I just gave gnucash a try, and thought I'd report on something I found confusing (v 1.6.6): the initial "friendly" names for debit and credit. These appeared as "funds in" and "funds out."
For asset accounts this is fine, but for other types of accounts it is confusing. For liability accounts, if you get a liability, does that mean funds are in or out? Or, put differently, the name suggested to me that although funds in = debit for assets, it might mean credits for liabilities. For income and expense accounts the labelling is totally non-intuitive, as regular income gets labelled as funds out. As someone familiar with the debit/credit terminology, I wondered again if the mapping had been switched (that is, funds in = debit for asset but credit for income). I set the preference option for "use accounting terms" and now it's all clear--apparently "funds in" is just a relabelling of "debit." Granted that debit and credit are unfamiliar to those without an accounting background--to say that a debit increases your bank account sounds backwards to most--I don't think the attempted fix really works. Those without accounting backgrounds are likely to find the meaning of funds in and out unclear for non-asset accounts. And I found that familiarity with accounting didn't help, because the friendly names suggested to me that "funds in" might mean debit for some accounts and credit for others. I guess if people operate in single line mode from their asset accounts this won't come up (but what about credit cards?), but otherwise it's confusing. There are a couple of solutions I can think of: 1. stick just with debit and credit, and explain it briefly to people. However, that really is not going to fly for most home users. 2. describe what "funds in" means in non-asset accounts for both accountants and non-accountants. (That is, just say, "For those of you who know accounting, these are just friendly terms for debit and credit" and then have a somewhat longer explanation for others). 3. Provide a mode in which there is only one column, and it is interpreted so that positive numbers go to the "natural" place. Asset: debit Liability: credit Expense: debit Income: credit with negative the reverse. Again, credit cards are problematic. On a separate note, I was a bit surprised that Income and Expense accounts apparently don't go under the equity account, but must stand on their own. I should add that, apart from these problems, I found the program quite nice. _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnucash.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
