaveC49]

Geert,

The default theme is Mint-X. There is a Mint-X Dark  GTK-3 theme available
as well and GnuCash comes up nicely in it. It is installable from the
Menu->Preferences->Themes dialog in the Cinnamon desktop. I would say on
Mint all you have to do is select a dark theme at the system level. There
are many available for download.
Thanks 

David



-
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] GnuCash 3.2 Released

[DaveC49]

John,

Just some further information. I rebuilt GnuCash with the -G Ninja option.

The build.ninja seems to contain a build uninstall target but it has no
commands. If I run 
sudo ninja install
it installs GnuCash (in/usr/local the prefix I set with cmake) and creates
install_manifest.txt.

If i copy the install target in build.ninja to the blank uninstall section
and modify it as follows

# Utility command for uninstall
build CMakeFiles/uninstall.util: CUSTOM_COMMAND all
  COMMAND = cd /home/david/Applications/gnucash-3.2/build-ninja &&
/usr/bin/cmake -P cmake_uninstall.cmake
  DESC = Uninstall the project...
  pool = console
  restat = 1
build uninstall: phony CMakeFiles/uninstall

and then issue

sudo ninja uninstall

Gnucash is correctly uninstalled except that it leaves:
   an empty gnucash directory in /etc;
  /include has an empty gnucash folder;
  /lib has a guncash directory with a scm/ccache/2.2 directory containing
gnucash, json and qif-import 
 folders
  /share has a gnucash directory with subdirectories but no files

It appears the uninstall is removing all files but not necessarily the
directory structure the files were in. OK unless that changes between
versions.

I haven't checked whether the uninstall behavior is any different for the
make version but a diff on the make and ninja versions of
install_manifest.txt produces no differences so I would expect that the
uninstall is the same given the cmake_uninstall.cmake files were essentially
the same.

Getting cmake to correctly create the build.ninja uninstall target should be
enough to get the ninja uninstall working as well.

Cheers
David




-
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] Fwd: The two modules

[DaveC49]

Stephen,

There is no need to install the libofx7specifically. If you install
libofx-dev that should install the the appropriate version of the library
for your ubuntu version (i.e. libofx4 on 14.04(Trusty), libofx6 on 16.04
(Xenial) and libofx7 on 18.04 (Bionic)

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] Fwd: The two modules

[DaveC49]

Stephen,

You can possibly force the case of sum of the children account totals being
the parent account total by making the parent  a placeholder account. Then
it cannot have any transactions into it, only the child accounts.

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] Fwd: The two modules

[DaveC49]

John,

I agree with you that making the accounts with child accounts have no
transactions is being unnecessarily restrictive and may not meet all
possible use cases but perhaps having the option of being able to restrict
it to that case if it suits an individual's purpose is a suitable
compromise. The other thing may be to issue a warning when you have made an
account with transactions a Placeholder account and that you may want to
transfer those transactions to a subaccount or another account entirely. At
the moment, I think it simply flags that you have made the account
read-only.  

I don't find the name Placeholder accounts too undescriptive of the function
of providing a higher level grouping of accounts with some commanality of
purpose/function. Adding an additional option to be able to in addition make
placeholder accounts strictly Placeholder (i.e. unable to accept
transactions into them) would be one way to go which would retain that
flexibility for those who have a need for Placholder accounts to be a target
for transactions. 

I personally can live with it as it is now and impose my own rules on my
usage for placeholders not to have transactions into them and just take
appropriate action to transfer existing transactions if you change an
account to a placeholder account. 

Perhaps all that is necessary is really to highlight the implications of
making an account a placeholder in the documentation/guide, perhaps in the
section of setting up the CoA. i haven't read that for several yers now so i
might check it out.

In either case, any reports have to be able to cope with the cases where a
placeholder account does have transactions directly into it or does no,t in
an appropriate manner.  My personal preference would be for 

If a parent has transactions put it twice: 
Once as aggregate account and once as an account on it's own. That would
meet 
both needs. The aggregate will total it's own transactions with those of its 
child accounts. Or put differently the aggregate account would treat itself
as 
a child account.

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] Fwd: The two modules

[DaveC49]

Hi Stephen,

I agree with your wife about not including the Income Statement inside a
Balance Sheet. These serve different functions and it just makes a Balance
Sheet more complicated than necessary. From an accounting perspective you
should be able to evaluate a balance sheet fairly quickly and having a
fairly uniform layout means comparison of balance sheets for different
entities is much easier, which is the rational for trying to get the IFRS
standards adopted world wide. My personal preference is for simple reports
which meet one specific objective well and clearly.

As I explained in a post to John, I don't necessarily require GnuCash to
impose parent placholder accounts not to have transactions into them
specifically, but it would be a nice feature to have an option to make
adherence strict if the user requires it. It may however require
considerable code mods to achieve that and I can achieve that by just
removing any transactions which target an account i make a placeholder to a
sub-account or another account. More difficult of course if you have a large
number of such transactions. A lot of people use GnuCash for a lot of
functions other than formal accounting so as David T pointed out some people
may find being able to make transactions to a parent account useful and also
use the placholder readonly functionality to meet other requirements. I
can't think of a specific case but I am all for retaining as much
flexibility in GnuCash as possible.  It may be just better documentation fof
the Placholder setting may achieve that.

Cheers

David



-
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] New Balsheet (and P report)

[DaveC49]

Christopher,

" except that Placeholder accounts 
can also contain transactions therefore must not necessarily accumulate 
their children account amounts. "

I have to disagree with the above from an accounting perspective.

If accounts are setup as Placeholders initially (i.e. the checkbox set in
New Account dialog when they are created) they are readonly hence you cannot
select them as targets for transactions (Placeholders do not appear in the
list of target accounts for a transaction and if you open the account
register you are warned that it is read only and you cannot enter
transactions from it so they cannot accumulate any balance when they are
initially set as Placeholder accounts.

If you change an existing account to be a Placeholder and it already has
transactions into it then its balance will contain the sum of those
transactions. If you then createa sub account of it and create transactions
into the sub-account, then the balance of the parent placeholder account
balance is correctly the sum of the balances of any sub accounts plus the
sum of any transactions into it before it was changed to a placeholder.

If it was initially a placeholder, a user could subsequently change it to be
a non-placeholder account  allowing it to accumulate transactions into it
and subsequently change it back.

In either of these two cases, the correct balance for the placeholder
account is always the balance of any transactions into the placeholder
account itself plus the sum of balances of it's sub-accounts. In most
accounting practice the balances of the subaccounts would be indented to the
right. 

To maintain consistency with this practice, if it is possible you could
present the balance of any direct transactions to the placeholder account
indented in the same manner as the sub-accounts as if it was a sub-account
and then have the non-indented balance for the placeholder account being the
sum of that plus the balances of any subaccounts.

Where you are trying to create a multicolumn/multiperiod type report, which
I have gathered is your objective, having to have indented sub-accounts will
make it very complex and difficult to fit on a fixed page size if you have
to preserve indenting of the sub-account structure. 

I would like to plead that the current Balance and Income Statements and
other standard accounting reports not be replaced by a multiperiod report,
but that this become an additional optional report.

Gnucash is used in many different jurisdictions not all of which have as yet
adopted the IFRS produced by the IASB. (The US while moving towards the IFRS
uses a GAAP which is not yet compliant). Even if this were the case, many
jurisdictions still have local divergences from strict IFRS adherence
because of the need to be consistent with other laws in their jurisdiction.
Having fairly plain vanilla single period reports which users can then
produce customised versions  for their specific requirements is fairly
essential to meet the need to operate across many jurisdictions, which is
one of GnuCash's strengths. That may be more difficult to do with a
multiperiod report.

A cautious user would hopefully not create the situation where placeholder
accounts have transactions into them, but Murphy's law applies and if it can
happen it no doubt will and does. 

The case where after a given date company or reporting policy requires a
more detailed breakdown with sub-accounts but prior to that date there was
only a single account is one situation where transactions to a parent
account might occur. I personally would treat that by creating a sub-account
for all transactions into the original account prior to that date to which
all existing transactions could be transferred along with the sub-accounts
for the future reporting structure for future transactions. At some point in
the future that sub-account with the original parent account transactions
could possibly be hidden, but the data is still preserved.

It would be ideal perhaps if Gnucash on creation of a subaccount required
the parent account to be made a placeholder and any existing transactions
transferred to either that subaccount (or another appropriate account) but
that is not built in currently. There may be other use cases where this is
not desirable however.

regards

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] Dark theme on Windows

[DaveC49]

Geert,

I tried this on Linux Mint 18.3  but had no changes from the default theme. 

David



-
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

[DaveC49]

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] Upgrading GC under Ubuntu

[DaveC49]

John,

The GnuCash wiki Installation instructions now link to the build
instructions for Ubuntu (and derivative distrubutions like Linux Mint)
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building which in turn has a link specifically
for building V3 on on Ubuntu16.04, 18.04 and derivatives which now hopefully
should be fairly comprehensive. If you have any difficulties with these
instructions or variations for a particular system please mention it on the
forum. I'm a Linux Mint user so my system is not straight Ubuntu 16.04 so I
appreciate any feedback for specific Ubuntu versions. You can also edit the
Wiki pages directly if you request an account to do so.

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] Rethinking the placeholder account concept (was: Re: Fwd: The two modules)

[DaveC49]

Stephen John, Geert

In accounting terms there are really only 3 basic account types:
  Asset
  Liability
  Equity

These all *must *satisfy the basic accounting equation Assets=Liabilities
+Equity.   

The two sides of this equation are what the German /European system defines
as Activa and Passiva but these groupings are primarily reporting
requirements not account heirarchy. Is there really a need to have an
additional placeholder category as the reporting grouping can be readily
defined from the existing basic account heirarchy structure?

Each type can have function specific sub-types which impose functional
restrictions for that subtype and where the children but these subtypes are
always one of the above basic types. Children of the types and sub-types
must conform to the restriction that they have the same type or subtype as
the parent E.g.

Asset
Top level placeholder
   Current  
placeholder
 Bank
 Accounts-Receivable 
business - no children
 Stock
 Trading
   Non-current   
placeholder

Liability 
Top level placeholder
Accounts payable   
business functionality-no children
Equity   
Top  level placeholder
Income 
Current period revenue placeholder
Expenses  
Current period expenditure placholder

My experimentation and what I have understood of the code is this is already
what GnuCash imposes in its account heirarchy with the exception perhaps
that Income and Expenses are treated as their own types and the Equity type
is enforced in any end of period closing operations and/or in the reporting
and the expanded version of the accounting equation is enforced in the code.

Assets=Liabilities + Equity + Income - Expenses

For business purposes it is usually a requirement that each legal entity
should have it's own set of books.   I handle the situation where I need to
separate different individual contributions within an entity in the manner
John suggested (e.g. a household or a partnership) with labelled subaccounts
within each type as defined above. If there really is a need to fully
separate the individuals in terms of separately recording assets,
liabilities and equity, then it is appropriate to run a separate set of
books.

I think it would be useful/nice to clearly document somewhere, perhaps the
wiki, what the existing account structure is at this point and what
attributes accounts currently have and what their intended purpose is from
the developers point of view as well as the other unintended uses that the
user base can come up with. That could then provide a basis for looking at
restructuring those attributes. Something like the design documents that
were produced at times in the past. This would also give the documenters a
chance to reflect that in the documentation.

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] GnuCash 3.2 Released

[DaveC49]

Hi John,

If GnuCash is not built with Ninja, there is a cmake_uninstall.cmake file in
the top level of the build directory which seems to read the
install_manifest.txt file. The Makefile in the same level produced by CMake
has an uninstall target - not sure how it executes the commands in the
cmake_uninstall.cmake file but it appears to. 

Executing "make uninstall" ( prefixed with sudo if installed in a system
location) in the build directory does remove all of the GnuCash files
installed in the  specified to cmake. (GnuCash V3.2 from the
SourceForge tarball on Linux Mint 18.3 built using Cmake, make and - should
be the same for Ubuntu).

Not sure that happens if it is built with Ninja rather than make though.

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] Building issues

[DaveC49]

Hi Carlos,

I had the same original problem during Make while building Gnucash 3.0 that
you did. Aboout half way down the following thread there is a recipe of what
worked for me in getting a successful build. It may not address your second
problem, but I hope it helps.

Cheers
David



-
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] ofx/qfx import to V3

[DaveC49]

John,

For your info OFX import is working fine on Linux Mint/Ubuntu 16.04. The
only problem I had was that the previous automatic matching to accounts
seemed to have had the data cleared in the swap over to the V3 user
preferences files. After one import it had reestablished most of the
matching  account matches and worked fine.

David



-
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: Accounting for Cryptocurrency Mining Operations

[DaveC49]

I think the accounting for bitcoin production would be similar to any other
manufacturing cost accounting although identifying the component costs may
be interesting. If you are running your own hardware to do it then that is
one cost, (depreciation, running costs etc) which will more than likely be
in a conventional currency. If you are using cloud based facilities then you
have the leasing/hire costs, labor costs, indirect costs and overhead costs.
Life would be easier if those costs were in bitcoin itself. It would
probably be better to set up a bitcoin currency and only convert to a
conventional currency on sale or conversion.

In normal cost accounting you would use a Work-in-process Inventory (Asset)
Account to accumulate the value any direct costs (materials, labor) and
indirect costs (overheads), a debit to that account for the value of the
costs over the time period of manufacture.  The accounts for the other side
of these transactions would be either an Accounts Payable (if purchase is on
credit) or a bank account for cash purchases. On completion of the
manufacture, this value would be transferred to a
Finished-Goods-Inventory(also Asset) account.  Any costs in conventional
currency would need to be converted either with a conversion value at the
time of purchase of production needs (or at the time of sale). Local
legislation may affect when and in what form these costs can be recorded.

Debit   
   
Credit
Asset:Work in Progess  

Asset:Finished Goods Inventory  

At the point of sale there are two transactions
  Debit 

Credit
Expense:Cost of goods sold   
Asset:Finished-goods-Inventory  

Asset:bank  
income:Sales revenue


The difference between  and  is the markup on the cost or the profit
(less any costs associated with sale/trading of the bitcoin). The major
difference will be the comparatively short production time for a bitcoin,
but there will still be costs which can be assigned to its production as
distinct from costs associated with the sale or trading of the bitcoin.  The
above is also a very abbreviated description of cost accounting for
manufacture but does illustrate the basic process behind it.

Bitcoin seems to buy and sell largely like a stock so a trading account may
be the best choice for an asset account to record the bitcoin inventory.

As John mentioned the exact details are going to be determined by the
regulations and legislation (usually primarily tax related) applying in your
jurisdiction. These may govern what costs can be recognised and when you can
recognise costs in your records and what conversion rates may be applied.



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: How to deal with RRSP's (Canada)

[DaveC49]

Cam,

I have been giving a bit of thought to the way one might account properly
for Retirement funds. I am not sure how your CRA asks for information about
income from your RRIFs. In Australia, I have specific questions in the tax
return dialog at which I have to record the income from such funds and it is
distinct from any ordinary income from other sources. If this is also the
case in Canada then the following should be a reasonable treatment in
accounting terms.

Assumptions:
1. Contributions to the RRSP are from pre-tax income;
2. Contributions to the RRSP are not taxed on payment into the fund 
(i.e. the contributions are tax deductible against income at the time of
their payment;
3. Fund earnings are not taxed as they are earned;
4. Withdrawals from the fund after retirement and conversion to RRIF are
taxable at that time;
5. Withdrawals from the RRIF are not taxed in the hands of the fund on
withdrawal (i.e. no withholding tax) but the payment of tax is through the
drawer’s personal income tax at whatever marginal rate applies.

The most obvious way of accounting for this, particularly if your income tax
return has a specific entry for a total of RRIF (or converted RRSP)
withdrawals, is simply to record the withdrawal as a transaction from an
Asset:Fixed:RRIF account to a Asset:Bank:Savings (or Cheque) account. i.e.
debit the Savings account and credit the RRIF account by the amount of the
withdrawal. This is assuming no withholding tax applies.

A custom report which then listed and totalled all withdrawals from the RRIF
account would provide the necessary information for completing such a tax
return entry.

Even if there was no separate entry for RRIF withdrawals, the results of the
above report could simply be added to your income entries at an appropriate
point. (I have no familiarity with CRA tax processes so cannot suggest how
this might appear .)

In the case where a withholding tax is applied by the institution
administering the RRIF to any withdrawal how you record it will depend upon
how you record your Tax liabilities generally. Taxes  are generally recorded 
as Liabilities e.g in an account like Liabilities:Tax. To record withholding
taxes, which are generally paid in advance of assessment of your tax
liability you would normally use what is known as a contra account in
accounting to record this. A typical account structure might look something
like:

Liability:Tax  parent account;
Liability:Tax Assessed  daughter account to record
tax assessed by authority;
Liability:Tax:Withholding daughter account to record tax
withheld from income.

When withholding tax is paid to the tax authority by the account
administrator (your bank for example),  you would record it as a debit to
the Liability:Tax:Withholding account where as assessments of tax owing
would be recorded as a credit to Liabilities:Tax:Assessed and the balance of
Liability:Tax gives your overall tax liability position.  With this sort of
structure for tax recording, then recording a withdrawal from an RRIF of
$  with tax $  withheld, i.e. a nett payment of $ =$-$
to your bank account would be recorded as:

Debit| Credit
Asset:Fixed:RRIF   |  $
Liability:Tax:Withholding $   |
Asset:Bank:Savings   $| 

Must stress that the above is a suggested approach for accounting for such
funds but is not specific accounting advice. It may or may not need some
other adjustments to account for aspects of the enabling RRIF and taxation
legislation with which I claim no real familiarity. I have looked at some
info
http://accountingtoronto.ca/2017/09/15/registered-retirement-saving-plan-rrsp/,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Retirement_Savings_Plan,
http://www.wheatlandaccounting.com/rrsp.html to compare it with what I am
familiar with in my own jurisdiction (Australia) but only in broad
conceptual terms.

Cam  I don't think there is a need to use an equity or expense account as
the offset account for a withdrawal or even an expense account (recording an
existing balance against Equity:Opening Balances is not a problem when you
open/create a set of books). Expense accounts generally record the
expenditure on goods or services which are expected to be consumed within
the accounting period so it would be somewhat artificial to use an expense
account. The most logical offset account is the Asset account into which the
funds are paid, i.e a cheque/check  or savings account as you have converted
a fixed long term asset, the RRIF, into a current asset -cash in you bank
account, when you make a withdrawal.


David




-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user 

Re: Gnucash on Linux Mint

[DaveC49]

Hi Les,

The Linux Mint Software manager version is usually 1-2 releases behind the
latest release of Gnucash.  getDeb is sometimes a bit more up to date.
Unless there are specific features/fixes in the latest release that you need
then 2.6.17 which is the current LM version should be OK. 

If not, it is not too hard to build on Linux Mint using the instructions at
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building#Ubuntu_16.04_LTS_.28Xenial_Xerus.29.
If you aren't familiar with cmake use the Autotools build.

I usually run ..gnucash/configure setting the --prefix  option to
/usr/local/bin rather than /opt/gnucash  or /opt/gnucash-devel until it
reports no errors, installing any packages it reports it needs as errors
that are not already installed. There is a list of dependencies in the
README.dependencies files and most can be installed directly with apt before
running the ..gnucash/configure.



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Receipt scanners, recommendations?

[DaveC49]

I use the flatbed scanner on a Samsung SCX3405FW combined with the XSANE
Image Scanning Program to scan receipts with output as jpg without any major
difficulties on Linux. As others have noted at present there is no way to
link these into Gnucash at the moment. Main reason is to store receipts from
heat printers which fade before thay fade. Ad mittedly never large numbers
though



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Unrealized Gains and Closing Books

[DaveC49]

The short answer is yes. but the following articles may give you some
insights into how unrealized gains and losses are usually recorded and
reported. These article provides some info about treatment of unrealized
gains and losses on trading securities under the GAAP in the US
(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/gaap-accounting-rules-unrealized-capital-gains-67388.html,
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/accounting/accounting-principles-ii/investments/balance-sheet-classification-valuation).
I would only use them as a guide and not as definitive advice and seek
professional guidance. The second has some examples of transactions to
record unrealized gains and losses in the various categories. 



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Period End Accounts

[DaveC49]

Mike,

1. it is unlikely but it is possible to unset the reconciliation status but
a warning with an opt out of the change is issued before it is changed and
it is possible to edit a reconciled split of a transaction but you will
normally get a warning even if the split you are editing is not into a
reconciled account.  The most likely possiblity is that you may have opened
one of the backup files from before the reconciliation rather than the main
file. The mainfile will be .gnucash while the backup files have a
format .gnucash..gnucash where  looks like
"20161215163750". Each time a backup file is created (when gnucash is
closed) a corresponding log file is created
.gnucash..log.  If you find files with a format
.gnucash..gnucash..gnucash.LCK ( a lock file to prevent the file being opened
more than once) and a .gnucash...LNK. These are normal

2. Unsure of what is happening here. I have just saved a custom report using 
Reports->Save Report Configuration 
and recalled it using 
Reports->Saved Report Configuration. 

After closing Gnucash and Reopening the report is still there so the
mechanism is fine. I wonder if your problem may be related to a similar
possibility as 1 where an earlier backup file has been opened as the main
file?  As far as i can tell the saved reports are in the main gnucash file
(I couldn't find them elsewhereon my Linux setup).

3.  Yes there is a mechanism for period end. Tools->Close Book.  (see
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/tool-close-book.html)  in
the Gnucash Help manual
(https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/help.html). This should
create transactions to zero the income and expense accounts to Equity as
described in the documentation referenced.  There is much discussion about
whether this is necessary in Gnucash as the reports can be set to generate
for any specified period but if you have a pedantic accountant it is there.  

Setting in stone is another question. Any computer file on a read/write
medium is always alterable ( any file locking only helps with accidental
writing not a deliberate attempt to change the file). Most people drop a
copy of their file as it is when the financial reports are generated onto a
readonly medium like CDROM, DVD and store that as a set in stone copy of the
state of the finances at that time. You will also find a lot of discussion
of this issue in the forum archives.

David

David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Bank reconciliation question

[DaveC49]

It should be no problem at all. Just record the original transactions you
already have  recorded against something like a miscellaneous expenses
account. Add notes to the description that they were direct debits in error.
The refunds should also appear in your OFX records so just load then and use
the same miscellaneous expense account to record the refund against. Attach
notes in the Description field referencing the orignal incorrect
transactions in error so that your auditors will be happy. 

Reconciliation should be no problem as your bank statements should have both
the original debits to the account(credits in your books) and the credits
(debits in your books) to the account so they should reconcile against your
account as normal.

When you prepare the financial statements, you could put in an explanatory
note, referencing the transactions in error. 

Transactions hould appear something like

Original transaction:
debit  
credit
Asset: Bank 
Expenses:Miscellaneous  

corresponding Refund 

Asset: Bank    
Expense: Miscellaneous

You may need to consult any local legislation which governs your association
and its recording  of financial matters or your auditors. As long as the
explanation is clear and references any external
documentation/correspondence from your bank, your auditors should be happy. 

Note that you can also create links from transactions to associated
documents.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: Reconcile problem

[DaveC49]

If its any help the reconcile dialog should allow you to change both the date
and the ending balance. The observed behaviour on Gnucash 2.6.18 ( and it
hasn't changed for me since changing from  2.6.16 or from previous versions
over the last 2-3 years) on Linux Mint 18.3 (Ubuntu 16.04) is that if you
change the date, the initial reconcile dialog updates the ending balance to
what the account record indicate it to beat that date. If your external
record shows a different balance at that date then you can enter that
balance  and hit enter. It then opens the main reconcile window with the
ending balance set to the value you have just entered.

A mouseover of the icons on the toolbar also brings up the tooltips and
again that behaviour was the same in previous Gnucash versions for the past
4-5 years. 

If you are not seeing the tooltips, perhaps it may be a problem/difference
with the library versions installed on your operating system. As far as I
know dpkg works on SUSE so it may be worth doing dpkg -l and comparing the
loaded libraries against the dependency list for 2.6.16. If there is an
older than recommended library, that may be a possible explanantion.



-
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: QFX Import and Reconciled Transactions

[DaveC49]

Hi David,

Agreed that the process of importing of transactions to an account is a
separate and distinct process from that of reconciliation with an external
statement.

Given that however, the import process, if it matches an existing
transaction in your accounts will classify a transaction as "Reconcile
(auto) match" and the R column is checked. What I am unsure of is whether
this will set the "reconciled" flag on the transaction. 

I just tried reimporting an OFX file which I imported earlier today and it
correctly matched all transactions as currently existing ( these had not
been reconciled against a statement and the reconcile flag was not set in
the account register). I was reluctant to hit OK to see whether it sets the
reconcile flag on the transaction records, but I took the risk of having to
unset a month's records, and it *does not *set the reconcile flag on
re-importing and justs skips importing the records which is the desirable
behaviour (from my point of view). It is the use of reconcile in the context
of importing that is confusing. I would prefer to see a more explanatory
message like "Auto match to existing record - skipping import" in that
comment field, i.e. not use reconcile in this context because of the
confusing the process with reconciliation.

The original question I answered was referring, I think, specifically to the
import process matching imported transactions to already reconciled
transactions, i.e. those with the reconcile flag already set in the account
register and  not just the R column set in the import process (and the
"Reconcile (auto) match" in the comment field of the transaction). 

I have not specifically tested whether Gnucash actually does that yet but I
will give it a go with a test set of books later today and see what actually
does happen.  I remember finding documentation of the Bayesian matching and
what the flags (A, U+R, R ) mean being veryhard to come by a year or two ago
and John Ralls spelled it out for me in a reply to a question at that time,
however I can't find that in the archives but this one  does have it
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/How-does-AqBanking-work-A-U-R-and-R-td4661099.html
or
http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/When-importing-QFX-what-does-U-R-actually-do-td4689755.html.



-
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: gnucash-user Digest, Vol 179, Issue 59

[DaveC49]

Elmar,

If you have narrowed the date range in which the error has occurred then it
is down to old fashioned accounting practices for finding errors. Some of
these articles may help:
http://www.reallifeaccounting.com/pubs/Article_Theme_Detecting_Accounting_Errors.pdf
https://ww2.odu.edu/~lhenry/accterrors.doc
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/37/pages/study-identifying-accounting-errors
https://talloncpa.sharepoint.com/Pages/FindingBalancingErrors.aspx
https://sciencing.com/catch-accounting-bookkeeping-errors-2324699.html

David



-
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: QFX Import and Reconciled Transactions

[DaveC49]

Any matching procedure on an import is not going to be perfect. Make the
criteria too tight and almost nothing is matched. Too loose and everything
is matched, so it is always a compromise. 

I have found the order in which I process the OFX imports from my various
accounts can have some impact on matching or at least the number of
transactions to an account which will be matched. I have one bank general
purpose account from which transfers to other accounts (credit card, account
connected to Paypal, savings accounts) are more common so I usually import
it first as there are then a smaller number of transactions in the other
accounts which are automatically matched so they are easier to check. If I
import the other accounts first then the odds of a mismatch are increased
and there are many more matches to existing transactions. 

Perhaps one of the developers may be able to comment on how the matching
occurs, but I would imagine it is first a match on the amount and then on
proximity of the dates. The README on the Github gives some idea of how the
importer works although not detail of its opearation. 

At best matching on the importer can only be a guide and its results always
need to be checked. I usually find any errors I haven't picked up at import
when I do a reconciliation against the issued statements but my bank now
only issues statements six monthly on some accounts and quarterly on others
and only my credit card has a monthly statement (one example of the many
improvements to customer service) so it takes longer to find errors now.

There are also a number of previous discussions of matching in the archives.
I odn't hthink the code has changed a lot recently.

David



-
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: How to deal with RRSP's (Canada)

[DaveC49]

Larry 

If your withdrawals from the RRSP are taxable on withdrawal then I think
your approach of using two files recording transfers to your bank account
from the RRSP as Expenses in the RRSP account and  Income in your main
accounts should work fine as it will satisfy the accounting equation in both
files without any conflicts and will keep Gnucash happy. 

With both the RRSP and your bank accounts in a single file, the decrease of
an asset (RRSP) is a credit to that account and an increase in Income (which
it would have to be to record it as income for taxation) is also a credit to
the income account in that same file, which would not be a balanced
transaction in which the sum of debits and credits is zero.

David



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: How to deal with RRSP's (Canada)

[DaveC49]

Larry,

I'm not familiar with the details of RRSP accounts in Canada so any comments
here are general in nature and not taken as accounting advice per se. 

 If it is a retirement savings account you would treat it as an Asset.
Depending upon the conditions associated with withdrawal of funds from the
RRSP you would most likely classify it as either a long term fixed asset or
a current asset. For personal accounting this distinction is not as
important as in business accounting, but can be still useful.  (You could
simply record eveything just under Assets if you wished and this met your
requirements). 

If you can withdraw funds at any time at your discretion, then you would
normally classify it as a current asset otherwise as a fixed asset. If there
are rules about how much you can withdraw and how often in the future, you
could continue to classify it as a fixed asset when you gain ready access to
the funds at some future time. If the funds become freely available (on
retirement for example), you could reclassify it as a current asset at this
point in time.  This simply requires having placeholder subaccounts for
Fixed  Assets and Current Assets under your Assets top level account and
changing the parent account for your RRSP from Fixed Assets to Current
Assets for example. It will just change what heading it appears under on the
Balance Sheet

If you are paying into the RRSP yourself, you are not creating an expense
when you transfer the money even though it may  actually go to whoever holds
and maintains the RRSP account  (it may be your bank for example) as you
still retain ownership and the right to access the funds in the future.

You are in this case exchanging one asset (cash in your bank account) for
another asset (the increase in the balance of the RRSP), so there is no
expense component of the transaction. The basic transaction will be:

  Debit 
 
Credit
Asset:Bank:CheckAccount

Asset:RRSP  



If you select double line mode (Menu->View->Double Line) when you click on a
transactionof this type in an account register e.g. your RRSP account
Register you should lines corresponding to both of the above components.

Interest should be recorded as:
Debit   

Credit
Asset:RRSP  yyy
Income:InterestRRSP 
 
yyy

Whether that interest is taxable or not under your local legislation will
determine whether you classify it under TaxableIncome or NonTaxableIncome.

When you withdraw funds from the RRSP to your bank account, the transaction
will be the same as the deposit above with a reversal of the debit and
credit entries,i.e.:

  Debit 
 
Credit
Asset:Bank:CheckAccount  
Asset:RRSP  
  


Hope this helps with the recording of your RRSP.  If your records are in
anyway critical (e.g. tax and legal implications) it would be advisable to
seek professional advice locally.

David Cousens



-
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
___
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Re: [GNC] Is there a Save As command line option

[DaveC49]

Steve,

One possibility is to use synchronized data bases using master-slave
replication. I know this works with MySQL and it is a bit of a pain to set
up but once it is going it is generally pretty good. Also a bit of a pain to
restart if the replication gets out of sync. I have been meaning to setup
scripts to do that but haven't yet got around to it. I keep several database
on my laptop and desktop in sync automatically. Not sure about PostGRES or
sqlite3 replication capability. 

Also if you have Dropbox or similar access you can store the GnuCash files
in a Dropbox and access it from multiple devices.

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] Bug in design of commodity sell transactions? (was Re: Getting My Account To Trial Balance)

[DaveC49]

Adrien,

>From what little I know of the automatic gains/loss calculations by default
the gain or loss on a transaction is created in an Orphan-Gains-CCC account
by default and the user has to reassign the gain or loss to an appropriate
income account. 

 See
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html#invest-sellAutoExample
in the Tutorial and Concepts Guide for a description of how the Scrub
function works. 

The transaction is balanced by the split into the Orphan-Gains-CCC account, 
which is not a true income account as such in the account heirarchy but is
used so the procedure has a defined target.

 From Section 9.7.3.10 covering the scrub function  which covers automatic
generation of the required splits the user is then instructed to proceed to
Section 9.7.3.6 where it describes reassignment of the Orphan-Gains-CCC
account to the appropriate Income account. Here the CCC refers to the
specific currency associated with the asset security account where trading
is in multiple currencies so foa a trade in Austraian dollars it would be
AUD or USD if the trade was in US dollars

David 



-
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] GNUcash 3.2 file open issue

[DaveC49]

Adrien, David,

The same issue occurs in Linux Mint 19(Tara) which is Ubuntu 18.04 based.
Nemo (file explorer)  can see the mounted USB stick and access it directly
or via the /media// mount point for the device but the Gnucash file
open dialog neither sees the USB stick or /media// mount point when
you click on other locations. It only lists a restricted set of the
directories under / by comparison with what can be accessed from Nemo. Not
being able to access the /media mount points would qualify as a bug.

 On LM19 /media has 755 permissions, the user directory under it has 750 and
the mounted USB stick has 755 permissions. 

The file->Open dialog in LibreOffice which looks to be a similar GTK3 dialog
does display the USB stick in the sidebar and it sees all the directories
under / as well as any networked locations which don't show up in GnuCash
either.

if no-one has already filked a bug i will put one in later today.

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] Payroll add-on, module, software?

[DaveC49]

John

I had considered writing a payroll plugin a few years ago but found that
finding my way around the Gnucash code made it difficult so I have great
respect for the business features that Derek has created so far. I started
to think more in terms of a separate payroll program which maintained its
own user interface and database and exported the necessary accounting
information to GnuCash via something like OFX importing. I have looked at a
variety of open source and purportedly free offerings most of which are very
jurisdiction specific and satisfy local compliance requirements. Many offer
a free version for a small number of employees and then scale into plans for
more employees. I have not found any which mention exporting or integration
of accounting information except where part of an ERP system (rarely free). 

As Derek has indicated the software can be complex because there is both a
dependence upon the taxation law requirements as well as industrial law
requirements and the framework for both varies considerably across many
jurisdictions. Tthere is also a high annual maintenance load to satisfy
compliance issues in both areas. As a business owner 15 years ago I was
happy to pay for software which handled the taxation compliance even though
industrial relations compliance was not handled at that time. We have a
fairly complex array of federal and state awards negotiated with the unions
and ratified by state and federal industial relations tribunals/courts along
with individual enterprise bargaining agreements with larger companies and
individual employment contracts for salaried staff as well as a compulsory
superannuation system paid by the employer and a withholding system for
employee tax contributions. I would imagine the situation is not too
different in most countries.  The need to store employee specific
information like tax file numbers, address and contact details also
introduces compliance issues re privacy although that is more OS and network
security related.

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] Nabble Delay? (was Re: Future Payments)

[DaveC49]

Adrien,

I do use Nabble and also get the user list posts by email but as I am in
Australia I sometiimes notice there is a long delay associated with being in
this timezone. I'm not sure where the moderators are located but, I tend to
post usually in the morning AEST (UTC -10:00) and my posts don't often
appear on Nabble, until the next morning so often the issue has been dealt
with by the time a post gets up. We need to be aware that not all responders
are necessarily in the same time zone.

This never seemed to be a problem a couple of years ago but maybe the
location of the moderator(s) has changed and/or they only have a narrow time
window available to them to lookover posts. Again no criticism of the
moderators intended or to be inferred.  I have never really expected
immediate responses in any case so I don't find it too much of a problem but
it does make conversations on a topic difficult at times.

The delay is not just whether one is subscribed to the mail  lists or not
though. I am subscribed to both gnucash-dev and gnucash-user but use Nabble
a lot of the time and my posts to both are still passed through a moderator
and it does not matter whether I reply using Nabble online or by email I
still receive an email saying my post is awaiting moderation.

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] Getting My Account To Trial Balance

[DaveC49]

Adrien,

The main function of the trial balance is to ensure the accounts are
numerically correct before any adjustments to the accounts are made before
producing the final financial statements. It should be just a straight
listing of the balance (credit or debit) of all accounts in the chart of
accounts and the sum of all credits should equal the sum of all debits. 

This is usually the starting point for adjusting the accounts.  Closing the
books is not just simply a transfer of the income and expenses for the
accounting period to equity. Prior to this, the accounts may require
specific adjustments which reflect the nature of the business and the
particularly the taxation rules which apply to it. Even though GnuCash is a
perpetual system it will require these adjustments to be made. This is also
the function of what was a 13 month financial year in some accounting
systems, in which the 13th virtual month was used to record and process
these adjustments without affecting the data for the 12 actual months,  but
was included in the current accounting period.

Adjustments are normally made for things which affect more than a single
accounting period like prepaid expenses, depreciation of non-current assets,
accrued expenses, accrued revenues and unearned revenues and the differences
between accounts recorded on a cash (when the money is actually received or
paid) or recorded on an accrual basis (when the income is earned (e.g. when
a report is produced in a consulting business) or expenditure is incurred in
an accounting sense in accordance with the matching principle) so that the
correct income and expenses associated with earning it are recorded in the
correct accounting period, mainly for taxation complliance. 

Not so important in personal accounting and usually many small businesses
below a specified income/turnover level where cash accounting is allowed to
be used for taxtaion purposes, but certainly significant for larger
businesses which must use accrual accounting under taxation legislation. 

An example can be in something like manufacturing where you may purchase
materials is one period (i.e. outlay the money) but you actually incur the
expenditure in another accounting period (for example when you make the
product) but the associated revenue may even be produced in a third or
subsequent accounting period in which you sell the product.

David





-
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] Imbalance bug in credit note generation?

[DaveC49]

Hi Amish'

I can also confirm that the credit note has a bug for GnuCash 3.2 running on
Linux Mint 19 from the flat pack. I have created an Invoice for $100 for a
dummy company  in a test file and then a credit note for the same dummy
company for $50. I have not used a tax table. After the two transactions,
A/R has a balance of $150 intead of $50. 

The recorded transactions in the Accounts Receivable Register are as
follows:

Invoice Posted
 Dr 
  
Cr
Assets:Accounts Receivable  $100
Income:Sales
  
$100

Credit Note Posted
Dr  
 
Cr
Income:Sales $50
Assets:Accounts Receivable $50
Imbalance   
   
$100

whereas the last transaction  should have been
  Dr
  
Cr
Icome:Sales  $50
Assets:Accounts Receivable  
$50

giving rise to a final balance in the Accounts receivable of $150 and the
unnecessary entry for $100 in the Imbalance account.

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] balance sheet and account equation for Business Accounts

[DaveC49]

As well as the internal funds transfer from Euro to USD in your Asset:bank
account  are you also converting the corresponding income account in Euro to
an Income account in USD at the same exchange rate? If not this is a
possible spurce of any imbalance in the accounting equation. 

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] Missing menus

[DaveC49]

Joe,

I've been using GnuCash on Linux Mint for approx 5 years with no problems.
The Software manager version is sometimes a little behind the current
GnuCash version but at present it has a flatpak GnuCash V3.2 available that
worked fine under LM18.3 and is working fine on LM19.  I'm currently running
Linux Mint 19 (Tara) and previously used the LM17 and 18 versions. I have
also built GnuCash from source on Linux Mint for the last couple of years
and I like to stay up to date (also kid myself I might get involved in
development in a minor way when I get bored with being retired).

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] opening my accounts after I have saved them

[DaveC49]

Johnnie
Use File ->Open from the menu and navigate to the location where you saved
the file. Hopefully you did not save the file to a read only CD. You should
have received a warning that the device could not be written to if you had
attempted to do that.

Open the file .gnucash where filename is the name you saved the
file with.

Ignore files with the format .gnucash..gnucash or 
.gnucash..log as these are backup and logfiles, useful
for rebuilding if your main file becomes corrupted.

After this, on most or all operating systems GnuCash should open the file
selected above. On some operating systems you cannot run GnuCash by double
clicking on the data file . See the archives of this mailing list for
details for specific OSes.

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] Upgrading GC under Ubuntu

[DaveC49]

Stephen, Colin

Just a correction to my last post. There is no problem with the icon
installation on Linux Mint 18.3.  It seems to possibly be a problem with
Nemo (Linux Mint file explorer) rather than the installation. All of the
icon files are actually there but there is something with the permissions
that does not allow Nemo  to see them if it is not opened as root despite,
all the files having read permissions for all users (and only for gnucash
files). I have closed and reopened Nemo in case it had somehow manged to get
that instance into a wierd state but the behavior seems to be reproducible.

It is a really weird situation, as with Nemo not open as root I can see the
icon and files in/usr/share/gnucash/pixmaps but not in
/usr/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions or any of the other icon
directories (shows as 0 items) yet with Nemo opened as root I can see them
all yet for any directories under /usr/share/gnucash, e.g. checks, I can see
all the contents in both yet there is no difference in the permissions of
the files (-rw-r--r-) or the directories (drwxr-xr-x) for the text files in
checks or the png files in the icon directories. The ownership and group of
all files and directories is root, root as you would expect.

If I use a terminal I can of course see the files at all levels with and
without root permissions.

Yet I have checked other software directories e.g. /usr/local/share/icons
and I have no problem seeing .png files in similar shares which all have the
above directory and file permissions without opening as root.

 I will check on the Linux Mint forums to see if anyone else has experienced
the same problem with Nemo.





-
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] Upgrading GC under Ubuntu

[DaveC49]

Stephen, Colin

I think there is a problem with the cmake creation of the scripts that do
the install, that is not installing the icons correctly. I just did an
uninstall of v3.2 on Ubuntu, deleted any gnucash files left in my install
location (/usr/local) relating to gnucash so that all directories had to be
recreated and there were no existing files to cause any problems, then did a
reinstall.  The procedure (sudo make install) reported that it was
installing the icons in /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/... etc. but
when I check the locations it has claimed to install files to, there are
only empty directories and no files in them. The output from the terminal
for that section of the install is below. I am not too sure what the
"Up-to-date" note means but no png files end up in those locations on my
system. See attached  screenshot of /usr/local/share/gnucash taken after the
above install below
  Screenshot_from_2018-07-03_14-33-56.png

  

-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/256x256
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/scalable
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-transfer.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-account-report.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice-duplicate.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-gnome-pdf.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-account.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice-post.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-account-edit.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-account-open.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-account-new.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice-unpost.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice-edit.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-account-delete.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-split-trans.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice-new.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-sx-new.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-jumpto.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/24x24/actions/gnc-invoice-pay.png
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/128x128
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/22x22
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-transfer.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-account-report.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice-duplicate.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-gnome-pdf.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-account.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice-post.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-account-edit.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-account-open.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-account-new.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice-unpost.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice-edit.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-account-delete.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-split-trans.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice-new.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-sx-new.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-jumpto.png
-- Installing:
/usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/gnc-invoice-pay.png
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/32x32
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/48x48
-- Installing: /usr/local/share/gnucash/icons/hicolor/96x96
-- Installing: 

Re: [GNC] GnuCash 3.2 Released

[DaveC49]

Geert,

I had realised the same thing about needing to uninstall before building and
shifted the section on uninstalling to before the section on Building on the
Wiki page and specifically mentioned using the previous version's build
directory. I might make the note clearer about retaining the build directory
for uninstalling.

>From the tarball the source directory installs with the version number
attached (from github it is a generic gnucash). It has become my practice to
put the build directory inside the source directory (I have had no problems
with that) so it is clearly identified which version it is for, or
alternatively one could tag the build directory with the version number as
there is no real need to keep the source directory once the build is done.
I'm not pushed for space so I don't bother to delete the source files until
I've installed another version and I'm happy with it but others won't
necessarily have that luxury.

At the moment the uninstall from a ninja build I did is a kludge. I will see
if I can find how/where cmake generates the install secion when creating
build.ninja and populate the uninstall target. If I succeed, i'll generate a
patch.

 I take John's point that ninja,  and cmake to a lesser extent now that it
is the only build configuration route, are primarily developers tools. 

David



-
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] Uninstalling previous versions

[DaveC49]

Stan,

The previous discussion on uninstalling related to Linux (the Ubuntu
distribution in particular) where users have built GnuCash from the source
code.

On Linux, if you use the particular Linux distribution's (Ubuntu, Debian,
Redhat, Centos etc.) supported version of Gnucash, it normally has an
uninstall for the previous version available to the user. Unlike Windows
though, it is not necessarily built into the installer for the succeeding
versions to automatically uninstall any previous versions, which would be
nice. Some distribution package managers may or should do that.

Unfortunately the Linux distribution GnuCash versions are often considerably
behind the GnuCash stable releases, so more Linux users tend to build from
source than would on either Windows or MACs. Linux is complicated by there
being many variants of it and these all tend to handle package management in
their own way, which is why packaging for a particular distribution is in
the hands of the people who manage the distribution rather than the GnuCash
developers. 

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] Building v3 - Wiki entry for Ubuntu

[DaveC49]

Colin,

A correction. The latest LM 18.3 Software Manager now installs Gnucash 3.2
as a flatpack in /usr/bin. There are no identiable gnucash directories apart
from the user configuration. 

David



-
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.