Re: GnuCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/14/2017 4:50 AM, Maf. King wrote:

On Sunday, 13 August 2017 21:49:51 BST Nick Major wrote:

Hi
Can you import previous history from TAS Books into GnuCash?




No idea about TAS Books - if you can get the data from TAS into either QIF or
CSV then probably will be importable into GC with few trial runs.
IF you are going to do this, do not try (at first) to do the import into 
your regular gnucash books. Instead create a set of "test" books into 
which you attempt the import of the QIF or CVS file that you have 
created from your TAS data. Only when you are sure that this is working 
properly do you do the import for real. That way you will not mess up 
your real books while trying doing those trial runs.


Michael D Novack
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Re: how to balance a loan to a director against expenses made by him?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/11/2017 12:57 AM, DaveC49 wrote:

Hi,

The most direct transaction to record this is:
   Debit
Credit
Liability:DirectorsBusiness Expenses   
Asset:LoansToDirector   .

The most important thing is to annotate the transaction description field to
indicate that a reimbursement of the expenses incurred by the director has
been offset against the loan to the director.

Going to jump in here with a consideration that has not been expressed. 
The purpose of accounting is to be able to supply necessary information. 
I do NOT know the reporting requirements of this situation for business, 
but do know, since I keep books for non-profits, that this is a 
situation (loans to a director) that I would have special reporting to 
do << I don't know exactly what, since those sections of the filings I 
get to leave blank except for a "none" >>


Get professional advice. Not about HOW to enter in gnucash but the WHAT 
of the necessary entries.


In general, loans, payments, etc. involving "insiders" might have to be 
treated differently than with outsiders. I agree that the "one step" 
transaction as described << expense against loan >> handles the overall 
situation but you might want two step for a cleared trail >>


Michael D Novack


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Re: mixing business and personal

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/11/2017 3:03 AM, Gio Bacareza wrote:

Hi,

I have used gnucash initially to track household expenses. So my flatmate
and I would contribute. We track what the transactions are for and also
keep track of contributions so we know that we both contribute equally.

Now that we are also going into a small business, I'd like some tips on
what the best practices are.

Should I incorporate the business transactions into the original file?
Or should I create a different file for business?

Separate books by all means. Do you need some reasons? Imagine down the 
road, this little business has become a success, and you are in 
negotiations to sell it. The prospective buyer would want to see the 
books, yes? But no reason to be able to look at YOUR books. I could go 
on giving other reasons.


Michael D Novack

--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: Archiving Records To Improve Performance

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/8/2017 12:14 PM, Michael Luderitz wrote:

I have been using Gnucash for over 5 years, accumulating all the data in a
single file name. Opening the file and saving it has become more and more
time consuming. Is there a way to archive the prior years so that only one
or two years are carried forward in the active file?

There is no AUTOMATED process to do this. But there is a way to mimic 
the "new volumes" from the days of pen and ink on paper in bound books 
bookkeeping.


a) Run a "close the books" for the end of the period. Run a Balance 
Sheet report. Export/ import your CoA (it will be empty). Make a copy of 
the old file as your archive.
b) Enter the opening transaction(s) using the balance sheet balances for 
all "standing" accounts (asset, liability, equity). This can be done 
with a single transaction (split on both sides) but you might find it 
easier to use two each split on just one side << this part of the 
process is very much like manually starting a new set of books >>


To look at your historical data, just tell gnucash to open that file 
(the archive file). I am always opening gnucash "no file" so get to 
choose which file I want opened because I am keeping several sets of 
books (and probably DON'T want to open again the one I last had open). 
If you have many of these archive files and frequently need to look at 
that year (or whatever) you might want to do likewise.


Michael D Novack

--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: Flash Drive

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/18/2017 3:31 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:

As I understand those links, portableapps.com works on these other operating 
systems by using Wine, a virtual windows emulator.
So, you'd install a windows emulator on your linux machine (125mb) in order to 
run gnucash as a portable app on a stick so as to save installing Gnucash 
(175mb) on your hard drive.
That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
David
  
That would be true if there were only one Windows app requiring the 
emulator. It would scarcely pay just for gnucash. But if there were 
several, another kettle of fish. The person who was asking the initial 
question has a "very small primary hard drive" and so presumably would 
want to run whatever could be run from an external drive that way. Not 
JUST gnucash << even though at the moment, only gnucash the issue >>


Michael D Novack
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Re: Copying many transactions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/24/2017 12:50 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:

azalea4va  writes:

This is essentially what I resorted to.  Since gnucash does not support
export to anything but a CSV file, I wrote a shell script to extract
information from the gnucash xml file and output to a GIF file.  As a shell
script, it was slow as molasses running on a file with 500K transactions,
but it got the job done.
Maybe a stupid question on my part (but I used to do a lot of data 
conversion)


If you had a way to export the data to a CVS file, wouldn't it have been 
as easy or easier to have written the shell script to convert from that 
to a GIF file? Might have run faster.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Unsubcribe

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/24/2017 7:50 AM, Ashwin A wrote:

Request you to unsubscribe agentash...@gmail.com from the mailing lists

OR you can follow these instructions because "mailman" can be sent 
orders with batch commands:
"you can also use email to make such changes.  For more info, send 
a message to the '-request' address of
  the list (for example, mailman-requ...@gnucash.org) containing 
just the word 'help' in the message body,

 and an email message will be sent to you with instructions."

I am sensitive to the possibility that instructions "go to some WEBSITE 
and do thus and so" might not be useful under the circumstances of 
limited bandwidth. For me, may websites are not accessible from home 
(only a 28.8 KBaud dial-up connection) so a "go to website" instruction 
means "the next time you have taken a computer to town where bandwidth 
is available and this particular task has high enough priority compared 
to all the other tasks in the "waiting till bandwidth is available" queue".


Michael D Novack

PS: I would have to cut down a lot of mature trees to get reliable 
satellite at the house


--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: File signatures??

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/28/2017 9:40 AM, m...@considine.net wrote:

Hi,

I think this is the right venue to ask this question.  If not, I can 
hopefully get a pointer to where else to turn.


I need to figure out what - if any - file signatures could be used to 
identify gnucash data files.  The need arises from a harddisk crash 
and recovery effort,


Horses and barn doors. And I am sure you will be better prepared next 
time. But others on the list should take note. And proper backup 
procedures are not just for gnucash:


a) Do not keep backups on the same device. Some day a disk may crash.
b) Ideally do not keep backups (not all of them) in the same location. 
You might make two copies, one to keep handy (for a data restore of a 
messed up file) and one stored off site for a more serious disaster. I 
learned THAT lesson in 2006 when a house fire (just one room actually 
burned) destroyed most of the backups kept in another room nearby (heat, 
smoke, and water)


What I personally do is have a couple of large external drives. These 
days a terabyte drive is only about $100. Sure slow going copying all 
the user data but you don't have to sit there while the computer chugs 
away making a copy of the data directory << you only need to do 
"systems" when you install software --- if instead of immediately 
updating every time you are notified of a new version but instead wait 
till you have several and do them at one time as a "build" you can space 
out THOSE backups >>


Michael D Novack
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Re: deleting .log files gnucash financial

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/3/2017 2:29 PM, Carl Hofinga wrote:

My file dates go back to January 2014. The Preference shows to delete these 
files in 30 days but that does not happen. Is there a faster way of deleting 
these files then one by one?

Yes, IF you have your books (and so all these log files) in a 
directory(file folder) that contains just them << if there are only a 
few other things the trick might still be usable >>


Remember, you can easily delete EVERYTHING in a directory, so the 
problem is just how to keep what you want to keep.


 The way I usually do this is to temporarily create another directory 
and copy into it the current books and say the last few log files. I 
then CHECK that this has happened OK << for example, open the books in 
THAT file using "file open" where you can specify what you want opened 
>> Now delete all in the original directory. Copy back in from the 
temporary directory. CHECK that this worked. Now you can delete the 
temporary directory. Notice that I checked before every irreversible 
operation. Being that careful or not is up to you.


Michael D Novack

--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: Methods to Track Gift Cards and Similar Items

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/31/2017 4:24 PM, Paul W. wrote:



On the one hand, these items are a form of income.  As such, I could track them 
as income.
On the other hand, I use these items  they way I use a credit card to make 
purchases.  As such, I could track them as a credit card.
Are there other hands with other methods?

Stop.

This is DOUBLE ENTRY bookkeeping. So the "on the one hand income" misses 
the point. When you receive a "gift card" (etc.) the credit side of that 
transaction would be income but the debit side an asset account. Not 
like a credit card but like a debit card.


When you use the card (or some portion of it) the transaction might be a 
debit to some expense account and the credit to that asset account


Michael D Novack
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Re: Printing reports without spliting text across pages

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/8/2017 8:47 PM, Jeffrey Black wrote:

The last post I can find on this is from 2013, and there were no satisfactory
answers then.

Does anyone know how or of a utility that will allow me to print reports
without the text splitting in half across page breaks?  PDF does not work
and besides I can not import it into my documents.  HTML export to a browser
is not really an option as I need to add these reports to documents in Open
Office.

Any suggestions other OCR scanning HTML printouts?

--JEffrey Black M.B.A.
Easy, I do this all the time when preparing quarterly reports for the 
boards of the organizations for which I keep books. For the simple 
reason that there is a lot of editing to be done and that is FAR easier 
to do under the control of a general purpose editor than writing scheme 
(custom reports) within gnucash.


steps:
a) Export the RAW report from gnucash. You know have a file in HTML format.
b) Open that, select all, copy.
c) Paste "unformatted" into your text document under open office, 
libreoffice, whatever.

d) Edit to your heart's content.
 Understand, HERE is where you control where pages break, what 
fonts and sizes you want, what zero amounts to purge from the report or 
what levels of details you might need to reporting purposes but the 
board doesn't want to see, add annotations and footnotes and any 
necessary fixed text.


 As a retired rather senior systems analyst, I could of course have 
learned scheme (I can at least read LISP) but an experienced accountant 
told me "Mike, don't bother. Do the editing OUTSIDE of gnuash. Any 
experienced accountant would choose to do it that way using their 
favorite genera purpose editor."


Mike Novack
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Re: Need a static version of GNUCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/12/2017 6:49 AM, John Ralls wrote:

On May 11, 2017, at 7:37 PM, parabolic quadrate  wrote:

Hi everybody
I need to have a pure static version of GNUCash (64bit Linux)

Why?  << explain your need >>

As John told you, gnucash uses loadable modules.

Back in my working days, the systems I maintained had some very large 
static modules (gigantic by the experience of most programmers here). 
One of the things I did over those years is to make all of those 
"pseudo-static" << the first time a module was needed, dynamic call but 
then the address where loaded to saved, and subsequent calls static to 
that address; assembler stuff.
That meant just as fast running as if static calls BUT a module could be 
changed without needing to link-edit the entire program. Until all but a 
reserved amount of memory left and then any additional modules called 
dynamic. >>


There should be need for those sort of tricks now. Our little computers 
are faster than the big mainframes of several decades ago.


Michael D Novack

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Re: Need a static version of GNUCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/13/2017 3:13 AM, Liz wrote:

On Thu, 11 May 2017 16:37:52 -0700 (PDT)
parabolic quadrate  wrote:
Hi everybody
I need to have a pure static version of GNUCash (64bit Linux)
You've had a few answers.
Could I ask some more questions?

Why do you need a static GnuCash?
What distribution of 64bit Linux are you using?

Can you give examples of other static programs which are running on
your system?

Liz
We should consider the possibility of a language problem (meaning of 
"static")


a) Might be a different human language thing
b) Might be a user vs programmer thing

Parabolic, to us programmer types, "static" refers to how an executable 
is link edited, how the pieces are tied together. To us "static" means 
the ENTIRE THING (even pieces that may not get used this run) are loaded 
into core when then the program is loaded. It would be one, gigantic 
piece. The opposite is "dynamic" which allows the link editor to say 
"wait" to find out where some piece will be loaded IF is ever called << 
because not at a fixed distance from where called, that can't be 
resolved till then >>


If you meant "a version of the program that is not rapidly changing, 
being improved, etc.) then the term would be "stable", not "static"


Michael


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Re: assistance request

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/21/2017 11:00 AM, Cathy Hobart wrote:

Good morning.

One of our groups was using GnuCash to keep their accounting records.  The 
treasurer has left and turned over electronic records to me.  However, I have 
been unable to use the software to access the backups he made.  Would someone 
be able to give me detailed assistance on how to restore a backup file to the 
software so I may access the data?

Faithfully,
Cathy Hobart
The Diocese of CNY
1020 7th North St., Ste. 200
Liverpool, NY 13088
315-474-6596 x131
315-478-1632 (fax)
Add to things to tell us (and you will have to find out) --- HOW did 
your ex-treasurer do backups? Just copy the files to another device OR 
us some general purpose backup application (which might have compressed 
them, just saved deltas, etc. )


IF just copied the files to another device/medium the restore is simple. 
If a backup application was used, will have to follow its restore 
procedure.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Tracking Primary Residences

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/25/2017 2:18 PM, Leo Bolta wrote:


Why to track a primary residence may not make sense to an accountant but
everyone's situation may be different.  For example, one may live in a peak
demand area and it may one day prove to be a timely decision to moving into
less popular area, where prices are not so hyped and geared more towards a
lifestyle that one may prefer.  I acknowledged in my email, that it was not
a standard practice to track primary residence, but I don't necessarily
follow standards and was hoping to get a reply from someone who may have
thought a similar situation through.


The purpose of accounting is to provide financial information (including 
for decision making) so something like this CAN make sense. So let's 
look at the alternatives. It appears that a great deal of your 
"effective" net worth (as opposed to "book" net worth) would be the 
capital appreciation of this property. How can you track that? << an 
aside here --- this sort of thing might in fact be very important and in 
BOTH directions and it most certainly affects "estate planning" where 
you might have to know if the value of the estate will be above some tax 
threshold or special probate requirements. >>


Your confusion is in assuming that has to all be done in one set of 
gnucash books. Gnucash will let you keep several sets of books. You can 
also combine information form gnucash with information from other methods.


Might I suggest a set of books under gnucash that would be standard. 
That would give your net worth EXCLUDING the possible eventual gain on 
the property. Then you could have an "off books" set of books (using 
gnucash or whatever*) to track JUST the eventual gain on this property. 
To obtain your "effective net worth" add the two.


Michael D Novack

ares, etc. >>

* In this case, I personally wouldn't bother using gnucash for this, 
since likely only an annually adjusted figure and an estimate in any 
case. But I personally do use gnucash for some "off books" accounting 
when has enough transactions to make an actual accounting application 
useful. Example: I have a home solar system. Treated as an "investment", 
how is it performing? << the "entity" borrowed funds from us. It has 
income from sources like transfer of credits to our personal electric 
bill, sale of SRECs, tax credits against our personal taxes, etc. It has 
expenses like depreciation, imputed portion of insurance cost and tax 
cost, interest on the loan balance, etc. and from profit makes payments 
against the loan principle --- QUESTIONS: IS this virtual entity able to 
pay off the loan at the assumed rate of interest during the lifetime of 
the system? Will it even be able to make "dividend payments" once the 
loan has been paid off >>



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Re: Tracking Primary Residences

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/25/2017 5:07 PM, Leo Bolta wrote:

Excellent!  I'll try tracking the property with periodic valuations in on a
"off books" set of books as you suggest.  Question: I assume that I'll still
need to enter an "Opening Balance" of the property in my standard booking
system, and so by what calculation shall I enter that value?  Shall I enter
the opening balance with an estimate of it's "effective book value" of when
I started GnuCash, which is about 6 months ago OR shall I go back about 6
years and enter an estimate of it's original purchase price, tallied
together with premove-in upgrades and closing costs?

Leo
That's not a gnucash question and with the caveat that I am NOT 
"qualified" as an accountant or tax advisor and that this question is 
really related to jurisdiction - you should enter the original basis 
+ closing costs and then adjust for upgrades that ARE allowed (by tax 
code) to be included in the basis because THAT is what you will need to 
figure eventual capital gains (if sold for more and proceeds not going 
toward a replacement house of equal or greater cost). But again that is 
all "tax stuff" which as I said I am NOT qualified to advise you about 
so consult a professional or go by your own reading/understanding of the 
tax codes.


Michael D Novack
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Re: How to close a financial year

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/24/2017 10:56 PM, doncram wrote:
Thank you to David T. and to Michael D Novack and others for 
observations on closing.  Ideas from these and other comments that I 
can look for in past ("annual") discussions oughta be incorporated 
into documentation.  Some notes while this is fresh:






*Note freezing is not the same...the prior years data stays in your 
system, and if it is not frozen then errors can be introduced, you 
might accidentally add or change a prior year transaction.  In 
commercial standard accounting, the past data is locked by password at 
least, and prior year info is only changed in exceptional 
circumstances (explain those...and how even for public restatements of 
financials, the past info is likely not changed).


*I still am gathering that password-locking the past period data is 
not possible.


This is getting tiresome?

In ANY computerized system, "password locking" protects only against 
accidental changes to the data. It does not protect against malicious 
alteration by a person skilled in software. You underestimate the levels 
of protection necessary to lock out somebody who can get physical access 
to your machine << eg: can I interrupt the boot sequence and change the 
boot order so instead of coming up in the usual operating system the 
machine will boot from a different device and thus the operating system 
of my choice? >> This problem is much more severe in the case of "open 
software" where a far lower degree of skill is necessary to get around 
password protection. But some of us have the skills and tools to get 
around it even if not open software.


And since this began as a "close the books" discussion, whether prior 
period data remains in the (new period) books is your choice. When I 
discussed simply making read only copies and passing these out of the 
bookkeeper's control I was demonstrating a work flow that could provide 
proof* of alteration of prior data. Most people consider that enough, 
and would prefer to be able to look at prior data (in the current books) 
and not have to reload from a backup copy to do that. BUT, if that is 
what you want, after closing the books you can create the new set of 
books without prior data. That mimics the usual procedure of back in the 
days of pen and ink on paper in bound volumes, where new volumes were 
begun with the new accounting period. In other words, you are talking 
about "work flow" matters and not the application itself.


And no, backup instruction do not belong in application guides. On our 
computers, we have data created by lots of different applications. We 
need backup procedures that back up ALL of our data. So discussion of 
alternatives for backup belong in a "computer users" guide, not 
application by application. Our working backups these days are usually 
not on read only medium. But it wasn't that many years ago, before large 
external drives became cheap, that I was burning even these to read only 
DVD.


Michael

* Yes, I was sometimes called upon to do that, run byte by byte compares 
to demonstrate that something HAD been altered.

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Re: Issues with Jobs and Purchase Orders.

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/29/2017 10:45 PM, Bruce Danielson wrote:

I agree Dave, and getting that done in 100 hours I think is optimistic.  
Realistically I think it is probably well beyond the scope of “free” software.


If the developers ever considered offering a “Pro” version of GnuCash, on a pay 
per license basis, that might work.  NCH gets $70 a copy for theirs, and I 
think at its core, GnuCash is a better product,  But I’m not really familiar 
with Gnu’s philosophy.
  


Bruce

Commenting in the middle (for both above and below)

a) "Free Software" licensing means can't do THAT. What would be "legal" 
would be OTHER software that produced feeds (files of transactions, 
etc.) that could be imported into GnuCash. Not only for this. Think of 
other business needs like an inventory system, point of sales system, 
etc. BTW, that's often how large systems are designed, Thus where I used 
to work, a number of other systems sent feeds to the "general ledger" 
system << which was the accounting part >>


b) On time and cost. I don't know about Silicon Valley, but around here 
where I used to work, maybe $100/hour. But the time is a gross 
underestimate. Even if correct for the CODING time has left out many 
other parts of a successful "project". Start with meetings of a USER 
GROUP (+ business analyst) which will decide on exactly what this new 
subsystem will do. Then a systems analyst specs the new system and a 
testing plan for it. Only then it is coded. Then it is tested (user 
group for that too). Where I worked they used to estimate the coding 
part as usually 40% or under of the total time << remember, a 2 hour 
meeting with 5 users and an analyst is 12 people hours >>


I would NOT be willing to get involved volunteering my time unless there 
were a committed user group willing to do their parts. Too often we see 
complaints after "does not do what I expected or what I need". Sorry, 
but the new program IS correct, it does what it does, where were YOU 
when it was time to specify what it was SUPPOSED to do?  What it had to 
do to satisfy your needs?


Michael D Novack, FLMI  retired senior systems/business analyst for 
one of the world's largest insurance companies




From: drkir...@gmail.com [mailto:drkir...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Dr. 
David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) Sent: Monday, May 29, 2017 2:44 PM 
To: Bruce Danielson Cc: Adrien Monteleone; GNU Cash User Subject: Re: 
Issues with Jobs and Purchase Orders. On 29 May 2017 at 16:53, Bruce 
Danielson  wrote: I see that clearly Dave as an 
excellent addition – and quotations are related to purchase orders as 
invoices are to bills and customers to vendors. Thanks for that bit of 
insight. Bruce I doubt quotations and/or purchase orders will be added 
any time soon - if at all. I did offer one of the GnuCash developers a 
modest sum ($100) if he could add support for quotations, as it would 
benefit my business. He did not do jobs for money, but someone else who 
would, had no time to do the job. But the developer estimated adding 
support for quotations would be 100 hours of work, and I told the amount 
of money a software developer earned in Silicon Valley was about 
$500/hour. A simple bit of maths indicates that to pay for this to be 
developed on a commercial basis ($50,000) , which was far in excess of 
the $100 I was offering. The developers have a roadmap, 
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Roadmap which seems primarily on cleaning 
up the code. Hence unless there was a substantial amount of money 
raised, I don't think quotations will be added any time soon, and I'm 
lead to believe purchase orders would be similar code. If someone could 
find a GnuCash developer willing to add purchase orders / quotations for 
a fixed feed, and there was crowdfunding to get it going, conceivably 
these features could be added. But I don't think this is likely to 
happen to be honest. Dave 
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Re: (no subject)

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/2/2017 12:45 PM, Mick Hartzell wrote:

Eneko,

Remember this:
In accounting Debits must equal Credits.
.

Assets = Debt + Equity.

Mick
 It will perhaps be better if we do not oversimplify, using assumptions 
that might be wrong.


A debt is a liability, but a liability is not necessarily a debt. Not in 
the way we ordinarily think about debts.


To give an example. Suppose the entity is a church (a non-profit) and it 
has been decided that a new church bus is needed. A campaign is begun to 
raise the necessary funds. Donations are solicited FOR THIS PURPOSE. One 
proper way to be accounting for these donations as they come in is to 
establish a liability account "restricted to bus" under the liability 
account "donor restricted funds". As donations (for the bus) come in, 
debit bank account and credit this "liability".


Temporarily, at least, that money IS in the bank account and available 
for cash flow, with the fact that it ULTIMATELY isn't "there" reflected 
in that liability.  When the bus is purchased, that is a debit to "bus 
basis" and a credit to cash AND the treasurer enters a transaction to 
debit "restricted to bus" and credit "donations -- bus fund". 
Essentially NOW those donations have been :earned" by the organization.


I said "one proper way" because there are alternatives. Which 
alternative best might depend on the legal strength of the restriction, 
the FORMALITY of the restriction.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Reconciling an account

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/3/2017 6:51 PM, EngineInstitute wrote:

I am having problems reconciling an account. The starting balance agrees with
the statement but ending balance does not. OK so I changed the ending
balance to the correct one in the initial dialog box. I then went on to the
next task of checking all of the debts and credits. I did that and compared
the sum of the total debt and credit amounts against the statement so far
ok. BUT the ending balance still does not agree even there are no additional
debts logs and one outstanding credit and I cannot close the account for
that period. What am I missing?

Thanks.
 What kind of account are we talking about? Since you mention 
reconciling against a statement is this a checking account?


If so, have you ever reconciled a checkbook against bank statement in 
the old fashioned days, statement against your check register? If not, 
you likely have no clue what to look for. You do not start by "changing 
an amount"! Using GnuCash:


1) Confirm that there is nothing in either Imbalance or Orphan. If there 
is, correct that problem first.
2) Look at the statement from the bank. Are there any transactions there 
that have not been entered in GnuCash? << assuming that you can 
recognize these as valid transactions -- otherwise contact your bank to 
find out what these were.>>
3) Are any checks still outstanding (you wrote them, entered them in 
GnuCash, but not (yet) returned against your account at the bank. THAT 
is why I referred to "old fashioned days" reconciling because you STILL 
have to do this to get the same balance amounts.  You EXPECT a 
difference in the balances (you vs bank) for the sum of all uncleared 
checks.


Michael D Novack


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Re: New PC

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/7/2017 7:34 AM, Edwin Humphreys wrote:

I have GnuCash on an old PC, which I am now replacing. I can download
GnuCash onto the new PC, but how do I transfer my old finance details? I
have found nothing about this in your documentation or FAQs.

  Thank you,

Dwin Tudor


You neglected to say whether the new computer will be under the SAME 
operating system, and if not, whether you were familiar with the new 
operating system. BTW, this is more  a question about ALL of the data in 
your old computer, not just the gnucash data.


a) If the same operating system, and if you are choosing the same user 
name(s) as on the old, you can simply do a restore from backup << the 
backup that has ALL of your data >> because everything would be going 
into the same path(s) as on the old one.


b) If not the same operating system, a bit trickier. Whenever I do this 
I am usually unfamiliar with the new operating system, not sure whether 
everything should go (what the NEW path(s) will be). In that case, as I 
am installing software on the new machine, I take a look to see where 
data (from that application) goes. Now I know where to copy the data 
from that backup.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Transfer query.

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/13/2017 2:00 PM, Eric Coates wrote:







"Credit" and "Debit" are technical terms that accountants use in a way 
somewhat different from "real" people. As a way of understanding this 
it may help to think that "ordinary" people tend to think in terms of 
how a transaction affects them, accountants think in terms of how it 
affects the counter party (when you deposit money in a bank you see it 
as crediting you, an accountant sees it as creating a debt the bank 
owes you). If anyone knows of an easier/more correct way to explain it 
I, for one, would like to hear it


I will try. Double entry bookkeeping goes back to the days when educated 
people (people who could read/write) used Latin for semi secret.


You deposit money in the bank. That means the bank OWES you that money 
(you can demand it back) debit = he owes


You owe somebody else (that liability account). He trusts that you will 
pay when demanded credit = he trusts


THAT was the big advance in trade/banking. That they didn't have to 
physically transfer all the money involved, could just exchange debits 
and credits and then the only physical money that had to be transferred 
was to adjust balances.  It didn't do thieves/pirates any good to steal 
documents being shipped indicating who owed whom or had  a credit with 
whom.


Michael D Novack
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Re: How to close a financial year & how to keep 'earmarked' funds

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/25/2017 11:05 AM, Anita Graves wrote:

I am astounded at the amount of help you dear people offer!  Thank you very 
much.

... My only reason for wanting to ‘close’ the books was in order to 
properly carry forward any account balances.  In my case, I had some advanced 
fund balances in the expenses as subaccounts and was hoping there would be a 
‘magical’ way to carry these balances forward, along with the balances forward 
in the asset, and equity accounts, but don’t think I know how to do that.

Stop right there.

I think you are mishandling how you are accounting for "dedicated 
donations" (what I would call "restricted donations"). Formally 
restricted donations are technically a liability, but you probably don't 
want to go there. And you probably don't have separate bank accounts for 
each fund. One (relatively) easy way to do this:


a) Make a parent for your bank account and make what is now your bank 
account a child of that, Then create child accounts for each special  
fund where the money is kept in your main bank account. You will be able 
to reconcile against the statements from your bank by looking at the 
parent total. You may have a little more work to do when entering a bank 
deposit if being new, you don't want to mess with transactions split on 
both sides (that's tricky). In that case, immediately after the deposit 
(split on the credit side) you enter a transaction to transfer that 
portion of the deposit that was restricted to the proper child(ren) so 
could be split debit  side.


b) Each time you pay an expense that qualifies for use of some 
restricted fund money you again have a little extra work. The actual 
check would be entered in the main bank account (debit the expense 
account) but also transfer back that amount from the restricted fund to 
the main account. Again, use two transactions if you find a two way 
split daunting.


c) The adjustments (transfers into and out of the restricted children) 
could be done periodically instead of as each happens. That is a "work 
flow" choice. In that case you would use the total for the period 
(quarter?) of "donations restricted building expenses" to transfer from 
main account to the "building expense fund" child and the period total 
of "building expenses" to transfer back from the "building expense fund" 
to main checking. use your judgement based on the volume of transactions.


This DOES carry over accounting periods since accounts of type asset, 
liability, and equity, are "standing" accounts.


Note that a Balance Sheet report will show your board what is the 
balance of each of these dedicated funds at any given point in time.


Michael


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Re: How to close a financial year & how to keep 'earmarked' funds

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/25/2017 11:49 AM, Maf. King wrote:

Copying to list...

On Thursday, 25 May 2017 16:33:39 BST you wrote:

Maf thanks so much!!!  Helpful certainly.  But I don’t understand IIRC, YMMV
and HTH.


Side by side reports, etc.

I can't really advise you on that as I do not try to do that sort of 
thing from within gnucash. I could have written the special reports 
(this was long before gnucash offered that special stuff) as I was an 
experienced analyst, and while never paid to program in LISP, could get 
by in it so could have handled the SCHEME (essentially, a lisp dialect). 
But a very experienced accountant told me "don't bother, Mike. Just 
produce the separate raw reports, export them, then use your favorite 
editor to put it all together, adding annotations, fixed text*, pretty 
printing, etc. under control, of that full power editor. That's what any 
of us would do."


In other words, the raw reports and what I present to the board of 
directors not the same. To fill out forms for the government, etc. might 
require different levels of detail/grouping than the boards would want 
to see.


Michael

* Being "public charities", the books are "open". Not that anybody from 
the public has ever asked to see them. But the reports have to be such 
that they WOULD make sense if seen. Thus while the BoD's of each 
organization know the accounting principles/choices used and wouldn't 
need to see them each time, they are included as fixed text. Statements 
like "fixed assets are durables costing more than $500 and will be 
depreciated over four years" << so somebody reading the financial report 
would know that durables costing under $500 would have been immediately 
expensed >>  And any unusual amounts are annotated. Certain lines in the 
report could be larger font, bold, etc. So even if getting the report 
side by side out of gnucash, would STILL be using an editor before 
getting to the finished product.



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Re: Issues with Jobs and Purchase Orders.

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/30/2017 8:54 AM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote:
On 30 May 2017 at 12:26, Mike or Penny Novack 
<stepbystepf...@dialup4less.com 
<mailto:stepbystepf...@dialup4less.com>> wrote:


 I was not referring to meetings among the people 
designing/writing/testing the new software. I was referring to meetings 
(and testing by) USERS, those who will be using the software.


And I strongly disagree that those writing the software would know WHAT 
the software was supposed to do in the BUSINESS SENSE. They are not the 
people using "jobs" and "purchase orders" etc. in their business. Sure, 
in my days in the cypher mines I did plenty of software that was more or 
less just FOR the system (see what the system does now; make that 
better, faster, easier to modify safely, etc.). Or even writing tools to 
make writing special ad hoc programs of a type we did often easier to 
write. But this is different, more like the bigger projects providing a 
new feature wanted by the BUSINESS people to do what they needed to be done.


Look, in my working experience, the USERS begin with a vague/general 
idea of what they need. They do NOT (initially) see all the 
exception/rare cases the new system must handle. They do not start out 
thinking about "if I enter something wrong, what sort of error feedback 
do I get". I was talking about meetings to define the specifications 
from the business point of view.


If there are not well defined specifications for what a program is 
SUPPOSED to do, then as long as the program doesn't hang or loop it is 
correct. But won't be what the (business) customers wanted.


Michael D Novack, FLMI

<< and I suspect my idea of "a large program" might be different. Say 
100K to 500K lines?? >>

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Re: Profit and loss/Cash Flow reporting question

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/31/2017 4:13 PM, Martijn Heuts wrote:

Good afternoon and thank you for your answer.So I understand now that the cash flow 
report and P can be different and you explained why.
I owe a business loan to the previous owner (owner financed). I made a payment to 
her and I was thinking this should be an expense? So right now it does show in the 
cash flow report but not in the P report.
This is how I build up GNU cash:March: Business Purchase: Loan (stock purchase) 
 $   (in EQUITY)April: Payment 1- business loan $xxx(comes off in 
Assets: Checking account)
Did I make a mistake in the way I build GNU or is a business loan not an 
expense?Thanks for clearing this up.
Martijn Heuts
  
No, it is not an expense. You assumed this liability to pay an expense. 
THAT transaction was a debit to a expense account and a credit to a 
liability account. Later you paid off this loan and that transaction was 
a debit to the liability account and a credit to cash << no expense 
account involved >>


Did these two transactions took place in different accounting periods 
(date ranges of the reports) ?


In any case, how to do accounting using gnucash (as opposed to using a 
different package or even old fashioned pen and ink on paper or slightly 
newer spreadsheets with columns just like accounting paper) is NOT the 
same as "how to do accounting". You really do need to go through an 
"accounting 101" sort of text.


Michael
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Re: Reconciling an account

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/5/2017 8:08 PM, EngineInstitute wrote:

Colin,




  When this happens it should be a cake walk right? Not for me.

I check off all of the credits and debits and compare their totals
(reflected on the bottom) with the statement and everything is in order yet
I am faced with a difference of $195.14. This is definitely not correct.
Have I found a bug?

-
China Blue
--
This is why I keep referring to "the old way, pen and ink on paper". If 
you have no experience doing that (solving discrepancies during hand 
reconciliation) it will be hard to find the problem. No, almost 
certainly not a bug.


It is what you DON'T say that is important. For example, I am not seeing 
you say "and there is no transaction with amount $195.14 or amount 
$97.57 and $195.14 is not divisible by 9" << the first would be a 
transaction not recorded or a date difference, the second a transaction 
recorded on the wrong side, and the third a digit transposition >>


However -- since you are using the tool other people should be helping 
you << I lack access to private/secure broadband and so reconcile more 
like the old fashioned way --- all the organizations for which I keep 
books are low volume, typically less than a dozen checks plus deposits a 
month, so not hard by hand >>


Michael D Novack
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Re: Vendor Bill - Invoice Entries

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 10/15/2017 10:08 PM, DaveC49 wrote:

Hi,

The facilities you are requesting are likely to require an inventory
management system. At present Gnucash is an accounting package and currently
does not incorporate any features for inventory management. As far as i know
there are no plans to incorporate such features in the near future. To do so
would reuire a developer(s) interested in developing these features.
Similarly while it can handle the accounting specific side of payroll
management it does not handle the calculation of payrolls, deductions, taxes
etc. You may need to took at ERP software if you require these facilities.

David Cousens


I am going to point something out. Gnucash is an accounting package. A 
business might need a number of OTHER packages that would interact with 
the accounting package, but normally are separate parts. Why separate? 
Because which of these other parts a business might want/need depend on 
the business. A unified business application (including ALL the 
different possible pieces) would be unnecessarily bulky, with a given 
business never using many of those pieces.


inventory -- only if the business HAS inventory that it sells
payroll -- only if the business has employees (employees in the 
legal sense of that word)

billed time -- only of a business deals in "billable hours"
POS --- only if a business does this kind of retail << point of sales 
not only interacts with accounting but also inventory >>

etc. etc. etc.

Since I do accounting just for non-profits, I am aware of OTHER "pieces" 
that would apply to this specialty. Just because I may be using gnucash 
to provide these pieces does NOT mean "part of gnucash" << I am simply 
ALSO using gnucash to implement "virtual  books" for those specific 
pieces >>


Michael D Novack
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Re: Transaction Report - Subtotaling on Description? (Based on Previous Threads)

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 9/4/2017 5:17 PM, aegross wrote:

This post is more-or-less for the elders of the forumthose who have a lot
of experience with GC and double-entry accounting

Was reporting on charitable giving for the current year, using the
Transaction Report.  Tried to determine how to subtotal on Description;
couldn't determine how and scanned through past threads and found these:

 I use a virtual set of books for this (because we want to track ALL 
giving, not just tax deductible) and I do use separate accounts for each 
donee in a hierarchy of classification (health, environmental, arts & 
letters, etc. ). But that is mainly so that we can easily see as we go 
through the year which organizations have or have not received their 
annual donation, running totals of categories, etc.


Most of you would have little need for such detail.

Michael D Novack
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Re: Cash Basis Reports

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 9/28/2017 5:20 AM, Warner Losh wrote:

I'm converting from quickbooks.

In quickbooks, it was super simple to have a 'cash basis' system, and still
keep track of the monies owed using things like invoices and accounts
receivable. In the US, business smaller than a certain size can be on a
cash basis. My businesses have been cash based for about 20 years now, and
QuickBooks has handled it nicely.
Unfortunately, gnucash business features (like invoicing) only work 
accrual basis. It would be nice if there were an option for those of us 
keeping books on the cash basis << I do accounting for non-profits, 
whose members often want to be invoiced for dues, etc. but those are NOT 
legally receivable >>


The work around is ugly and requires additional data entry << keeping a 
second set of "virtual" books to produce the invoices and record their 
being paid, etc. (and at that time entering transaction in the "real" 
cash basis books) >> But that is what I do for the non-profits for which 
I need to produce invoice statements.


Michael D Novack



Michael D Novack

Michael D Novack
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Re: How to deal with the cash flow and the credit card.

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 9/24/2017 8:31 PM, R. Victor Klassen wrote:

Folks,

I think the original poster is looking at how to forecast cash flow.  Given the 
credit cards have different due dates, and assuming they are paid on their due 
date, does the account from which they are paid have enough in it for the 
coming month?
This depends on HOW one uses a credit card. Can scarcely schedule these 
transactions because the amount of the payment can be anything from the 
minimum payment due up to the full balance. That's a CHOICE made by the 
human. Not known in advance. Even those of us who normally pay the full 
balance each month on credit cards might SOMETIMES pay less if dealing 
with a cash flow crunch.


Look, this is really related to possible confusion about what a "cash 
flow" report means (should mean) and doesn't mean.


Budgets may be in terms of profit and loss (ensure expenses not greater 
than income) OR in terms of cash flow planning. You may need BOTH of 
these because can be all right with regard to one but not the other.


Michael


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Re: Version Migration

[Mike or Penny Novack]

I'm accomplishing that part by writing the sqlite3 file to Dropbox, which   
etc. etc. (other discussion of backups)


I have no familiarity with "small" version implementations of SQL << in my working 
days, it was mainframe SQL under the DB2 database manger >>

Are folks saying that sqlite3 does NOT come with a backup/restore utility? I 
would think that at least somewhat strange.

Michael D Novack




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Re: Unable to open 2nd set of accounts on one MacBook Pro

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/25/2017 11:41 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:

John,

I know you and the other developers are doing huge service to the rest of us 
with your work. I truly wish I had the skills that allowed me to help with 
this; years of attempts have shown me that this is beyond me, however.

Thank you all.

David
In case we want a formal definition of the behavior desired << let's see 
if we have agreement about that >>
a) Make gnucash "transitive" instead of "intransitive"  in other 
words, let it take an "object", file to be opened (books to be opened). 
Right now it does not do this, only appears to for those users who have 
only one set of books. In other words, they may click on an object (that 
is a file ending in .gnucash) and see the action "gnucash opens with 
this file" but that is not really what is happening. Instead, gnucash is 
ignoring the object and simply starting. If starting "file" (default) 
then the last file that was open or if "nofile" then without any file 
open << the "file" button will bring up the selection list and allow one 
of those to be opened or any other name that is typed in >>


Then people with several sets of books would just have objects (for 
each on their desktop) assuming that they do that << I don't, just 
applications on the desktop >> or they go to the directory (file folder) 
where these files live and click on which they want.


b) When opened without an object could be current behavior. It would be 
nice though to allow an easier way to change the default behavior.


Michael D Novack


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Re: Unable to open 2nd set of accounts on one MacBook Pro

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/24/2017 10:24 AM, D wrote:

Michael, your "shortcuts" are essentially the command line entry I provided. 
The OP could put that in a text file and make it executable on a Mac, for sure. It's a 
little more involved to set up.

They are both still methods to work around a default behavior that many users 
find surprising, especially on a Mac.

It is not just on a Mac. Nor do I agree that the developers were wrong 
to make the default "last file" because perhaps 90% or more of gnucash 
users only keep one set of books. Those who have only one set of books 
ALWAYS want "the last file open" and would probably complain "why do I 
have to go through an extra step to select which file I want when I only 
have one".


The PROGRAM cannot know how many books it is being used to keep. Nor is 
it necessarily true that the users with just one set of books ALWAYS had 
just one set << might originally have had a test set, now only very 
rarely if ever used >>


It is only those of us who are keeping multiple active sets of books 
within the same user log in who have the problem and might want to set 
the parameter to "nofile". I say "might want to" because even in the 
case of having multiple sets of books within the same login it is 
possible that one of those sets of books is used MUCH more frequently 
than all the others combined*. In which case you like the "last open" 
default since only rarely having to from there open a different set of 
books.


Michael D Novack

* Example? My virtual set of books for the solar system is rarely 
opened. There are scarcely three dozen transactions for the entire year 
and the purpose of this virtual set of books is just to track the solar 
system AS IF it were a real entity in which we had invested. I maybe 
enter transactions quarterly (from having written them down on the sheet 
of the last reports run).


In other cases, activity in a set of books might be very 
"seasonal". During the active phase, would be opening frequently to 
enter transactions but the rest of the year scarcely at all. Accounting 
for an annual event would be like that, with 90-95% of the transactions 
concentrated within the weeks right before and right after the event.




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Re: Unable to create liability account under expense account

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/23/2017 2:17 PM, Suresh Saragadam wrote:

I am working on a small construction work where i need to record my
expenses for both material and men (labour)

i am purchasing cement on credit(Loan) that is accounts payable i.e. 
liability Here i need to create liability account for cement under 
material expenses, but i am unable to create a liability account for 
cement under material expense account so that i can record total 
material spend including liability for cement this is very minimum 
accounting requirement. Regards Suresh


As others have explained, this is a misunderstanding about basics.

In double entry bookkeeping, each transaction has net equal debits and 
credits. When you pay an expense, you are often writing a check. In 
other words, the credit side of the transaction would be the checking 
account. But there are other possibilities for what the credit side 
might be << the debit side of the transaction of course being the 
expense "materials".


1) You might be paying with a credit card. Go back to that "often". In 
some cases (for some sorts of expense) you might ALWAYS be using a 
credit card. For example, these days, with "self serve" gas stations, 
you might always be buying gasoline that way.


2) In THIS case, the vendor is allowing you you to "pay on account" (not 
unusual in business*). So under LIABILITIES you set up and account for 
this vendor showing what you owe. When you pay on this account NOT an 
expense (you already accounted for that when the liability was assumed) 
but a transaction where this liability is the debit side (for an account 
if type debit, that is a reduction in the debt) and the credit side your 
checking account you used to pay that bill.


Michael D Novack

* It is not that unusual (for businesses) to be dealing with vendors on 
a basis like "net 30 days, thereafter 1% per month" or even with a 
discount for paying within some defined amount of time.


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Re: Unable to open 2nd set of accounts on one MacBook Pro

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/24/2017 12:25 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:

This has long been an issue with GnuCash on the Mac, such that most of us have simply 
gotten used to it. I will add something to the wiki FAQ shortly. It has been entered 
as a bug (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=761024 
), so it has been noted for 
potential correction at some point. In the meantime, most of us just accept it for 
what it  is. If you are regularly using multiple data files, you can use a terminal 
command to force GnuCash to open the file of your choosing: 
/Applications/Gnucash.app/Contents/MacOS/Gnucash 
—-/path/to/my/gnucash/datafile/firstaccounts.gnucash

David


No, you don't have to accept it for what it is.

   If you are using gnucash to keep books for several entities (real or 
virtual) under the same session log in you might prefer to be calling 
gnucash with the "nofile" parameter to override the default "open the 
last one that was open". In other words, this is not an problem with 
gnucash itself but the default. That will save a step since gnucash will 
come up with no file open and you then use 

Re: Unable to create liability account under expense account

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/23/2017 10:07 PM, Suresh Saragadam wrote:

Hi Buddha,

Thanks for the reply,Now I understood may be it is not a general accounting
practice.
To my requirement i am not required to record double entry,
I know that i am spending from my pocket there is no need for income or
profit and loss statement,
I just want to track my Expenses. and accounts Payable.

Gnucash is a package for doing double entry bookkeeping.

That said, were you very experienced with it, you could get it to do 
what you want (I, for example, have some sets of "virtual" books). 
However, those are still (actually) double entry. It is just that the 
"rest of the books" not defined beyond the minimum needed.


In your case, the other side (the credit side) would be "paid by" << 
check, cash (literally), kind (barter), and assumed liability >>  Weird 
as that might seem, those could be of type Income. The virtual entity in 
this case a sub business of your business that pays the bills for your 
main business, receiving money from your main business to do that.


But like I said, you should FIRST have a good understanding of double 
entry bookkeeping and lots of practical experience doing it before you 
play around like that. Else you will make too many mistakes.


Michael
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Re: Could not obtain the lock

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/20/2017 9:49 PM, moi...@web.net wrote:

No, the files are not "Read-Only".

My username for Windows??? Yes, it is different on the new computer. Does
that matter?

In general, yes, and not only for gnucash.

Would affect ALL situations were a path name was saved because the path 
name is now different.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Two different sets of accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/20/2017 9:14 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote:

On 11/20/2017 09:47 AM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:




I have an additional solution, practical since I am the administrator of
this computer.

I have my own private accounts, and if I am logged into my machine as
me, if I run GnuCash, I get those.

I also am treasurer for a small non-profit outfit, and I gave that
outfit its own login. If I log in as that and run GnuCash, I get those.
Both are under /home, but otherwise separate.
Yes that of course will work since separate users have their own data 
areas. I was not suggesting that solution because in my case a lot more 
than two entities having books kept for them plus a number of virtual 
entities (virtual sets of books) .  Would be too many logins.


Thus loosely attached to our personal books are two virtual sets of 
books. For example, we have a solar system on our barn and it has a set 
of books for the "AS IF" it were a business that borrowed money from us 
(and from the point of view of our books, an investment in a mortgage) 
various sources of income (tax credits, credits against electric bills, 
sale of SRECs, etc.)  and various amounts as expenses (its share of 
insurance, taxes attributed to income that affects our personal taxes, 
etc.). How successful is this "business" at paying off its loan? (at an 
above market rate of interest). If it pays the loan off early, what 
dividends can it be paying on built up equity?


As for the organizations, well when entering transactions often have to 
refer to emails (when I have to ask the person who submitted a receipt 
for reimbursement "what WAS that?" so I know the right expense account). 
So I want to be under the same log in that our email is.


Michael D Novack
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Re: New User to GnuCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/14/2017 2:10 PM, Jack Slater wrote:

I think I get what your saying and at this point (a) I have no clue how to
manage/edit/adjust what I have to that type of structure nor (b) do I know
enough yet to feel confident in making any changes! LOL..

I'm reconciling my November statement as we "speak" and had to add a few
account transfer entries - that in Quicken would credit 1 account and
automatically debit the transfer account. I have non idea how/if I can do
that in GC!?

Any pointers/help is gladly and thankfully accepted!

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 12:53 PM, Fross, Michael  wrote:


When you are entering transactions (of any sort) in gnucash or any other 
double entry package you are always debiting one account (or accounts) 
and crediting one account (or accounts). Whether the second account is 
being debited or credited will depend on what you are doing in the first 
account (the one you are entering the transactions from). THAT is 
automatic using gnucash.


<< the plurals above refer to split transactions which you will learn 
about later >>


Michael
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Re: New User to GnuCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/14/2017 5:23 PM, Alex Aycinena wrote:

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Jack Slater  wrote:


How could that be? I’m paying from Checking. That’s a debit is it not? If
not then everything I’ve learned in 59 years is wrong!

On Dec 14, 2017, at 4:08 PM, Alex Aycinena 
wrote:
Nope, you have it backwards. Double entry bookkeeping has two "senses", 
debit and credit (not quite the same as positive and negative). There 
are three FUNDAMENTAL types of accounts, asset, liability, and equity 
(type income and expense are actually temporary accounts of fundamental 
type equity --- hundreds of years ago they did not exist and 
transactions were entered directly against equity).


The normal balance of the type asset is debit (a debit increases an asset).
The normal balance of the types liability and equity is credit (a credit 
increases a liability or equity)


You are being confused by looking at the statement you get from your 
bank. That is because from THEIR point of view, when you make a deposit 
it is a credit (for THEM) and when they pay a check a debit (for THEM). 
But for you it would be the other way around.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Invoice & Bill Posting Date Issues Across Multiple Periods

[Mike or Penny Novack]

I have zero experience with gnucash's invoicing system. Nevertheless I 
think in this conversation dates may be confused. When I receive an 
invoice, say for a visit to the doctor, there are SEVERAL dates involved.


a) The date the service was performed.
b) The effective date of the invoice prepared by the doctor's billing 
service.

c) The real time date when the invoice was prepared by the billing service

Which of these dates are we talking about? And from the doctor's point 
of view, which of these dates (were we using gnucash) would be used for 
the date of the transaction? << when affecting AR >>


When people are talking about periods being crossed "when work done" vs 
"when invoice prepared" I wonder whether all are talking about the same 
date. And if gnucash IS using the real time date when somebody gets 
around to entering data, there may be a different sort of problem.


Michael D Novack
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Re: GNU Cash Transactions - Wiped Out

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/9/2017 3:39 PM, Roy Molepo wrote:

Greetings

I have been using GNU Cash and processed transactions for 12 months.
Today when I opened the Program all my processed transactions have been
wiped out / disappeared. All balances are now ZEROS.

How can I recover my processed transactions?
Help will be highly APPRECIATED.

Yours Sincerely

Roy Molepo
Let's get clear about what you are and are not seeing. If I am wrong 
interpreting what you are trying to describe, say so.


I am taking what you describe when starting gnucash is that it opens a 
file where you DO see all of the accounts you expect to see, but when 
you ask it to open an account, you don't see the transactions you expect 
to see.


Things to check:
a) Is this the right file that was opened? You should see its name 
displayed. Remember, you data is NOT "in the program" but in data files 
(you can have several, one program (gnucash) being used to keep 
different books.


b) If it is the right file, check that there are no date range filters 
in effect. For example, if you were (accidentally) asking gnucash to 
show you just 2018 on you would not expect to see any transactions.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Bank reconciliation

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/13/2017 1:14 PM, Cam Ellison wrote:

On 13/11/17 09:45 AM, David Goodenough wrote:

Does no-one else have this problem?



I have dealt with this by setting up a separate Asset account for 
receiving payments, similar to what you have. When a payment is 
received, it goes into this "Payment" account, and then when the bank 
deposit is made the appropriate amount is debited from the Payment 
account. This process adds a step between receipt of the cheque (thus 
acknowledging the invoice as paid) and depositing it.
Not JUST acknowledging as paid. The customer is NOT responsible for your 
delay in depositing a check. Nor does any government I know of consider 
the date you received money to be the date you got around to depositing 
it << the LEGAL date might in fact be the date of "constructive 
delivery" which is why the postmark on a mailed payment might be 
important >>


The common name for an account of this sort is "undeposited cash". 
Especially if you normally are depositing several payments/checks at one 
time you might prefer to always have them first go to "undeposited cash" 
(each can be split on the other side as needed) and then the deposit 
transaction itself is simple/clean/uncluttered.


BTW , another account of this sort often used by businesses is 
"suspense". Say you receive a check but there is uncertainty what it is 
for, the correctness of the amount, etc.


Michael D Novack
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Re: entries

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/10/2017 7:33 PM, Christine via gnucash-user wrote:

Whenever I have a DR and a CR the summary shows that although it balances
all the amounts are showing as negative. Does anyone know what I have done
wrong here as I cant work it out.

Christine
My suspicion is that you are entering transactions in the reverse 
direction. Accounts of various TYPES have natural (positive) balances on 
either the debit side or the credit side. For example, the types "asset" 
and "expense" are positive on the debit side while types "income", 
"liability", and "equity" are on the credit side.


That kind of systematic error would not affect the books being in balance.

Michael
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Re: Cannot edit opening balance

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/11/2017 3:17 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:

I would suggest reading section 4.4 of the tutorial, where the issue regarding 
handling starting balance problems is addressed directly.
David

  
I would also suggest learning how to CORRECT errors, which in formal 
accounting is not done by changing/editing existing errors.


Let me give an example. Suppose you did set up your books using 
"starting balance" << as others have pointed out, some of us would NOT 
have done that but would have manually entered the initial transactions 
with a date before the start of the first period, usually the day before >>


Dec 31, 2016
Cash on hand db$500
 Equity cr $500   (this probably part of a split 
amount if :starting balance was used --- a single entry for the total of 
all assets minus all liabilities)


Now on June 25th 2017 you discovered a jar squirreled away that had $100 
dollars in it. How do you correct the starting balance? You can enter a 
transaction with a date of Dec 31, 2016

Cash on hand db $100
  Equitycr  $100  (I don't know what equity sub 
accounts the "starting balance" might have created since I never have 
used that, but if a sub account was created, use that)
Your description for this entry would be something like "correction of 
starting balance because of money found in jar"


Michael D Novack



Michael D Novack
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Re: Invoice & Bill Posting Date Issues Across Multiple Periods

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/9/2017 7:38 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:

Thanks Maf.,

But it seems the entire invoice posts together on the posting date, not by 
line-item date. I just double checked several of them that crossed period 
boundaries.

I’m in the U.S., not sure what the specific rules are on invoice time frames, 
but GAAP would say the invoice/bill date doesn’t matter - what matters is when 
you actually do the work or incur the expense.

Going to put my two cents in (even though I am  not doing business 
accounting)


More complicated that that (the dates) and I will give you a concrete 
example from my own experience as customer. We had a solar system 
installed and we had a CONTRACT with the installer and this contract 
specified dates/events that made various portions of the job payable. 
Things like "upon signing contract" (of course no actual work done), 
upon delivery of materials (that one at least matches the above), upon 
completion/up and running but THAT depended on actions outside of the 
control of the vendor (when building/electrical inspector signed off, 
when electric utility came out for final hook up and they stall that as 
much as they can).


In other words, of all of the payments, only ONE was related to when the 
vendor actually do the work.


However I agree that the date an invoice is prepared is irrelevant. 
Should have effective dates for the charges.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Enhancement Request for GNUcash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

 Most of us reading this are having more than a little difficulty 
understanding for WHAT you are asking.

To whom it may concern,

Given how limited and un-free our monetary system is nowadays, I think
GNUcash would make a great tool for the following freedoms below:
What does the free or unfree status of a currency have to do with 
keeping track of it with double entry bookkeeping. Maybe give some 
example where an "unfreeness" would affect accounting. Is it THIS sort 
of thing? You deposit a check into your checking account and so record a 
transaction in that amount as of that date. But your bank probably has a 
hold on that amount until that check has cleared << you would NOT be 
allowed to withdraw your full bank balance until then >> Or do you mean 
something else?


0 > The Freedom to modify your starting and ending balance. This means you
can take a @200 balance (yes, I'm using the @ symbol for example use), and
turn it into @20 without the need to transfer anything.
With double entry bookkeeping EVERYTHING you do has to have equal debit 
and credit amounts. Are you possibly meaning "can I "rescale" EVERY 
amount in the set of books? << that would not violate equal debits and 
credits >>


1 > The Freedom to add and subtract from your ending balance like a
calculator.

I can't eve guess what you might mean by this.

 2 > The Freedom to send and receive money in any amount you choose.

Nor this one either. What limitation on the amounts being entered are 
you referring to?


 3 > The Freedom to exchange this currency for other currency of any 
amount or size. So I am generically requesting a feature that allows 
this to be implemented into GNUcash, just to exercise this right. Thanks 
for understanding, Jesse.


For a "what if"? You want a global change of currency at some specified 
exchange rate? << as opposed to the ACTUAL rate when the transactions 
become real >> You are making an unjustified assumption here, that all 
the things in your books would be exchangable in this way. Currency yes, 
but how about other assets that exist in the place of the original 
currency. You have a "book value" for those BUT do not know what the 
actual amount of currency they convert to until that conversion (to the 
first currency) has taken place. For example, your house here in the US 
might have a book value of $X but you do NOT know if that can be 
converted to #Y until/unless that house has been successfully sold.


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] help setting accounts to track contributions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/4/2018 9:24 AM, Matthew Pounsett wrote:







This doesn't sound straightforward at all.  What's complicated about 
treating joint contributions to the household coffers as "income" to 
the household?  Treating that income as ever-increasing equity would 
confuse P and cashflow calculations, wouldn't it?


AS DESCRIBED this apartment/house partnership has no income. The P 
report not so strange if you consider some of the alternative names for 
this report that not or profit entities use. Thus "Income and Expenses" 
except that as described, no income.


BUT --- there COULD be income. Let's say that this were a house or large 
apartment, and in addition to the partners living there and sharing 
expenses they sometimes rented out a room to a non-partner. THAT would 
be income to the partnership.


BTW -- there might be other, actual business partnerships, even ones 
intended to make a profit, that initially and perhaps for some time 
would have no income. Imagine a partnership that came together for the 
purpose of buying some real estate with currently un-inhabitable 
buildings, fixing this up, and later selling it for a profit. Could be a 
project that took a couple of years to complete. Do you not see that 
pretty much until the end there would be no income?


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] Handling VISA Debit Accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/7/2018 2:39 AM, Karen Stingel wrote:
This is a Fix of my previous thread ... Re: gnucash-user Digest, Vol 
182, Issue 8,

apologies for not clarifying the subject line last time.

How does gnc handle the Case of a VISA Debit card?
Technically, this is a BANK account with a VISA enabled card and a 
$0.00 Credit Limit

Should it just be created as a normal BANK account type?

Are there any plans to include this as a new Asset Account type in 
future editions of gnc?


As others have already answered, if this is just a payment card 
associated with an existing bank account (just another way of making 
withdrawals from THAT account) no account to be added. But if it is a 
separate account (with some institution) then yes. Thus you might have 
an asset account category for "gift cards", "prepaid debit cards", etc.


HOWEVER -- you have raised a more general question, perhaps 
misunderstanding something. The "built in default" accounts that come 
with gnucash CoA skeletons are just for convenience satisfying the needs 
of many new users. There is nothing magic about the types of accounts 
included, either that they would be necessary or sufficient. If you find 
you need another category of asset accounts (another sub tree under 
assets) simply add that. Same with liabilities and equity (and thus for 
income and expense).


Your CoA is YOUR CoA specific to YOUR needs.

Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] Handling VISA Debit Accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/7/2018 10:36 AM, John Ralls wrote:



On May 7, 2018, at 6:37 AM, Mike or Penny Novack 
<stepbystepf...@dialup4less.com> wrote:
HOWEVER -- you have raised a more general question, perhaps misunderstanding something. 
The "built in default" accounts that come with gnucash CoA skeletons are just 
for convenience satisfying the needs of many new users. There is nothing magic about the 
types of accounts included, either that they would be necessary or sufficient. If you 
find you need another category of asset accounts (another sub tree under assets) simply 
add that. Same with liabilities and equity (and thus for income and expense).

That’s not quite right. The account *types* are hard coded and control program 
behavior: For example, types STOCK and FUND have a different register display 
from the rest. There is neither UI nor API for adding types.

Regards,
John Ralls



Misunderstanding. The term "type" being used to mean different things.

The original question was using "type" in the sense I was answering the 
question. Things like "gift cards", "pre-paid debit cards, bank account 
associated debit cards, etc. are not "types" in the sense you mean 
(STOCK, FUND, etc.)


Assets of type (sense 1) stock, fund, etc. not the same thing as 
accounts of type (sense2) STOCK, FUND. << one could keep books under 
gnucash involving assets of type (sense1) stocks ad funds without using 
the built in (sense2) types. though it might help doing that to have 
learned bookkeeping in the old pen and ink on paper days >>


Michael D Novack

--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: [GNC] accounts setup for a cooperation with members

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 4/25/2018 8:50 AM, Martina di Vertacollini wrote:

Hi Everybody,

I am new to GnuCash and wish to set up the financial administration for
a cooperation with members/owners.

Can anybody help me with this?

--
Martina di Vertacollini
You problem is not "how to do this using gnucash" but "how to do this 
however the bookkeeping is done". In  other words, basic accounting for 
corporations << seek out a suitable text >>


That said, what kind of corporation* is this? A for profit? A 
non-profit? What jurisdiction are you operating in and what filings must 
you be able to do for this jurisdiction?


Michael D Novack

* For example, in the US there are different sorts of corporations. 
Since you refer to "members/owners" rather than "stockholders" could be 
one of the "pass through: sort like S corporations or LLCs.

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Re: [GNC] House renovation Expense or Asset?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/11/2018 1:21 PM, Tony Vanson wrote:


I assume that when all the construction is finished, the total cost could
be assumed to be treated as an asset increase to the value of the house?
In this instance, would all additional expenses occurring during
construction be treated as a debit on my bank account but a credit as an
asset increase?
I would really appreciate some advice from any of the many knowledgeable
users on this forum.

Correct, with the caveat that while we are competent to tell you HOW to 
do things using gnucash, and while many of us KNOW the the correct 
answer, we do not hold the qualifications to give accounting/tax advice 
of this sort.  At least I do not.


Michael D Novack

PS -- Do you understand  WHY this is a tax issue? Again speaking as an 
"amateur", living expenses are not deductible, maintenance expenses are 
not deductible, but capital improvement expenses eventually ARE (in 
effect) deductible from the capital gain which may result when you sell 
the house. Raising the basis reduces the gain.


--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: [GNC] using Guile

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/10/2018 4:12 PM, John C wrote:

How can I use Guile in an interactive window outside of Gnucash?

I'm using Windoze 10 and Gnucash 2.6.17

I want refresh my scheme programming knowledge with small experimental 
code.


Can you install emacs for windows? That should give you a LISP 
environment. From that I would assume you might be able to get to a 
dialect specific environment.


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] Handling VISA Debit Accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/7/2018 8:45 PM, randix wrote:

Did VISA debit cards do somethin' to you as a child, why are you pickin' on
them (that reply is to no one in particular, only the thread, so pleeze, no
one get defensive)?

A debit card [to me] is a non-existent entity, it has no business having its
own "account".

My schwab checking account has a VISA debit card


THAT is what the question was about. YOUR debit card is associated with 
a checking account. That is one common type. But there are OTHER sorts 
of debit cards. There are ones associated with what are more like 
savings accounts (no checks, the debit card is used for all 
withdrawals). There are "free standing" debit cards (pre-paid debit 
cards) that are stand alone, associated with no bank account and which 
should be handled like "gift cards", just not tied to a particular 
vendor. And then there are "debit cards" associated to virtual accounts 
<< some agency might be adding so much per month to the debit card 
balance >>


YOUR type of debit card would/should have no existence in the CoA. Some 
of these other sorts (I will avoid the word "type") would.


Michael D Novack

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Re: [GNC] help setting accounts to track contributions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/4/2018 4:13 AM, Gio Bacareza wrote:

Hi,

My partner and I are moving in together and we'd like to share expenses
like groceries, rent, etc. So we'd like to track expenses as well as our
appropriate contributions to make sure that we both are contributing
equally to house expenses.

How should I set up the contribution? Under what main account type should
it be? Any recommendations?

I am going to suggest something more straight forward than treating 
contributions as "income", less distorting to what the situation is. 
Imagine that this were an ordinary (business) partnership, income, 
expenses, and partner's "drawings" or "contributions" (partner's drawing 
accounts are under equity, representing each partner's investment in the 
enterprise). In other words, you can look in a standard accounting text 
under "accounting for partnerships".


OK, this is a special sort of partnership that only has expenses, no 
income. So the drawing account of each partner will only show 
contributions. Going to be very easy to see if the total contributions 
are equal or not.


In other words, a funny set of books, in effect just "expenses" and 
"equity" trees with meaningful content. You can leave the top level 
parents "assets", "income", and "liabilities" in there, but usually 
these would have no contents. Or perhaps because of how you run your 
household, they might. For example, could be a "cookie jar" for small 
amounts of cash held on hand, so something under assets. Or there might 
be a situation where one partner pays a large bill but that partner's 
contributions are already higher. So treat that as a loan to the 
partnership and now something under "liabilities"


Michael D Novack

--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: [GNC] Invoice tax rouding issue in 2.x

[Mike or Penny Novack]

There is no solution to this. Among other things, it would be dependent 
on the rules of the jurisdiction whether the tax is supposed to be 
figured per item or on the total of all taxable items. So what would fix 
it in one case would break it in the other. It simply is true that 
rounded(a) + rounded(b) may not equal rounded(a+b). One of the things I 
used to do in my working days was to calculate the correct "fuzz" 
(maximum discrepancy) for comparison tests << effective equality >>


It is not only with this that we have a problem. Those of us who keep 
books to exact amounts but must file with governmental agencies on a 
whole dollar basis know how much "fun" it is deciding which amounts to 
juggle up or down (what is the LEAST alteration) as necessary to the 
book amounts to make the whole dollar report come out right. This this 
year, for one organization, fudging two amounts by a few cents was 
enough to make the 990-EZ come out right.


BTW, there are analogous problems with things like figuring amortization 
tables for loans )) how much of each payment is interest and how much 
principle). There is no "right" way to do this and so any function used 
by a program might not match what the particular bank says. In cases 
like these we can't ask that the program be "fixed" to agree.


Michael D Novack


On 5/22/2018 9:11 PM, Matthew Pounsett wrote:

I've got an off-by-a-cent error on an invoice due to the way taxes are
calculated.  GnuCash (2.6.21) is calculating the tax on each individual
taxable item, then summing that up, and adding that value to the subtotal.
This causes an error because each individual tax calculation is rounded
prior to subtotalling.

Given a tax rate of 13%, GnuCash is doing this:

 Item Tax
   277.50   36.08
92.50   12.03
Subtotal: 370.00 + 48.11 = 418.11

When the real calculation should be:

 Item  Tax
   277.50   36.075
92.50   12.025
Subtotal: 370.00 + 48.100 = 418.10

This could be fixed by GnuCash not rounding tax amounts until the final
total, but typically I believe the calculation done is to add up all the
taxable items and apply the tax calculation to that subtotal, so that it's
not necessary to track many decimal places to avoid a rounding error.

I did some searching through the mailing lists and I see a lot of reported
issues about rounding errors in GnuCash 2.x.  I can work around this by
putting in an extra line item to correct the taxes, but it would be nice
not to have to do that.  Is this something that's been fixed in 3.x?  I've
been avoiding the update because I haven't had time for a careful
migration, and testing whether I'm affected by any of the various issues
that have been reported since its release.  But, this might be a reason to
set that time aside.
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of the grave.

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Re: [GNC] Invoice tax rouding issue in 2.x

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/23/2018 9:17 AM, Nathanial Jones wrote:

The "It can't be fixed," attitude is just wrong, since there is a
conceptually simple fix.

It may take a while to code, but why not just put a check box or option
group into the tax rate setup that defines whether it is a "per item" or
"total" rate.
I did NOT mean "uncodeable" for some specific jurisdiction/situation. I 
meant a GENERAL fix (work for all the possible rules). Yes a "switch" 
between two rules would of course be possible. Keep in mind that users 
who only have to deal with the rules of one jurisdiction are going to 
see the problem as much simpler than those who have to deal with many.


But I think time for an "aside" on the term "bug". A "bug" is an error 
in a program where the program is not doing what it should according to 
the formal definition of what it should do. A bug is NOT "program does 
not do what the user expected it to do" where there was no formal 
decision on the matter. So in this specific case, would be a bug if/f 
the program was supposed to figure the tax on the total but was doing it 
per item or was doing it on the total when supposed to do it per item.


It is a FEATURE request "provide a switch" to allow both methods. It is 
the lack of USER commitment to the development process for the phase 
"define what the program is supposed to do" that is the reason why I am 
not helping with development. In my working days (design/implementation 
of financial systems software) that initial "formal definition" phase 
was >20% of the total development time charges << and then more user 
commitment for the testing phase >>


Michael D Novack

PS: Take something as simple as a "meals tax" on a restaurant bill. Here 
we have a state one and MAY have a local one. These are almost always on 
the total pre-tax amount but there is the rule question "apply 
separately or one on top of the other? and if one on top of the other, 
which first?" So more switches. Similarly with things for which there is 
Federal excise and state sales tax. Rules about whether figure 
separately or one on top of the other. LOTS of switches. POS systems are 
usually doing these calculations for the accounting system, not the 
accounting system itself. That isolates the problems. I don't know if 
anybody has tried to come up with a universal POS << have 
provisions/tables/switches to deal with the rules of every jurisdiction 
on the planet >>

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Re: [GNC] Profit and Loss Spreadsheet

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/3/2018 3:01 AM, John Robins wrote:

Got it! Thank you.

One quick follow up question. Would it be possible for a gnucash 
developer to add this report into the software, could I commission a 
developer to add this report in (or would it be too expensive), or is 
it not the type of report that could be added in?


All the best, John 


Assuming a developer were willing to take this on (unlikely*) the first 
step would be thinking about the not so simple things.


When you run ONE "Income Statement" report the CoA is as it is at the 
end of that period. But when you are running for multiple months you 
have no assurance that the CoA will be the same each time. How is that 
to be handled? << I am NOT asking how implemented but what do you expect 
to see in the report >> Notice that with the manual process that has 
been described to you you might encounter this situation also, and IF 
SO, make a decision what to do at that time. But if coded, need to have 
decided that in advance.


In my working days, probably 20% or more of a project's "time charges" 
were for user meetings to decide matters like this, "what should the 
program do IF ...? As a general rule, expect 80% of the code (or more) 
to e dealing with all the rare "exception" situations.


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] How To Record an In-Kind Charitable Donation?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/30/2018 3:10 PM, Eric H. Bowen via gnucash-user wrote:

I performed some design work and provided custom-printed envelopes and
materials for a local 501c3 charitable ministry. I am not charging them
money for the items, but I would like to receive credit for their fair
market value as an in-kind charitable donation. The ministry's treasurer
said to send him an invoice for the material and he would acknowledge
its receipt as a donation. Am I able to use Gnucash to track this
donation and, if so, what is the proper way to record the activity?
The proper way is the way your tax lawyer/accountant tells you to. Once 
THAT has been settled, we can then tell you "how in gnucash".


I lack the "qualifications" to give this sort of advice, especially as 
there are two parts to it. The "materials" part of it is easy, a debit 
to donations and a credit to your materials inventory. The "design work" 
part of it I would not be willing to hazard a guess. Maybe somebody on 
this list who donates professional services might answer.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Church Use of GNUCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/22/2017 3:30 PM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:

On 12/22/2017 1:56 PM, Aaron Laws wrote:

Excellent; thank you. One more question:


Something which I forgot to ask:

Does the organization have another bank account besides the checking 
account? If the organization has a savings account (for example) an 
informal way to account for restricted funds, but one which might seem 
more intuitive to your board, is partitions (child accounts) within the 
savings account. In other words, instead of having JUST the savings 
account, make that a parent of "general savings", "restricted fund one", 
restricted fund two, etc.


The total in the parent should match the bank statement.
You enter ordinary transactions affecting savings in "general"
When you have qualifying expenses for one of the restricted funds, you 
just transfer that amount to "general" << and you could do this either 
as expenses incurred or by periodic adjustment.??


Michael D Novack

PS -- You can do this even if you have just a checking account BUT it 
makes reconciling the checking account trickier so I wouldn't recommend 
that.

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Re: Company sponsored stock plan

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/30/2017 4:39 PM, Klaus Dahlke wrote:

Hi Wolfgang,
I have modeled a comparable plan as follows: first of all, I record my salary 
only net. Salary is what is posted to my bank account after all deductions.

I you don't participate in such plan, posting is straight forward, e.g.:
Bank <-> Income:salary -> 1000

If you participate in the plan, a further account is helpful to show the plan 
contribution. Also, the amount transferred from your company to your bank is 
reduced by your own contribution and the taxation for companies' addition.
Stop --- this advice depends on jurisdiction (in the US, the 
contributions if "pretax" are taxed only at distribution time many years 
down the road). But there may be other complications. The employer 
contribution is usually "conditional" becoming vested over time.


 Accounting for a 401k is complicated.

I'm at the other end of this process. But were I using gnucash during 
the money going in phase I probably would account for the 401k on a 
separate set of books. Like I said, the "net worth" of a 401k depends on 
lots of things like vesting and current age (can money be received 
without penalty tax in addition) and even can be conditional on why 
money taken out, and whether taken out or borrowed (if the plan allows 
that)


Michael D Novack

Michael D Novack
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Re: 2018?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/30/2017 3:54 PM, Kelly Sandwell wrote:

What do I need to do to use your gnucash in 2018?  I have used it this year
(2017) and I am very impressed.  I don't know much about accounting but my
tax preparer was very happy with the reports I showed him a month ago.

  Thanks,

Kelly Sandwell
You don't HAVE to do anything. Gnucash can continue to produce reports 
for the "current year" as long as you correctly specify the date or date 
range for the report. You don't HAVE to do a "close the books" (whether 
you would want to depends among other things how you look at your data**).


That said I suggest:
a) Even if you don't do this regularly, make a back up copy of the file, 
ideally onto removable medium so could go somewhere safe.
b) I would also make a copy of the file incorporating the new year in 
its name, and from now on use that new file. That will make a whole lot 
of things easier (like SAFELY getting rid of old of all log files etc. 
since the NAMES of these will be different). Also your old file is a 
backup (of state at year end) handy on your machine (as opposed to the 
one you sent for safekeeping off site*)


Michael D Novack

* If I seem to be overly worried about this, we had a house fire in 
2006, where just one room burned but backups were not far enough away to 
escape heat/smoke damage.


** IF you want the balances of the temporary accounts (income and 
expense) to reflect the current year as opposed to just using reports is 
one of those factors that might decide you on doing a "close the books". 
If you do do "close the books" either using the facility or manually I 
suggest you make backups before and after, named according << like 
"beforeclose2017" and "afterclose2017" because you can't rerun an 
"Income Statement" report after.



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Re: Income Statement report to show loan paydown amount?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/9/2018 1:40 PM, Tj Junior wrote:

Wondering if this is possible, the income statement appears to be the
closest I've been able to find.  Looking to find a summary of income and
expenses summarized (e.g total over 1 year rather than by transaction), but
I'd like it to show what's paid towards loans as well.  The income portion
is already there, it's the expense portion I'm having trouble with.

The portion of your mortgage payment that is applied to reducing the 
principle of the loan is NOT an expense, which is why not showing on the 
Income Statement report. It is a reduction of a liability (the mortgage).


In addition to running the Income Statement for a period you should run 
a Balance Sheet for the start of the period (immediately before) and the 
end of the period. It is there that you should see the reduction of the 
liability.


Michael D Novack

PS: Strictly speaking, that portion of your mortgage payment that goes 
into escrow to pay taxes when due, possibly also insurance premiums when 
due, is also not an expense << the escrow account is a restricted asset 
-- when funds from it are actually used to pay tax bills, etc. is the 
transaction which is the expense >>

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Re: How to deal with RRSP's (Canada)

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/5/2018 1:05 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:

David—

I see where you are coming from on this.

For reference, I accept your 5 assumptions; I believe they are accurate for 
many US retirement accounts as well.

.
I guess, from a philosophical perspective, the question really is: when do 
these funds become income? Is it when you get paid, or is it when the money 
actually gets disbursed? It seems to me that most of us are looking at it from 
the first perspective, but that the taxing agencies are looking at it from the 
second. So, for example, I have paycheck transactions that document my 
retirement contributions, transferring to the retirement asset accounts from a 
special (retirement) income account
David
There are ADDITIONAL questions if a US 401k. For example, are company 
contributions vested immediately or only over time? Here is a typical 
case (yours might be different)

1) Company contributions are vested 10% per year.
2) Any still unvested contributions become fully vested upon retirement 
at normal age (possibly also separation earlier but after age 55) or 
upon death if earlier.


In other words, the company contributions are conditional on staying 
with the company. They are in the account and earning but there is a 
diminishing liability (you have to pay back the unvested portion if you 
leave)


The 401k account MAY also have after tax contributions made to it, but 
that only affects how distributions will be taxed.


Another benefit that some companies offer is "split dollar" insurance. 
Very complicated to figure its affect on net worth. With split dollar, 
the company still owns the policy but you get to select the beneficiary 
<< the rights associated with ownership of an insurance policy can be 
separated >> Called "split" because the employee is taxed for the 
premium of the same amount term policy. Often to prevent that 
complication, the employee is billed that amount. At termination the 
employee has the right to:
1) Surrender the policy paying the company back for the premiums from 
the accumulated policy values keeping the remainder.

2) Pay the company that amount and keep the policy.
Note that there is a hard to calculate value associated with that choice 
<< what is your health status at this time in the future when you have 
to make that decision.


Note that this is simply a special case of things that might affect 
"effective" net worth or income but are difficult to carry on the (main) 
books. For example, a job might provide in addition to salary, housing, 
use of a vehicle, etc. << and this could even be tax free "income" 
depending on the circumstances >>


Michael D Novack
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Re: Filtered account report

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/16/2018 6:07 PM, AC wrote:


Yes except that's not how things started or ended up.  Many of the
transactions are from before GnuCash so they are historical records that
imported that way.  Second, I really wasn't paying attention to the
interest in any way other than to record it for record keeping as part
of a transaction mainly because I was more interested in the portion of
the payment that went to the principal and tracking the remaining amount
of payoff.

There were already over 500 transactions at the time I imported into
GnuCash for the first time.  So it's a bit off base to suggest I should
have "paid attention" when setting up the CoA when I didn't have a CoA
due to the original software.  I was lucky enough to get it to import
with few errors as is.
I thought I was clear enough that this situation is something that we 
ALL had to keep alert for to prevent it from happening. To PREVENT this. 
Obviously not going to help in retrospect for any particular person. For 
example, I now tell people "keep your backups in a separate location" 
--- that did not help me with backups I made before our 2006 house fire. 
I was not being critical that you had not done the separation for 
whatever reason. Sometimes these things are completely beyond our 
control to have foreseen << like a change in tax codes >>


However, you raised another issue, when should we import data from 
another package and when maybe not (create a new set of books under 
gnucash going forward). Factors I would take into account:
1) Is the old package still available on my machine to (re)produce 
historical reports and for viewing historical data? If not, obviously 
you want to import. But if so, you have a choice, and decide based on 
how hard to use the old system for that purpose vs how hard to clean up 
after import.

2) How changed would be your CoA now from your CoA then.
3) Do you have the necessary skills to write a program to modify the 
file being imported.


FIXING the sort of problem you had really a matter for a pro. For 
example, you describe being able to parse externally. Getting the 
computer to do that, parse*, create a batch of correction transactions 
(writing  a special ad hoc program to do that) and bringing in that 
batch is precisely the sort of thing I used to get paid to do. Except it 
would have not been 500 but 5000 or even 50,000 so would have taken a 
whole army of folks sitting at their terminals to do the corrections by 
hand. IF faced with your (initial) problem and realizing that the data I 
was about to import had these transactions all going to one interest 
account but I wanted them separated, I would have written something to 
alter the .cvs or whatever before the import. But not expecting you to 
<< you didn't do this sort of thing for your living; I did >>


I should perhaps add that USUALLY even I cannot see in advance that I 
should split an account. When the first "not quite fitting" transaction 
appears, it might seem an oddball case, so you ignore. It is when 
several others appear you realize not so oddball after all. So even I 
have to correct a few transactions. For example, one of the 
organizations existed more than a decade before the first fixed asset, 
and then several more years before there was a second << and so the need 
to split >>


Michael D Novack


* If you can look at them and tell which, then presumably a program 
could be written to do the same thing.

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Re: Year end issues

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Let's discuss this (and possible options)

First, you need to understand what "close the books" does do and what is 
does not do. It creates a transaction (or transactions) to zero out 
income and expense accounts to equity. It does NOT remove transactions 
and so will not make your file smaller.


It sounds like what you want is something more like to was in the old 
days of books kept in BOOKS, pen and ink on paper.  What was common at 
the end of each accounting period was to close the old books and open 
new ones. The old volumes were put safely by in case they needed to be 
referenced later.


One of the advantages of software like gnucash is that it can create the 
usual reports without actually closing the books. Easy to reference old 
transactions (previous accounting periods) without having to "bring them 
back" as they would have done in the old days when physical books. But 
suppose you don't want this, you don't want to be seeing all those 
accounts that have become obsolete cluttering up your view, etc. Or are 
worried about the sheer size of the file, etc.


You CAN simulate what was done in the old days when they opened new 
books each period. This is just like when you created your gnucash books 
in the first place. You run a final Balance Sheet report which gives you 
the balances of all of the standing accounts (asset, liability, and 
equity). You create a new set of books, say by exporting the CoA and 
importing that to a new set of books (all accounts zero) and can delete 
any accounts that are obsolete. You then enter the initial values from 
the Balance Sheet << note: I never use the facility to create accounts 
with an initial value but instead with an opening transaction, or rather 
two so each is split on only one side >>


You of course SAVE the old file. If you at some future time want to look 
at old (prior period) transactions you simply ask gnucash to open THAT 
(saved) file instead of the one you are currently using.


Michael D Novack

PS: All of my books are small enough that I have never been tempted to 
do this. The obsolete accounts do not appear in the reports as furnished 
to the boards of the organizations because EDITED first << in other 
words, I do not expect gnucash to produce the final pretty version of 
reports. I have to edit them anyway to add annotations explaining and 
unusual entries so all the editing for "pretty print" etc. can be done 
at that time >>


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Re: Correcting Opening Balances

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/13/2018 5:17 PM, David Carlson wrote:

Did you check the transactions as you imported them to weed out duplicates
and correct errors?

If not, I would suggest starting over to get at least reasonably close to a
good starting point.
Also, this is a case where the solution to the problem more obvious if 
you understand what "opening balance" is doing, how you would be doing 
that if setting up your books manually (hand creating the opening 
TRANSACTIONs), and the proper/formal method of correcting "errors" and 
omissions << entering a correcting transaction instead of editing an 
existing one>>


If you are going to import from another system, run a Balance Sheet (of 
that other system) as of the date you will be using for the import. That 
will show you what the opening values SHOULD be.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Double Entry of Informal "Loan" & Repayment

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/14/2018 1:57 PM, Keith Lewis wrote:

I'm new to GC, longtime Quicken user. This is a double-entry accounting question rather than a GC 
question-hope that's okay in this mailing list. I made a purchase for a gift w credit card and used 
expenses:gifts to balance. Afterwards, a friend wanted to help with the gift and so paid me half with cash. 
I think I should deposit that cash into assets:wallet and balance with expenses:gift. But isnt the cash from 
my friend income? Does this sound right to you? Now imagine my friend had offered ahead of time to help pay 
for the gift, but didn't immediately have the cash. I think I could record the transactions as above or set 
up a "loan" account to track the "loan". IOW split liability:creditcard -> 
expense:gifts + liability:creditcard -> loan; then when he pays me back, loan -> asset:wallet.Thanks 
for your time,Keith
No, not income but an adjustment to an expense. You (later) learned that 
you were not paying for all of the gift but sharing the cost. So an 
adjustment transaction: (when he pays you)

debit  wallet
   creditgift expense
   description could explain -- say "friend is paying for half the 
gift"


Now let's examine the second case where the friend agreed to do this but 
hadn't yet. In other words, you paid for the gift but he owes you for 
that share of it. I am assuming that you mentioned credit card because 
that is HOW you paid for the gift.


when gift purchased
debitgift expense (for your share)
debitowed by friend (that is an ASSET type account)
 creditcredit card (for the purchase price

when he pays you back that's a transfer between assets
debit   wallet
 credit owed by friend   (that "asset" is now zero)

Michael D Novack




Michael D Novack
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Re: Filtered account report

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/16/2018 3:04 AM, AC wrote:

Thanks but not exactly simple in my case as there are over 1000
transactions to the loan interest expense account.  The report was
mainly for my own curiosity which is why I'd rather use an algorithmic
method to generate the report.

This is an important point (what David just said)

With any of these accounting packages you have to plan the CoA so that 
the information you need will be available. Essentially what you are 
saying is:


"I did not design the CoA in such a way (a parent "loan interest" under 
which children "loan 1 interest", "loan 2 interest", ..) that I 
could see the interest for each loan separately. How can I NOW obtain 
that information?"


The simple answer is, you can't. But that leads to a discussion about 
being alert to changes needed in our books. Such changes might be easy 
at the time but very difficult later. Using this situation as an 
example, you might have started out with just one loan, so natural to 
have just "loan interest". It is when first entering transactions 
related to a second loan that we need to notice "oops, won't be able to 
track the interest of the two loans separately" and so you:

1) rename "loan interest" to "loan 1 interest"
2) create parent account (placeholder) "loan interest"
3) make "loan 1 interest" a child of this account.
4) create "loan 2 interest" a child of this account.
If you realized this fairly speedily after loan 2 came into existence, 
not a lot of work re-entering transactions. But if you wait till there 
are hundreds or thousands that would need to be fixed .


Michael D Novack


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Re: Collecting payments from others then remitting to one vendor

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/12/2018 8:48 PM, Christopher Lam wrote:

You could do liability accounts for each utility bill but I like the
concept of 'kitty funds' which gives you/them a real-time view of monies
owed by whom.

I would make the choice (asset accounts or liability accounts) depending 
on whether they usually paid you their share in advance or usually 
reimbursed you afterwards. Then on rare times when the other way around, 
the transactions "contra". But if the arrangement is new you won't have 
that history.


Note that even if you started one way, you can easily enough change this 
around later if their behavior changes.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Subaccounts [WAS Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets]

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/28/2018 8:11 PM, Matt Graham wrote:
 When you look at what liabilities really are, Adrien and I 
concluded on this thread that this situation (segmenting money for 
future) is really using a separate asset account. After all - creating 
a liability INCREASES your cash available. ...
Yes, the problem precisely, we aren't assigning the same meaning to 
"available" and "liability"


But your example of what you would like to see:

Template transactions (I'd probably call them "Triggerred transactions", but it 
doesn'tmatter) sound awesome. As someone else highlighted, there are implementation 
difficulties to consider, but I dont think that it would be too onerous.

In terms of spending from another account but recording against a sub-account, 
its easy:
Dr Exp whatever account
Cr Cash I pay for something awesome
Dr Parent account the amount I paid
Cr sub-account the amount I paid

SPECIAL CASE of a GENERAL requirement. The special case might be easy to 
implement BUT in general the amounts are NOT going to be the same.

This is actually a fairly common situation for me, say one of the organizations 
SELLS a tee shirt (fundraising, but tee shirts might also be being given away 
to volunteers).
Db   Cash
Cr   Sales
Db   Cost of goods sold
Cr   Tee shirt inventory
<< the shirts might be being sold for $20 but cost the organization $7 >>

Or, and though this is common with our restricted funds (not exactly matching) I will give 
an example precisely for your situation. You socked away into this reserve $100/mo toward 
the annual renewal of your car insurance based on your ESTIMATE of what that annual bill 
will be. But when the bill arrives it is for $1150 or $1250. In both cases you pay the bill 
and release the restriction, yes? << in one case, you had more in the fund than 
needed but it still can be released to general purposes, in the other you used all of the 
fund AND had to add some general funds >>

Michael D Novack


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Re: Accuracy / Rounding issues - Difference between gnucash and broker account

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/27/2018 4:54 PM, Pawel Wocjan wrote:

Hi,



Are there some general guidelines how to choose accuracy for fractional 
shares/price etc? Has anybody experience such minor discrepancies between 
his/her broker account and gnucash?

Thank you for your help,
Pawel
   
There is no way to do this (guarantee agreement). Whenever rounding is 
involved, it matters not just the particular rounding rule used but WHEN 
rounding is applied, because rounded(A) + rounded(B) does not 
necessarily = rounded (A+B).


One of the things I used to do (in my working days) was calculate the 
necessary "fuzz" for compare operations necessary not to have these 
small "errors" (different rounding process) cause mismatches.


Michael D Novack

PS: You can manually adjust by including a child account for "rounding 
errors" which you might name that or "fuzz".

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Re: Subaccounts [WAS Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets]

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/27/2018 10:25 PM, Matt Graham wrote:

Nice! It seems like we are getting somewhere. I am convinced that the process 
we think of budgeting where we are saving up for something is really a case of 
segmenting money within a sub-account. And it looks like Gnucash is already 
happy with this kind of situation - with the include sub-accounts in the 
recociliation window.
Not exactly. This is a case where the term "budgeting" is being used in 
different ways meaning different things. Budgets my be legal 
(organizations, government entities) or advisory (personal, business) 
though of course businesses might have requirements to set aside funds 
<< might be in the terms of a loan, etc. >>


ONE way of doing this is with liability accounts (typical -- account for 
amounts needed for taxes) but that method can also be used for "reserve 
funds" <<  I deal mainly with non-profits where "restricted funds" are 
common >>


Note that partitioning of a checking account in this way earlier 
described is still just "advisory" as it would NOT prevent you from 
writing a check for more than the balance remaining in the unrestricted 
portion of the account. Just you can't do that without seeing that you 
are doing it.


Michael D Novack


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Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/4/2018 1:21 AM, Christopher Lam wrote:

Looks nice. My main concern with these "shadow accounts" is that they will,
by default, be counted in the Net worth reports, income reports, etc, and
must be manually deselected every time.

In my view budget allocations are technically "outside the books" and must
therefore ideally be recorded in ways that don't affect the everyday data
and reports.

The problems people have been discussing are really "work flow" and "how 
done" issues.


a) As noted in the second paragraph, technically "outside the books". So 
ONE solution is to do just that, a separate set of "books" (gnucash can 
handle many). That obviously would mean no effect on reports run against 
the regular books. And of course that could be using the built in budget 
facility.


b) But it seems most would prefer not having to switch books to record 
the effect on budget items resulting from the real transactions. I can 
think of MANY ways to put the "budget" accounts so that they would have 
no net effect on reports, total of the parent standing accounts (asset, 
liability, equity). What I can't see is any easy way to "automate" 
because IN GENERAL users, especially non-organizational users, will be 
ADJUSTING budget allocations on the fly as needed << don't need a vote 
of some board to authorize that >>


c) Some people seem to be confused about "liabilities" thinking that 
they NECESSARILY represent an actual debt (the most common use) instead 
of possibly representing a CONDITIONAL debt. I will note that some of 
the things I have mentioned in this context (especially for non-profit 
orgs) may be changing << I have heard that new accounting practice will 
allow some restricted funds not to be considered liabilities 
until/unless something prevents their use for the intended purpose 
instead of as now from the get go as a conditional debt* >>


d) IF I wanted to put the "envelopes" in my main books, I could put them 
under assets, liabilities, or equity WITHOUT affecting the totals of any 
of those. Thus:

   Budget (the parent)
 Total allocated funds(debit side?)
   Allocations   (credit side?)
   Each individual envelope
   << all that matters is that Total Allocated Funds and 
Allocations be on opposite sides --- which means the total for the 
parent "Budget" will be ZERO >>


Michael D Novack

* In my practical experience, donors of conditional gifts or grants 
often will agree to a change of use, extension of time to use, etc. But 
I have never had to deal with governmental grants, etc. which I suspect 
would be less forgiving. But I also have practical experience where ALL 
there is is budget accounting << the organization or committee has no 
funds in hand --- the budget represents what will be reimbursed if the 
committee votes to authorize an expenditure and some committee member 
goes out and spends the money --- and then submits the receipts to the 
town treasurer for reimbursement. The committee must track "how much do 
we have left to spend" or somebody will be out of pocket >>



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Re: Keeping track of sales and expenses for a specific craft show

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/7/2018 12:22 PM, C M Reinehr wrote:

Ravenkwill,

I would suggest setting up your chart of accounts to record the 
revenues & expenses and then use the notes field of each entry to 
identify the specific craft show. Later, you can then use the notes 
field as a filter when running profit & loss reports, or specific views.


CMR 
 And I (putting on my "business analyst" hat for a moment) would ask a 
number of questions about the information desired to be answered BEFORE 
discussing "how to implement".


a) What is the volume of transactions for each fair? How likely the same 
fair to be attended for a number of years (before being able to decide 
whether THAT ONE with while)


b) To what extent want to be able to report the totals of certain 
expenses that can be fair related but also not. Thus taking just hotels 
for an example, might also use on vacations.


The point is, there can be multiple WAYS of doing these things, reports 
with fancy filters can extract information, BUT there are other 
considerations like clutter in main books, likelihood of data entry 
items < if you have under "hotels" a child for each event, can 
accidentally stick a transaction to the wrong one >   The which way 
easiest, which way less error prone, which way nothing special to do, 
which way less duplication of effort entering data, etc. choices cannot 
be intelligently made until these things have been considered. There are 
trade offs.


Michael D Novack

PS: Some examples might help. Thus, an organization of which I was 
treasurer was going to host the annual gathering for the organization. 
The event was going to have it's own bank account and for a period of 
two months there would be hundreds of transactions related to the event 
and then nothing ever again (or at least not for many years when the 
local might again host the national gathering). That was sort of a no 
brainer for choosing the "separate set of books" solution.  Why?
1) There would be very few transactions between the (local) 
organization's books and the event books.

2) No special reports (special filters) would  be needed.
3) Would be a great deal of "clutter" in the local's books << and yes 
you can hide that, but why have to hide >>
4) The national organization's treasurer would need access to the books 
(of the event)
BTW, take a close look at that one. Suppose what your org did (as a 
major activity) was put on events for other organizations. Do you not 
see that "separate books" would make it a LOT easier to show the 
treasurer's of these organizations JUST the data which belonged to them,.

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Re: How to relate Transfer Sales to Cash to Customer?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/8/2018 4:00 PM, Greg Feneis wrote:

I suspect Gnu Cash needs a point of sale (POS) module to handle this
functionality.


I think not exactly a module withing gnucash.

What gnucash would need is the ability to accept a feed from a (typical) 
POS system. Whether a POS system is practical as an open source project 
is another matter. Many (most?) that exist are tied to some company's 
cash registers, may be scanning in customer ID << I am going by what I 
see out there as a customer >>


Keep in mind, in the usual situation, you would NOT be wanting the sales 
clerks (who are ringing through customers) to have any access to the 
accounting system.


Open source POS (and inventory, see below) more practical based on the 
assumption that instead of a cash register would be a general purpose 
small computer the sales clerk used. Would be an app where a customer 
number was entered, purchases one at a time (know what is taxable), 
total the bill and note how paid (cash, check, credit card). Then feed 
the accounting and inventory systems.


Michael D Novack

PS: Interfaces with an inventory system similar. There, ideally you 
would want POS to feed inventory as well as "general ledger" and 
inventory to feed general ledger. In our case, the general ledger system 
would be gnucash.

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Re: Copying transactions from an account to the general ledger

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/6/2018 12:15 PM, Mike Donovan wrote:

Having recorded many transactions to the cash account, I would like to copy 
these to the GL (which has no transactions currently) and then use the GL for 
recording all future transactions. Can this be done? Thanks.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Review the intro to double entry bookkeeping.

a) The cash account IS a ledger account.
b) Each transaction you entered (entering from the cash account) had 
ANOTHER (at least one other) account associated with it, the other side 
of the transactions. If you did not specify that other account, gnucash 
used the account "Imbalance" as a (temporary) default account. You need 
to FIX each of these (change to the correct account)
c) Gnucash only has a ledger. The journal is virtual (you can run a 
report that will show it to you).


Michael D Novack
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Re: Installation

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/12/2018 10:08 AM, David Carlson wrote:

Johnathan,

GnuCash may or may not play well with various cloud storage services 
because of it's insistence (in current releases) on keeping it's 
automatic backups in the same folder as the data file.


Just so understood why it makes sense (to me)  to "insist" the automatic 
backups go into the same directory as the file. It guarantees gnucash 
being able to make up a UNIQUE name for the backups. If you were allowed 
to specify a directory B  in which to put the automatic backups for 
books.gnucash in directory A, what prevents directory B from also 
containing  a file named books.gnucash ?


Yes of course, care by the user could prevent a disaster like that, but 
as somebody who used to get paid to unscramble messes caused by that 
sort of carelessness, absolute prevention is better.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Installation

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/11/2018 10:04 PM, Jonathan Ames wrote:

Thanks, all, for advice. Just not happening, though. I can see the latest
file in a directory, but get "file not found" when clicking on it. By now,
a lot of lost work. Am I correct in assuming that unlike commercial
software, gnucash doesn't save itself back to the application
automatically, even if you "save" automatically? In other words, what
you're paying for is not to deal with the log files, but to save and then
later click on the icon and have it be where and as you left it?

No, "commercial products" are equally unlikely to save the data "in the 
application". Another application MIGHT have some default DATA location 
where it does its saves (I will give examples in a moment) but note that 
this is practical/possible ONLY if able to make the assumption that 
there will be only ONE "data file".


Take something like FireFox (I am intentionally choosing a 
non-commercial app to show you that "commercial" has nothing to do with 
this). When you install the program (well first time run as opposed to 
install) it creates a data directory in the "application data" directory 
and that is where it will store things. It is "first time run" because 
almost all modern operating systems support multiple users. So when 
opened (by a user) it looks in the expected place, if found, it uses 
that data, if not found decides "ah, first time for this user" and 
creates it << that process allowing the user to choose various 
preferences which will be saved there >>


Gnucash cannot do this because it supports MULTIPLE BOOKS. Only some of 
its data can be saved in a common location.


So the first time you save a set of books you have to tell gnucash 
"where to put THIS one" (what to call it, what directory will it live 
in, etc.) Perhaps you are also thinking about the "did not create an 
shortcut icon on my desktop" at the same time. That again is behavior 
more useful IF can assume that there would be only one. If you want 
icons on your desktop acting as shortcuts to your files, create them.


Michael D Novack
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Re: RFP: Generic Comparison Report

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/10/2018 12:52 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:

David,

As I noted in another thread, I'm interested in tackling this. I have a few
other ideas I want to try as well. (multi-step Income Statement and
Analytic/Activity style Income Statement)


Let me jump in hear a moment.

The "standard report" in my line of country (non-profits) is TWO periods 
side by side (generally two years, this year's annual vs last year's 
annual "Statement of Revenues and Expenses" and of course the 
corresponding ending Balance Sheets.


I did NOT write a custom report to do this in spite of the fact that I 
made my living doing software for a "financial" and was reasonably 
fluent in LISP << and Scheme is a LISP dialect >> That's because I 
expected the condition under which such a report to "line up properly" 
in the horizontal sense to be the exception rather than the rule. It is 
RARE that two consecutive years have NO changes to the CoA << no 
accounts renamed, no new accounts added, no account split into two, etc >>


In other words, since going to have to fiddle a bit anyway, doing this 
manually (export the constituent reports form gnucash and then 
reassemble the pieces with my favorite editor) and making decisions how 
to deal with the changes to the CoA as they become apparent)


Michael
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Re: One account for both Income and Expenses possible?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/11/2018 9:03 AM, Robert Heller wrote:

At Sun, 11 Feb 2018 08:15:56 +0100 Jeff Abrahamson  wrote:
... transfer
"money" from the vegetable account to a bank account (income when you sell
vegetables) and when you transfer money from a bank account to the vegetable
account (an expense when you buy vegetables). *I* do this which my inventory
of thumb drives. GnuCash does not have "inventory" accounts or any way of
dealing with inventory as such
Inventory MANAGEMENT is something else (gnucash lacks this but that 
belongs in an inventory system*, not "general ledger".


But you are saying that gnucash does not support inventory value and 
cost accounting and that is simply not so.


Let's say incidental to its main activity an organization sells various 
things (tee shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) as a fund raiser. You create 
under Assets (after "current assets" and "fixed assets") a parent 
"Inventory of goods". Under that might be accounts (more likely also 
parents as batches of goods might have different basis) for "tee 
shirts", "coffee mugs", etc. When the organization buys a new batch of 
tee shirts that is a debit to "tee shirts" (or as I mentioned, perhaps 
"tee shirts batch 4" --- the account description can include what the 
unit price was for this batch) and a credit to checking << note: we get 
confused using the supposedly more user friendly terms worrying about 
what sort of "transfer" this is). Each sale of a tee shirt not only 
debits cash and credits "sale of tee shirts" for the sale price but also 
debits "cost of goods sold" and credits the inventory account "tee 
shirts batch N" for the unit cost of batch N << going to be a policy 
decision whether to simply use FIFO or to actually worry about from 
which batch that shirt came. Maybe BOTH come into play. To use your 
example, thumb drives, you might have 8 Gb drives (batches of those) and 
16 Gb drives (batches of those) so you might want under "thumb drives" 
children "8 Gb drives" and "16 Gb drives" and under each of those "batch 
1, batch2, etc. and use FIFO there >>




Michael D Novack

* The data kept here things like "number on hand", "physical location 
where shelved", "reorder point", etc.

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Re: Recording non-cash donations

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/13/2018 10:56 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:

Hi all,

  For tax purposes non-cash donations of goods and services are 
deductible.

I would like to track those as an account (or off-setting accounts) in
gnucash and do not find how best to do this in the guide or help docs. 
I'm

open to suggestions on how to track these transactions.

Regards,

Rich 

Clarify your question for us.

Are you asking "can I use gnucash to track this?" (yes) or "can I easily 
do this WITHIN my main gnucash books? (maybe not, and probably not 
simply, easily, etc.(


Remember, for reporting purposes, you still will be reporting these 
donations in terms of dollars. You will want to have some way of 
noting/marking which require the additional substantiating paperwork.


Since I do NOT use guncash for personal accounting (no personal "regular 
books") but do normally itemize and so need to track donations I do have 
a "virtual" Donations set of books. In my case, I also want to get a 
report that shows me not only total donations but which organizations on 
our "get an annual donation" have received theirs, for this I use a 
"funny" set of books that has ONLY accounts of type "income" and 
"expense". The income side has "by check", "by cash", and "in kind" and 
the expense side a tree of receiving entities. We wan to track 
non-deductible donations too, so those two categories are the main 
parents, deductible further broken into types of organizations, 
non-deductible into simple non 501(c) 3 ("informal entities", "beggars", 
"unknown status") and "PAC".


The only report I need to run against this is an "Income Statement"

As it happens, we make only trivial "in kind" donations", but if we were 
doing some substantial ones (that needed individual documentation) I 
would have split the "in kind" on the income side between those that did 
and those that didn't. Since these NOT by check, could always use the 
number field to mark when the documentation was in hand.


Michael D Novack

PS: I use guncash for other sorts of "virtual" entities. For example, 
one that treats our solar system AS IF it were an entity that had income 
and expenses, was operating on borrowed money on which it was paying 
interest as well as paying the loan back, and which later, perhaps, will 
be paying dividends after the loan is paid off. Additional expenses are 
things like its share of our property insurance, estimated affect on our 
taxes, etc. Income items are things like tax credits, credits to our 
electric bill, sale of SRECs (being taxable, would be an example of part 
of that going for an expense).


 MOST examples you see for solar systems discuss "payback" as if 
money were free of interest and/or there were no effects on other 
expenses. I wanted one which was realistic about a normal rate on a 20 
year fixed mortgage,other expenses, etc. I chose 4%, which at the time 
was GOOD for 20 year fixed, taxable interest, loan and this would 
actually be an internal (non-taxable) loan so really equivalent to AAA 
and ~5%


But looking at that set of books, not obvious "virtual" as 
otherwise appear more or less normal. Just that there ISN'T such an entity.

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Re: 2.6.19: find source of imbalance in reconciled accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/13/2018 12:43 PM, Rich Shepard wrote:

  I'm puzzled how I can find the source of the imbalance at the bottom of
the 2017 trial balance report when both the checking and saving accounts
reconcile with the bank's records (as of today). The trial balance 
period is

1 Jan 2017 through 31 Dec 2017.

  Please provide a clue stick where I should start looking.

Regards,

Rich 
 What I don't understand is why you think the checking and savings 
accounts agreeing with the bank's records should have anything to do 
with it. Maybe consider going back over the "basics of double entry 
bookkeeping".


But I'll try to help. Go to the Imbalance account. For each transaction 
there, go to* the other account which is almost certainly the account 
from which you entered the transaction. From that view of things you 
should notice that you failed to specify the account that was the other 
side of this transaction. That every transaction in double entry 
bookkeeping has AT LEAST two accounts associated with it is basic.


I wish as easy as I made this sound. Back when you originally entered 
the transaction you probably knew what it was about. You might now be 
faced with the question "what was that check #1234 written back on June 
7th, 2017 for? I can see it was in the XYZ store, but they sell all 
sorts of things". You MAY end up having to create another expense 
account for "unknown".


Michael D Novack

*  You can see from the transaction in Imbalance a date and the name of 
the other account

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Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/22/2018 4:21 PM, Dan Carpenter wrote:

Adrien, general accounting principles close the books at the end of the fiscal 
year.  This process in most accounting software updates the Equity with the 
profit or loss balances and then zeros the income and expense accounts to begin 
fresh for the new year.  I am just starting with testing this software, but 
most software retains “last year data” in a separate file or field within the 
data record for comparative reporting of this month/last month ; this year/last 
year etc.

Gnucash (without doing  a"close the books")
a) Have last year's data in a separate file << just make a copy of the 
file at an appropriate time >>
b) Can still produce the reports for any prior time period << you can 
(if you lost them) recreate the previous period's reports from the 
CURRENT data file >>
c) And you can close the books in the old pen and ink on paper way too 
if that is what you want to do. Either using the function or totally 
manually.


This is a matter of understanding the HISTORY of bookkeeping. It was the 
PROCESS of closing the books that created the report we call "profit and 
loss" << the report WAS another temporary account used in the process of 
closing* >> And of course they needed a method of keeping the physical 
books small enough to handle << a 10,000 page book would be real awkward >>


Michael

* The individual income and expense accounts were not closed directly to 
equity. They were closed to this special "profit and loss" account and 
then THAT was closed to equity by the net profit or loss. BTW, this 
wasn't just back in the "dark ages". I am old enough to have learned 
doing it this way.

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Re: General Ledger

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/25/2018 2:06 PM, Dave H wrote:

Thanks for explaining the distinction Michael.

So I take from all this that the General Journal/General Ledger 
distinction is an historical distinction no longer in real use with 
the advent of computerised accounting software.


No, that wasn't quite what I said. Look at it again.

Even with computerized accounting software might want/need this 
distinction. Might WANT the books partitioned.


For example, in an enterprise of some size (not all that big) you MIGHT 
want (for example)
a) The office manager to have a small fund (petty cash) for things it 
was decided could just be purchased without going through the purchasing 
department.
b) Each sales location to be entering individual sales with only the 
daily totals going to main books.

etc.
Not JUST reducing the work load on the main enterprise bookkeeper. Not 
JUST reducing clutter and unnecessary detail in the main books. Not JUST 
that lower level employees can lack access to look at more than they 
need to (do you want EVERYBODY who needs access to be able to enter data 
to look at, for example, payroll to see what somebody else is getting 
paid. Note that with something like that reduced risk that the office 
manager or somebody in a sales office, etc. could do more than limited 
embezzlement on their own.


Michael D Novack
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Re: Church Use of GNUCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/20/2017 2:40 PM, jcnw wrote:

I am setting up our church books on GNUCash and wonder how to handle
restricted funds.
For example if a member makes a donation to The Organ Fund


I do accounting for non-profits and so can help.

There is more than one way to handle this, and factors which may lead to 
the choice which are things like: (answer these)

1) Will the special fund have its own bank account?
2) Will the special fund drive last for a long or short time? Is this an 
immediate project or likely to go on for months or years before enough 
funds raised?
3) How formal do you want to be? How formal the restriction? << that's 
specified by the donor --- for example, "I'd like this to be for the 
organ but if needed for something else you can" is an INFORMAL restriction.


Michael D Novack

PS: The strictly proper method of having a liability "donor restricted 
funds" can ALWAYS be used.

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Re: Church Use of GNUCash

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/22/2017 1:56 PM, Aaron Laws wrote:

Excellent; thank you. One more question:





Assets:Chequingx
   Liabilities:Organ Fundx

Then some expense:

Expense:Organ   x
  Assets:Chequing  x

But then how is the encumbrance relieved?

<< an adjustment transaction is made >> How does that adjustment 
transaction look?
Opens the whole topic of "journal transactions" << there are more 
possible adjustment transactions than this >>


But that is how I would do it. Let's say we had a restricted fund for X 
(the X fund) and it had a liability balance of $1000. Let's say that we 
were adjusting quarterly (will discuss later if likely a one shot 
situation). The quarterly total of X expenses were $400 (expenses 
qualified to be be paid put of the restricted fund). I would enter a 
transaction debiting the liability and crediting equity for $400 giving 
the description "released form restriction in 3rd quarter" (or 
whatever). If this were a large restricted fund only a portion of which 
used each year, might do that adjustment annually along with all the 
other year end adjustments << that is when the bulk of "journal 
transactions would be" >>


BUT -- if this were a one shot deal, say we were raising a fund and 
using it all at once ) possibly with general organization funds added I 
might choose to do it along with the purchase transaction. Wait till you 
have lots of experience with split transactions before you tackle a 
fancy two way split like that.


Michael D Novack


--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: Check Register view disappeared; how do I get it back?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/3/2018 1:38 PM, Dave Orsinger wrote:

Hi,
I asked this basic question several days ago and still haven't found a 
solution. I was starting with gnucash on a very basic, personal 
level.  I was entering data in the basic "check" register. When taking 
a break, I accidentally "x'd" the check register tab and it went away 
(no surprise). However, when I tried to make it reappear, I cant 
figure out how to do it. My data is still there as I can run reports, 
etc. but I need the "check" register to continue entering more data.
Perhaps someone can create a "dummy" account (named after me), do what 
I did in closing the check register, and figure out how to get it back.


Much appreciated.
Dave O
You had been keeping this account "open" (a tab for it on the bar) and 
you closed it so the tab went away?


What tabs DO you still have on that bar? Surely one for "accounts". 
Click on that and it will bring up a view of your CoA (chart of 
accounts; your hierarchy of accounts). You then find your checking 
account in that hierarchy and open it (click on it) which will put it 
back on the bar. Yes, MOST of the time your checking account will be one 
of the accounts affected by a transaction but not always, so you need to 
learn how to open ANY account in your CoA. So learning how to (re)open 
your checking account useful.


Michael
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Re: Company sponsored stock plan

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/1/2018 4:01 PM, Klaus Dahlke wrote:




Stop --- this advice depends on jurisdiction (in the US, the
contributions if "pretax" are taxed only at distribution time many years
down the road). But there may be other complications. The employer
contribution is usually "conditional" becoming vested over time.

   Accounting for a 401k is complicated.


Acutally, I am not sure whether Wolfgang is engaged in a 401k plan or he just 
enjoyes 'share based compensation' as in my case (not unusual these days in 
Germany). The company shares I buy I can sell the next day I have acces to. 
Wolfgang mentioned reporting in Euro, so my inital guess was that it is plain 
'share based compensation'.

I did say "depends on jurisdiction".

 And we have "share based compensation" here in the US too. And that 
MAY be like you described "I can sell the next day" or maybe not (not 
until a certain amount of time has passed) and there might be other 
complications like given OPTIONS to purchase shares (so things like 
value of option till exercised or expired -- and shares so purchased 
MIGHT also have restrictions on sale attached). I suspect that at least 
some of the complications I just described might exist in Europe as well 
as other places.


But do note, ONE of the possibilities for 401k plans here IS 
contributions of company stock. A 401k does not HAVE to offer a wide 
range of investment options.


Michael




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Re: [GNC] Operating Checking Account in Overdraft

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/2/2018 10:15 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:

GnuCash lets you create any account you want and put it (pretty much) wherever 
you want.

Contra-Accounts are sometimes desired to be where they are as true 
contra-balanced accounts. Others prefer or need them on the opposite side of 
the equation. I think the user should decide, and not be prompted by the 
software or overridden by the software.

If you would prefer a contra-asset to be a liability, then simply create a 
liability account instead and place it there.

Since the (initial) question was about an account of type asset, I will 
give an example where asset accounts would NORMALLY be "contra". Forget 
"current assets" for a moment and consider "fixed assets". A fixed asset 
would normally have two children under it, "basis" and "accumulated 
depreciation" << yes, the "basis" COULD have additional transactions --- 
thus some "repairs" to a farm tractor considered routine and thus 
current expenses but rarely other major things like an engine rebuild 
might be considered extending the life of the asset and thus capitalized 
over time >>  The accumulated depreciation account would be a contra 
account.


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] Payroll add-on, module, software?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/26/2018 11:21 AM, John Ralls wrote:


  or as a separate program that maintains all of the HR stuff and just sends 
the financial transactions to GnuCash.

<< Just back from camping in the woods >>

THAT is the sense I meant, though I would not think of it as a "plug in" 
but possibly one of several external programs that were keeping their 
own sort of data (like Payroll having HR data; Inventory having things 
like shelving location, reorder levels, alternate supply vendors, one 
like POS sending feeds to both Accounting ad Inventory, etc.)


All sharing the same feed format << and each "make" dependent on THAT 
but not each other, or for that matter gnucash except with regard to the 
format of the feed >>


However "feed format" goes two ways, also a common ERROR format by which 
the (new) input edit component reports WHY a feed was rejected (or part 
of a feed if on a transaction by transaction basis).


Michael

P

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Re: [GNC] Payroll add-on, module, software?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

I often get accused (not just here) of leaving something critical out. 
Jumping over the obvious, just not so obvious to all.

On 7/26/2018 11:21 AM, John Ralls wrote:



All sharing the same feed format << and each "make" dependent on THAT 
but not each other, or for that matter gnucash except with regard to 
the format of the feed >> 


THIS is perhaps what I am not making clear enough. We have been seeing 
calls for gnucash to be able to handle inventory, pos, and here payroll, 
etc. Functions important to businesses, functions which for some would 
be simple systems but for others very complex. Functions which are doing 
many things unrelated to accounting. But which share IN COMMON that they 
all would create transactions for accounting.


That is the main reason I don't think of these as much suited to be 
"plug ins" as independent systems that create feeds for the accounting 
system (send transactions to the accounting system) because the 
accounting system then only needs ONE method of receiving feeds from 
whatever outside systems exist. And businesses that have grown beyond a 
couple employees, grown to the point where employee X does payroll/hr, 
employee Y does inventory, etc. but none of those employees should 
necessarily have access even to look at the company books.


This would also allow for multiple solutions for these "outside" 
functions, simple ones for those whose needs are simple, and complex 
ones for those whose needs are complex (assuming that somebody would 
create powerful versions). Thus in this discussion with regard to 
payroll, some say "well I can do it with a spreadsheet, how hard could 
it be" while other see the need for a powerful system able to deal with 
all sorts of complication (exempt, vs non-exempt, differing 
jurisdictions applying, standard taxes vs voluntary larger amounts 
withheld, etc. on an employee by employee basis) << inventory and pos 
have similar simple vs complex issues -- thus for pos, not only do 
different jurisdictions have different tax rates but differ on what is 
taxable (and at what rate) and may depend on where the customer 
lives/goods delivered and on the tax status of the customer << and if a 
tax exempt organization, is the paperwork submitted for this transaction 
--- a complication not obvious those who do not interact with tax exempt 
entities* >>


Michael D Novack

* As somebody who keeps books for exempt organizations, obvious to me 
form the customer end of things (what paperwork needed to be submitted 
so NOT charged sales tax on an otherwise taxable purchase) but not on 
the vendor's side of that problem, how their system enters the 
transaction. And BTW, even things like "where" not so obvious -- mailing 
address for a location might not indicate the correct state for sales 
tax purposes as postal routes do NOT respect state boundaries << thus 
where I used to work, customer records kept both "mailing" and "legal" 
state as insurance law is state by state >>

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Re: [GNC] Payroll add-on, module, software?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

:


Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable are in a similar vein.  In
fact, they share a common feature with payroll in that they deal with
3rd party entities (Receivable -- entities who owe you money; Payable --
entities to whom you owe money; Payroll -- entities who get paid for a
salary/wage).  That common module of dealing with names/addresses and
relationships could be abstracted out of all three modules and made a
common service.


--
Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM
stephen.m.butle...@gmail.com
kg...@arrl.net
253-350-0166 
 Oh dear. No, I would see them as VERY different. And very different 
information being kept.


When I have a payable I owe THAT person an amount.

When I have a payroll event I owe THAT person something (some portion of 
the gross amount), and according to information on that person's record 
owe (for example) the Feds various amounts, the state various amounts 
(and neither of the previous single accounts -- example, income tax and 
SS and medicare separate; state income tax and state workman's comp 
separate, etc. ) and possibly various other entities/accounts. I am 
required (by many jurisdictions) not only that amounts be correct but 
that the employee get a statement along with that check (or direct 
deposit). Many/most of the amounts depend on data on the HR record.


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] Payroll add-on, module, software?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/25/2018 2:06 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:

R. but the short answer is, no, there is no (and probably won’t ever be) 
any payroll module or features. Unfortunately, the jurisdictional requirement 
nightmare to comply with every nuance across the entire planet is beyond the 
time and resources of the small development team.

However, GnuCash can handle the payroll accounting entries and even print the 
checks. (with vouchers if you’re up for some finagling)

You’ll have to calculate the deductions from gross separately in some other 
software first though. The most common suggestion I’ve seen is to setup a 
spreadsheet with the proper deduction rates and you just fill in the gross.


But that is ONLY if there is an insistence on monolithic design. What 
might not be beyond the capabilities of the development team is to 
introduce a facility for gnucash to accept FEEDS (from external 
components). Once that capability is present, it would be possible for 
OTHER teams to come into existence to create POS and Payroll systems << 
both of those have jurisdiction dependencies so might well be just for 
this or that jurisdiction >> that would interface with gnucash and other 
external facilities like "inventory" which would be more likely 
universal << not jurisdiction dependent >>


However I've always been on the modular side in the great monolithic vs 
modular debate.


Michael D Novack

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Re: [GNC] Payroll add-on, module, software?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 7/25/2018 8:20 PM, John Ralls wrote:

GnuCash is actually very modular (perhaps a little too much, there are 
parts of it that are modules and probably shouldn't be). I wouldn't 
say it's easy, nothing in programming GnuCash seems to be easy, but 
it's possible for a third party developer to create a payroll module 
for their jurisdiction and for users in that jurisdiction to add it to 
their GnuCash installations. But in 20 years no third party developer 
has ever expressed any interest in creating a GnuCash plugin. Regards, 
John Ralls 


"Plug ins" (feeds) have TWO parts. Sender and receiver. As I understand 
the issues (decades of experience in software design) there are TWO 
parts to a "plug", can think of as male (sender) and female) receiver. 
It is the receiver that needs to be responsible for input editing of 
feeds and THAT is a good sized project all by itself << do not accept a 
feed that will not work, how to report this to sender, etc. >>


Saying that no third party has expressed interest in writing something 
that would send a feed to gnucash ignores that gnucash does not have the 
capability of (properly) dealing with batch feeds.


Michael

--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: [GNC] Operating Checking Account in Overdraft

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/2/2018 9:21 AM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:


I have sent an email to the Australian and New Zealand Chartered Accountants 
asking them the question.

I will let you know what they say.

Kind Regards,

Murray


This is something we here in the US can't help much on because we do not 
have "two way checking accounts". We might have checking accounts with 
"overdraft protection" but with those the credit balance situation is 
assumed to be temporary. We might have lines of credit accounts against 
which checks can be written (normal way to make disbursements from the 
account) but with these the balance is almost never* debit, the account 
a liability. What we don't have is accounts designed to be used either way.


Michael D. Novack

* Having had one of these many decades ago, I seem to recall sometimes 
making an extra large payment before leaving for a month or two hiking. 
But this would be a temporary situation, just like temporary the other 
way around with a checking account that had overdraft protection. I had 
one of those two back then, but can't remember how long I had to 
straighten out a "overdraft" situation.

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Re: [GNC] Loan/Mortgage payments with "adjusted" principle (eg after an extra principle payment), SOLVED

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/12/2018 12:58 PM, azalea4va wrote:

Sorry, I missed this reply.  So a little late, but ...
I should perhaps have indicated that writing this sort of thing used to 
be "my line of country". I have written these things.

Mike or Penny Novack-3 wrote

a) method? << by "present value" of series of "rents" or by "trial and
error" >>

I am not sure what ""present value" of series of "rents"" means, but the
answer is by math.  This is just a mathematical calculation.  As was
indicated in the code provided.  I did not specify, but the math was based
on 30/360 calculations, the one most often used in determining mortgage
payments.
OK --- The periodic payments are called "rents" and dependent on the 
"discount rate" (the mortgage interest rate in this case) that series of 
future payments has a PRESENT value. So ONE way of doing the math is to 
take the payment amount to be 1.... (number of decimal places not 
going to be agreed) and discounting each by the interest for the 
interval. That gives a number you can divide into the starting principle 
amount.


Another way for a program to address the problem is "trail and 
error"where starting with an initial guess as to what the payment would 
be this is adjusted until the "best fit" results << see my question 
about "final payment" >>




Mike or Penny Novack-3 wrote

b) where will rounding take place?

I addressed this in the file I provided.  There is one and only one correct
answer mathematically.
Not true. Depends, for example, on how many decimal places in the 
calculations and whether only final rounding or rounding at multiple 
places during the calculations. Since you and the bank will not be in 
agreement won;t get the same answer. Again I will refer to the alternate 
"trial and error" method of calculating the payment which MIGHT give 
better results.



Mike or Penny Novack-3 wrote

c) how will the final payment be figured?

To be honest, I forget (because I do not care).  Did I add the code to to
make the final payment the amount due at that time?
Again, there are choices here. Was the calculation made so that there 
was NO additional (small) payment at the end? Was the calculation such 
that the final payment would be as close as possible but not more than 
the rest of the payments? What do you do IF the choice is between a 
final payment much smaller than the others or going over a small amount 
if the payment amount is 1 cent higher?


Do these issues explain why (in practice) my "amortab" programs (create 
an amortization table for a loan amount, interest rate, and number of 
payments) were usually written to use the "trial and error" method? << I 
might get a first approximation by calculating the "present value" and 
THEN seeing if small adjustments up or down gave a better fit to all the 
desired conditions. >> For understanding what I mean by "trial and 
error" methods look up something like "Newton's Method" -- I was NOT 
referring to "non-math" but an algorithm, a PROCESS,  guaranteed to 
converge on a best approximation of a value.


Michael D Novack
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Re: [GNC] keeping entities separate

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/13/2018 8:52 AM, patrushkha via gnucash-user wrote:

I just started using Gnucash and thought I'd gotten through the learning curve; 
I have 2 small businesses and entered both of them as well as my personal data, 
but discovered they are all mixed together. At least I think so, I'm not versed 
enough to understand how I got there or how to untangle entities.
Can anyone suggest a process to separate them OR do I have to start all over?

I'm also willing to hire someone to get me on track- Los Angeles area.

Thank you so much,
Pat


Oh dear. You are describing THREE entities here so ideally you should 
want to have three sets of books If you are showing somebody the set of 
books for one of the businesses (say you are selling it) no reason for 
this prospective buyer to see anything about the other business or your 
personal finances.


I can't tell you whether better literally to start over or to 
disentangle (temporarily having FOUR sets of books). There are other 
questions you need to answer. For example, do these businesses have 
their own bank accounts? Or are you perforce going to remain somewhat 
entangled.


Michael D Novack

PS: If one or both of these "businesses" are small/minor it WOULD be 
possible to carry them within your main personal books. And still be 
able to see/report on each separately. BUT be advised that the chances 
of error would be very high because neither gnucash nor any other 
bookkeeping system would prevent you from entering a transaction in the 
wrong place.




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Re: [GNC] Loan/Mortgage payments with "adjusted" principle (eg after an extra principle payment), SOLVED

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 8/13/2018 11:29 AM, azalea4va wrote:

I addressed this in the file I provided.  There is one and only one
correct
answer mathematically.


I am surprised the moderators have not stepped in.

If you want to continue this, I suggest off list.


Michael D Novack
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