On 20 Apr 2000 17:34:16 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Bill Gribble <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> Rob Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > For some reason I think that gnucash is focused too much on the
> > non-personal finances, unless you want to do double entry accounting
> > for your finances. (which I don't, or at least don't think that I
> > do.) Maybe the manual which was mentioned is the answer that I am
> > looking for which will help me to understand how I should be using
> > this application. That would be nice.
>
> I'm not an accountant, but once I took a minute to wrap my brain
> around it double entry accounting seems as natural as it can be. It
> just doesn't make sense to do it any other way, especially in the
> underlying accounting infrastructure. I don't think it's all that
> much of a leap from Quicken's way of doing things, except that gnucash
> treats what Quicken calls "Categories" as accounts.
xacc-quicken.html discusses the issue of "Categories" versus "Accounts;"
xacc-double discusses double entry.
If the explanations aren't good enough, I suggest that people complain
about _that,_ and indicate what it is that they didn't grasp, so that
the documentation may be _improved._
> The differences between the meaning and use of asset, liability,
> expense, income, and equity accounts can be a little tricky to get at
> first, but a tutorial introduction to setting up initial accounts
> would go a long way.
Can you suggest improvements to xacc-groups.html?
There is a sample hierarchy there; an additional section in that file
to document further examples would be a reasonable thing to do.
> I don't think every user should even have to understand what "double
> entry" is; they just need to know that the program understands that
> money doesn't magically appear and disappear, it only moves around.
> If you write a check, you need to note where the money is going. If
> you deposit a check, you need to note where it came from. That's just
> basic record keeping, and the program should encourage it as much as
> possible.
See the last section of xacc-double.html; it suggests why it is probably
a bad idea for _anyone_ to use the "single-entry" accounting mode.
> A manual is always a good idea for a complicated piece of software,
> which I think gnucash is.
Yes, indeed. The _real_ problem is that GnuCash _does_ have the
beginnings of some reasonably decent documentation that apparently people
don't consult very much.
--
Actually, typing random strings in the Finder does the equivalent of
filename completion. (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the
intuitiveness of commands: file completion vs. the Mac Finder.)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
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