Re: [GNC] splits 3+ accounts, how to

[Eric Siegerman]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 07:39:20PM -0700, DaveC49 wrote:
> To be fair to GnuCash, I have not been able to find a formal definition of
> split in my accounting text books . The only formal references I could find
> were [a couple of specific cases that are clearly beyond the scope of
> this discussion]

Interesting.

> The use of "split" in Gnucash to describe any of the components of a
> transaction either debit or credit is explained fairly comprehensively in
> the Gnucash documentation  [...]

Oops.  It's been long enough since I've read that that I forgot
it's even there.  Sorry for the noise.

  - Eric
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Re: [GNC] splits 3+ accounts, how to

[Eric Siegerman]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 09:38:23AM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> I find it's *usually* easy to determine based on context.  A Split, by
> itself, usually means an individual Gnucash Split.  On the other hand, a
> Split Transaction usually implies a transaction with >2 splits.

To be sure, as an adjective, "split" pretty reliably indicates
the accounting sense.

As a noun it likely means the GNC-internal one -- but only when
coming from someone who's aware of the distinction.  AFAIK,
that's a GnuCash-specific usage.

Counterexample: the OP wrote:
| I've tried to learn how to do a three way split like entering [...]
No problem; I do *not* mean this as a criticism, however mild.

My main point was to give a heads-up to newish users (or at
least, newish list subscribers) that they might see the term
"split" used in a sense they weren't expecting; and if so, how to
make heads or tails (umm, debits or credits? :-) ) of what's
being said.

  - Eric
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Re: [GNC] splits 3+ accounts, how to

[Eric Siegerman]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 04:29:49PM -0400, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> Ah .. That is what had me confused about "three way splits"

To make things worse, the GnuCash source code uses "split" in yet
another way:  each of a transaction's entries is stored in a data
structure called a split.  Thus, what in accounting terms is a
simple, un-split transaction, is stored in GnuCash as two
"splits" (one each for the debit and credit entries).

One often has to stop and think about whether someone means
"split" in the GnuCash-internal or the formal accounting sense
:-/

  -Eric
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Re: [GNC] splits 3+ accounts, how to

[Eric Siegerman]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 01:24:50PM -0400, Eric Siegerman wrote:
> 3. "Unbalanced CAD" (or whatever) [...] just means
> "you're not done finagling yet".

Corollary: even if you've committed the transaction, and thus
ended up with an "Unbalanced XXX" in your accounts list -- no
harm done.  Just go back and edit the transaction(s) in question,
and all will be well.  To do that:
  - open the register for "Unbalanced XXX"
  - edit each transaction in turn; as you do it will vanish from
"Unbalanced XXX"
  - repeat until "Unbalanced XXX" is empty

Same goes for "Orphan XXX".

  - Eric
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Re: [GNC] splits 3+ accounts, how to

[Eric Siegerman]

A few things I've learned the hard way:

1. A split transaction usually has one debit and several credits, or
vice versa.  Whichever side there's only one of, enter that one *first*.
Otherwise things tend to get tangled up -- not beyond recovery, but it's
easier to stay out of that situation than to get back out of it.

E.g.

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 08:58:55AM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
>   When I pay my mortgage each month I assign the total payment to 3
> debit acounts accessed using the Split menu function.
> [...]
>   The total of these three amounts are offset by their total in the credit
> (decrease) to my checking account.

In this case, start with the (single) credit.

1b. Occasionally a transaction does want both multiple debits and
multiple credits.  Treat those as an advanced topic, and avoid them
until you've wrapped your head around the simpler case.

2. Sometimes it takes some finagling to get right.

3. "Unbalanced CAD" (or whatever) doesn't mean "you've screwed up
*again*, you dummy!", as I interpreted it at first.  It just means
"you're not done finagling yet".

  - Eric
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Re: [GNC] What does your Summary Bar say in Gnucash-3.0? Mine is rude

[Eric Siegerman]

On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 10:10:16PM -0400, lj wrote:
> When viewing the accounts tree, my summary bar at the bottom displays this, 
> exactly:
>  $:  Net Ass Profits:

I'm seeing almost the same thing on Ubuntu 16.04, XFCE.  Image
attached, showing the summary bar both "at rest" and clicked-on;
under both 2.6.18 and 3.0.  (The four screen snaps were cropped
to the same size and position, so they should be directly
comparable.)

My currency is "C$", so that leading "C" is totally expected :-)

  - Eric
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Re: Gnucash 3.0 Build error

[Eric Siegerman]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 10:56:01PM -0700, DaveC49 wrote:
> fatal error: gdk/gdk.h: No such file or directory

This looks like the problem.  Maybe you don't have the relevant
package installed.  On my Ubuntu 16.04 system, I think that's
"libgtk-3-dev".

  - Eric
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Re: beginning balance of income and expense accounts

[Eric Siegerman]

On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 09:34:58AM -0400, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> [...] it is usual to start a set of books JUST from the balance sheet
> with income and expense zero.

This is what I was going to suggest -- very tentatively and with
many caveats that I'm not an accountant.  Since Mike (I believe)
is one, I feel on much firmer ground amplifying on what he said:

 1. Start with opening-balance entries for the Balance Sheet
accounts -- but as of the previous year end, *not* as of the
cutover date (9-30 in your case) -- and opening balances of
zero for the Income Statement accounts

This is what your GnuCash books would have looked like on Jan. 1
if you had cut over to it then.

 2. For each Income and Expense account, enter one rolled-up
summary transaction.  Its date should be the cutover date,
and its amount should be the account's balance as of that
date.  All of these should be against some Asset account (see
below)

At this point, the Income and Expense balances will be correct as
of the cutover date, but the Assets and Liabilities will be
wildly out of whack, because your summary entries won't have even
tried to reflect whether, for example, that widget you bought at
Office Depot on July 15 came out of Petty Cash, from the Bank
account (via debit card), or from a Liability account (via credit
card).  So now:

 3. Make adjusting entries to move money among the Asset
and Liability accounts to bring them into agreement with
reality

If I were doing it, I'd probably create a dummy asset account
specifically for this purpose, to make clear that it doesn't
correspond to any real-world store of value.  In particular:
  - the dummy account would start step (2) with a balance of zero
(no opening balance, and no txn's yet)
  
  - after step (3), its balance should automagically end up back
at zero because everything just works out -- if that doesn't
happen, go back and look for errors

  - In between those points, the dummy account's balance doesn't
signify anything, so if it goes negative, no big deal

My non-accountant-ness means that I can only guess at how Equity
figures into all this.  Rather than do so -- possibly very
wrongly -- I'll leave that piece for someone else to please fill
in.

I also don't know whether the dummy-asset-account idea would
remotely pass muster among real accountants.

  - Eric
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Re: Gnucash and 529 plans

[Eric Siegerman]

Caveat: I'm not an accountant.

On Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 07:21:31PM -0700, Steve Kelem wrote:
> How do I keep track of whether I've requested enough
> disbursements?

Presumably you have a GNC account for the 529 plan already,
reflecting its balance, earnings, etc.  Here's an approach that,
while requiring more transactions, seems to me to reflect what's
actually happening.

>Ideally, when I pay for tuition, for example,
> 1. The funds go out of my checking account into the university

At this point, the 529 plan owes you money, even though they
don't know it yet.  So enter two transactions:

  - the obvious one: debit tuition expense, credit your bank
account

  - but also: debit an "owed by 529 plan" asset account for
yourself, and an "owing to Steve" liability account for your
plan (I want to say "A/R" and "A/P" respectively, but in
GnuCash those specific account types are reserved for the
business functions, so one has to steer clear of them)

> 2. I need to make a disbursement request from my 529 plan

Make the request for the current balance of your "owed by 529
plan" asset account.

> 3. The disbursement gets deposited into my bank account.

Again, two transactions:
  - debit bank, credit 529-plan assets
  - debit 529-plan "owing", credit your "owed by plan"

Variations on the above for cases where you request the plan to
pay some expense directly -- which is why the disbursement
request is *not* for the current balance of the "owed by plan"
liability account.

  - Eric
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Multi-user suggestion: an edit token

[Eric Siegerman]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 10:21:55PM -0600, Jeff Hobson wrote:
> [...] a true conflict would arise if both platforms were
> modifying the data at the same time. That caveat, understood is
> the real barrier to mutual and simultaneous access. 

Indeed!

If there will be multiple people involved, one way to keep these
collisions from happening by accident is to have a physical token
of some sort.  It can be anything -- a dollar-store trinket, a
lovingly carved wooden figurine, an oddly shaped rock from the
garden, whatever :-)  As long as it's distinctive.

The rule is that only the person with the token on their desk is
allowed to touch the file.  So:
  - If you want to do some GnuCash work, grab the token first

  - When you're done, return the token to some agreed neutral
location where it lives while not in use

  - If you go to grab it and it's on someone else's desk, *check
with them* before you take it

No cheating on this one!  Maybe they left for the day and
forgot to return it ... but maybe they're just taking a quick
break in the middle of something long and intricate.  If Mary
has the token, Mary *owns* that file until she says
otherwise!

In theory this shouldn't be needed.  GnuCash is supposed to sort
all that out for you -- that's what the foo.gnucash.LCK file is
for.  But over some networks, that kind of locking can be iffy.
So if in practice you get these "John and Mary both changed it"
situations, the above physical-token scheme can be used as a
fallback.

  - Eric
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GnuCash release numbering

[Eric Siegerman]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 02:14:31PM -0500, davel...@mac.com wrote:
> Yes, 2.6.18 is newer. Each number between the periods is a
> separate number and 18 is greater than 3. 

To expand on that:  software version numbers don't work like
decimal fractions, even though they use "." as a separator.
Think of "2.6.18" as a series of (multi-digit) integers, and
compare each integer in turn until you find one that differs:
 2 = 2
 6 = 6
18 > 3<--- Bingo!

To put it another way: unlike in mathematics, "2.6.3" and
"2.6.30" are *not* equal.  (GnuCash 2.6.30 doesn't exist -- nor,
I imagine, will it ever exist, because the whole 2.6.x series
will reach end-of-life long before it gets twelve more releases.)

It gets weirder; I oversimplified, above.  The individual
components of a version number are not always integers.  There
can be other characters as well, usually letters.  Worse, what
those letters mean depends on the project.

In some projects, "3a" comes before "3".  To invent an example,
"4.7.3a1" might be the first "alpha testing" pre-release.  Then
"beta" releases like 4.7.3b1; then "release candidates" like
4.7.3rc1; and finally the *real* release, 4.7.3 itself.

In other projects, it's the other way around -- something like
"3a" comes *after* "3".

GnuCash works the second way.  It had 2.6.17a and 2.6.17b as
*very* minor post-release corrections to 2.6.17.  Typically
one tries to avoid needing these post-release fixups, and in
fact GnuCash 2.6.18 hasn't needed any ... but sometimes stuff
happens...

One wants the world of computers to be as logical as Mr. Spock,
but alas, we humans seem able to make a confusing mess out of
anything :-/

> In general, do not download the 2.7.x versions as those are
> beta releases for the next version unless you are testing those
> with other data (i.e., don't run a 2.7 with the only copy of
> your actual data file).

The way GnuCash distinguishes testing prereleases is with odd vs.
even numbers for the second component.  The 2.6.x series are
"stable", i.e. intended for production use.  There are already
several 2.7.x releases, but those are "unstable"; they're only
for testing, *not* production use.  Once the 2.7.x series
stabilizes, they'll release 2.8.0, which will be the first stable
release of the new series.  So:

2.6.3 <--- Several years old now
...
2.6.16
2.6.17
2.6.17a
2.6.17b
2.6.18<--- The current stable release.  INSTALL THIS ONE.

2.7.0 \These already exist ...
2.7.1 |... but they're for testing only.
2.7.2 /DO NOT USE them for real work!

  <--- (2017-11-27.  Below here is in the future.)

2.6.19<--- The next stable release in the 2.6.x series
2.7.3 <--- The next testing release
2.6.x <--- Repeat as necessary ...
2.7.y <--- ... until ...

2.8.0 <--- The first stable release of the new series
2.8.1 <--- And so on
...
2.9.0 <--- First of the testing prereleases leading up to
   2.10.0


  - Eric
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Re: Customized saved-reports file per gnucash file (i.e. per company)

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 02:31:10PM +0530, Amish wrote:
> cp ~/.gnucash/saved-reports-$1 ~/.gnucash/saved-report-2.4
> exec gnucash /path/to/$1.gnucash

Problem: If you modify any reports, you'll have to remember to
copy the new file back again.

It might be better to create a symlink rather than copying the
file.  That way, changes will automatically go to the right
place.

  - Eric
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Re: Broken link at for the gnucash-user archives search

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 03:58:41PM -0700, John Ralls wrote:
> > On Sep 14, 2017, at 3:05 PM, Maxim Cournoyer  
> > wrote:
> > [broken "search" link at 
> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user]
> 
> We know.
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists#Searching_the_List_Archives 
> explains that.

The target of the broken link is:
https://lists.gnucash.org/search/?idxinfo=gnucash-user
(The link itself is on mailman's info page for a given list.)

I get that there are no immediate plans to (re)implement search
locally, and that's cool; but more helpful than just returning a
404 error would be to put a static page at that URL that explains
what to do instead.

  - Eric
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Re: Tracking a TIAA mixed fund account

[Eric Siegerman]

(Lost the attribution; sorry):
> Assets:TIAA (cash)
> Assets:TIAA:Lifecycle 1 (commodity)
> Assets:TIAA:Lifecycle 2 (commodity)
> Assets:TIAA:TIAA Mutual Fund (commodity)

I've never heard of TIAA before, but from what's been said, I
infer that an account there behaves enough like a normal
investment account for what follows to make sense, i.e. that it
can hold numerous securities, but can also directly hold cash.

If that's so, I'd make one small change to the suggested layout:
track the cash holdings in a fourth subaccount, rather than
dumping them into the parent account, like so:

Assets:TIAA (placeholder -- see below)
Assets:TIAA:Cash (cash)
Assets:TIAA:Lifecycle 1 (commodity)
etc.

That way you can see at a glance how much uninvested cash the
TIAA account holds, while the parent Assets:TIAA GNC account
shows its total value.

In this scheme, you'd never enter transactions directly into
Assets:TIAA, but only into its subaccounts.  Turning the former
into a "placeholder account" would help prevent mistakes in that
regard, but is entirely optional.

  - Eric
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Re: Flipping account types by hacking the XML

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 03:00:41PM +, Richard Ullger wrote:
> Could you not, having created the new account, delete the old account
> containing the transactions and when prompted, select the new account to
> move the transactions to?

That was my first thought.  But it turns out that the "delete
account" dialog only lets you move the transactions to accounts
of the same type as the one being deleted.

BTW, 2.6.15 and 2.6.16 are the same in this respect; this case
isn't part of the latter's new restrictiveness.

  - Eric
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