On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 01:23:13AM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> On 16 May 2000 21:45:09 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
> John Hasler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > Rob Coker writes:
> > > Has anybody written code to be able to delete every transaction in every
> > > account to prepare for a new accounting period?
> >
> > Wouldn't it be simpler to just extract the chart of accounts and use it to
> > start a new file? In fact, a chart of accounts editor of some sort would
> > be nice. Creating dozens of expense accounts by going pointy-clicky over
> > and over is rather slow.
> >
> > > It would be really cool if it also adjusted the opening balance to be the
> > > prior ending balance, but that is a nicety.
> >
> > Or extract the closing balances from the old file and insert them as
> > opening balances in the new one.
>
> In the long run, I think this needs to have some sort of user interface
> to control policy.
>
> --> There may be accounts where it is desirable to keep history _forever_.
> Mortgage payments, for instance.
> Or property improvements.
That does, in a way, depend on what you are doing with the software. If
you are running a business, German tax laws require you to keep history
for at least ten years as far as I know. Of course, roll ups once in a
while are necessary, but they must be handled in a way that keeps the
history of the account.
>
> --> There may be accounts where it is desirable to "roll things up"
> once in a while, perhaps melding transactions together into (let's say)
> monthly summaries.
>
> --> It may then be valuable to, after some period of time, have the "rolled
> up" transactions folded together, and the income side removed from
> the income (and expense) accounts, netted against Retained Earnings.
>
That would be really valuable. Actually this would keep the history,
too, since it just implies a transaction to Retained Earnings once in a
while.
> _Usually_, I'd expect the short term accounts (banks, cash, accounts
> receivable, accounts payable, ...) to get rolled up once in a while;
> long term stuff like mortgages and fixed assets wouldn't get messed
> around with as often, if ever.
The user could be allowed to set a roll up policy for each account, like
"roll up every xxx months/years/never against account yyy". The ledger window
should then, by default, display only the current accounting period.
I'm not sure whether this is the right way to do it. If it is, the
implementation shouldn't even be too difficult. Of course the
introduction of accounting periods into gnucash requires a change of the
data format...
Jan
......... . .. .. . . ..... .. ..... .. .. ... ... .. . . ..... ......
Jan Schrage [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~schrage
PGP: http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu/pks-commands.html
PGP signature