Re: [GNC] GNUCash becoming unusable ..v3.4
I am trying to decide how to proceed with my accounting software. I have been using Quicken since DOS v2. Back then, if you encountered a problem, you could go over to Intuit in Menlo Park and there’d always be an engineer happy to talk with you. They also had free phone advise for a few hours, more than enough to get a newbie up and going. At about the same time Intuit moved their headquarters to Arizona (I think it was AZ), they replaced their original business model which was to provide a straightforward, user-friendly, virtually bug-free personal bookkeeping program. They switched to the Microsoft Model which is to “upgrade” with superfluous “features” and simultaneously introduce lots of bugs so customers who upgraded to the “new improved version” would be locked into an endless cycle of upgrading to get bugs fixed AND simultaneously acquire new bugs. Ain’t greed great :( Then my hard drive died and I decided to replace it, sort of, with a Raspberry Pi and take the plunge into the world of Linux. I had wanted to learn more about Unix since the late 70s and here was a golden opportunity to do just that. As my chits built up, I turned to the well thought of GnuCash, only to discover that it is a mess. It’s one thing to have a program that is DESIGNED to use specific outside utilities, which fact is then fully and accurately documented. It is quite another to have a program so buggy that the end user needs to go out and FIND the right 3rd party programs to make it run well, for a while, sort of. In short, GnuCash is about where Quicken was when Intuit dumped it. Buggy, unfriendly, and failing at trying to be all things to all users. I suggest that you Gnu folks do what Intuit did originally. Make a simple to use, bug-free personal bookkeeping program. [Maybe the rights to the original DOS and early Windows versions of Quicken are now free or could be gotten inexpensively and you could build on those platforms.] AFTER you get a program that works almost flawlessly, THEN create modules that can either be incorporated into or dynamically linked to the main program. Simultaneously, continue to help newbies who want just the bookkeeping program and nothing else. What I can see from the short time I’ve been in this group and reading the emails is that GnuCash is basically flawed and fixing those flaws is a game of Whack-a-Mole with each whack creating new software conflicts. When your great idea just needs a tweak or two, you tweak. When your idea needs fixes that look like a dog chasing its tail, you go back to the drawing board. Instead of fighting with GnuCash, I think that I’ll try to figure a way to install an old DOS version of Quicken on my Pi. Aside from getting a program that is clean and easy to use, it’ll be fun to re-visit the Easter Eggs. ___ 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] How to Reclassify Invoice Amounts
Unless I misunderstand your situation, you are a small business, do things pretty simply, and do not have a large accounting dept. If this is so, then you don’t need to reclassify anything. The total billed for your service(s) is Sales and all the “various expenses related to the transaction” are booked as expenses when you enter the bills from YOUR vendor(s), if you are on the accrual basis, or when you pay your bills, if you are on the cash basis. [Side note: One thing you said worries me. “Before I started keeping track of sales by invoice I would just splt the transaction.” IF you “split the transaction” by breaking the invoice total down into income, fees, shipping, etc, what did you book when you paid your bills for those items? Take PayPal. If you used to book $1.75 of the invoice as PayPal Expenses AND you booked your bills from PayPal as PayPal Expenses, then you booked each PayPal fee twice. This would badly distort your P statement because you would be showing less revenue than you were actually receiving and more expenditures than you actually incurred.] Be forewarned that Adrien’s additional GL posts like Dr. Expenses:Insurance $192.15 Cr. Assets:Current Assets:Checking $192.15 are a mistake if you book insurance, PayPal, and other expenses when you enter or pay the bills for those items. Doing it a second time will a) throw your checking account out of balance and b) double book your expenses which the IRS will NOT be happy about. There is a misconception that accounting programs can do everything. They can’t. There are many things that are better tracked separately using spreadsheets and then booked into the accounting program with end-of-month GL entries, like pre-paid insurance and accrued interest, for example. ___ 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] Column labels in Credit Card accounts
Dear Maf. King, Thank you for your very helpful answer. Diane On 11/17/2018 04:22 PM, Maf. King wrote: On Saturday, 17 November 2018 19:05:18 GMT Diane Trefethen wrote: Dear Fellow Users, Second: My Credit Card type account registers display Debits and Credits, not Charges and Payments. Why? Hi, Edit -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Use Formal Accounting labels HTH, Maf. ___ 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.
[GNC] Column labels in Credit Card accounts
Dear Fellow Users, I have GNUcash 2.6, and Raspbian GNU/Linux, v9 First: I apologize for asking here without checking the Archives but the search function isn’t working yet and I don’t see any way to look through the FAQs except to eyeball each month (there seem to be about 100 of them) to find my question. That is a bridge too far. However, if there is an efficient way to scan the FAQs, I will gladly use it first. Second: My Credit Card type account registers display Debits and Credits, not Charges and Payments. Why? Thank you. Diane ___ 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.
