Re: [GNC] Your Classification / Tagging Implementation

[doncram]

Gal - Well-stated question, except you omit description of the problem in
language of accounting as taught to, learned by, and understood by
accountants of the classical type, i.e. CPA's, students and graduates of
business programs, accounting researchers and educators.  Which is to
describe the feature lacking as JOB COSTING.  I.e. to allow a company or
nonprofit the ability to use identifier codes to indicate specific JOBS,
e.g. for a home renovation business to identify both revenues and expenses
associated with a given construction project, or for a nonprofit to
identify different programs, or for a catering firm to identify different
gigs.  And to support budgeting and profitability reporting in summary and
in detail, BY JOB.  JOB COSTING is included in the second of two intro
courses in accounting that are required for all undergraduate business
majors (whether Marketing or Entrepreneurship or Finance or whatever is
their specific major) in the U.S., for example.

The statement of the problem in terms of adding "categories" or
"tagging" reflects
what I think may be characterized as "the computer programming world" (I'd
welcome better characterization) and to some extent modern accounting
software world of Quickbooks (and probably some other accounting software)
which allow for "classes" in addition to "jobs".  Classes as given in
Quickbooks are useful, e.g. for a nonprofit to distinguish between "Program
services" vs. "Administrative" vs. "Fundraising" for a U.S. nonprofit's
required reporting on IRS form 990, and probably have other purposes, but
are not part of the general corpus of what's covered in accounting
education, while JOB COSTING is.  (Quicken's "categories" were equivalent
to regular _accounts_; Quicken did not support job costing.)

In your application for a person's accounting, "Vacations" or more specific
"Vacation-Portugal 2019", "Vacation-Thailand 2020" could be designated as
"jobs", probably with job numbers.  In Quickbooks' "Customer:Job"
terminology, you'd use "Vacation" as a "customer" and then "Portugal 2019"
and "Thailand 2020" as "jobs".  For nonprofits, the "Customer" would be one
grant source, and "Jobs" would be the 2019 grant, the 2020 grant, etc. and
it can be very important / essential for a nonprofit to provide exact
tracking of their expenditures related to one of these specific grants or
another.  The "Customer:Job" terminology for the fields in Quickbooks apply
most naturally for businesses which have multiple contracts or projects
over the years for major customers.

About your first suggested workaround strategy of using "#code" tags within
a memo field, I suppose it could sort of work, _if_ it is possible to
design custom Income Statement reports, Balance Sheet reports, etc. in
GnuCash specific to each defined tag.

About your second suggested workaround, expanding the chart of accounts for
an entity, that has been repeatedly recommended by GnuCash user-list
commentors, say when a catering company owner asks "can I use gnucash" but
is not helpful.  A firm wants reporting by type of expenditure account
(e.g. food & beverage purchases, staffing costs, equipt rental, etc.) AND
it wants reporting by JOB.

I can't imagine recommending GnuCash for any person or firm or nonprofit
which needs, or would seriously benefit from, JOB COSTING (and it's getting
hard for me to imagine any entities which would not benefit from that).  So
for myself and for my nonprofit and forprofit clients, I use Quickbooks'
versions (e.g. Desktop Pro) which include JOB COSTING.  The feature of JOB
COSTING is among my top 5 recommendations/requests for what GnuCash should
add.  So short answer: I don't see either workaround working.

 sincerely, Don Cram

Say I spend 100€ at a restaurant during a vacation in Italy.
The obvious transaction is a 100€ credit to checking account and 100€ debit
to Expenses:Eating out
But I would also like to be able to track the vacation expenses, so I have
to classify all transactions took place during the vacation, for example
with a #italy2020 tag.

Summarizing all discussions I've read, there are two common workarounds, or
ways to manually implement classification in gnucash:

1. By adding the tag #italy2020 to the description, note or memo field of
the transaction.
The transaction report can then filter transactions by the tag string.

2. By creating an additional account, called italy2020, and change the
transaction splits in the following way:
Cr. Assets:Checking 100€
Dr. Tags:italy2020 100€
--
Cr. Tags:italy2020 100€
Dr. Expenses:Eating out 100€

On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 3:14 PM David Cousens 
wrote:

> Will,
>
> The confusion often arises because your bank regards a savings/checking
> account in your name as a liability in their books while in your own books
> it is an asset. Conversely your credit card is an asset in the bank's books
> and a liability in yours
>
> See
>
> 

Re: [GNC] Price retrieval

[Geoff]

Hi Randix

That screenshot is too small for me to read, however you can start 
troubleshooting using the GnuCash price support utilities in a command 
window.


Here is an example - Windows 10 / GnuCash 4.1

C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\bin>perl gnc-fq-check
("1.49" "adig" "aex" "aiahk" "alphavantage" "amfiindia" "asegr" "asx" 
"aufunds" "australia" "bamosz" "bet" "bmonesbittburns" "bourso" "bse" 
"bsero" "canada" "canadamutual" "citywire" "cominvest" "cse" "deka" 
"dutch" "dwsfunds" "europe" "fetch_live_currencies" "fidelity" 
"fidelity_direct" "fidelityfixed" "financecanada" "finanzpartner" 
"finland" "fool" "france" "ftfunds" "ftportfolios" "ftportfolios_direct" 
"fundlibrary" "goldmoney" "greece" "hex" "hu" "hufund" "hungary" 
"hustock" "iexcloud" "indiamutual" "known_currencies" "lerevenu" 
"maninv" "morningstar" "morningstarau" "morningstarch" "morningstarjp" 
"mstaruk" "nasdaq" "nyse" "nz" "nzx" "platinum" "romania" "seb_funds" 
"sixfunds" "sixshares" "stockhousecanada_fund" "tdefunds" "tdwaterhouse" 
"tiaacref" "tnetuk" "troweprice" "troweprice_direct" "trustnet" "tsp" 
"tsx" "uk_unit_trusts" "ukfunds" "unionfunds" "usa" "usfedbonds" 
"vanguard" "vwd" "yahoo_json" "yahoo_yql" "za" "za_unittrusts")


C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\bin>perl gnc-fq-dump yahoo_json IBM
Finance::Quote fields Gnucash uses:
symbol: IBM  <=== required
  date: 11/10/2020   <=== recommended
  currency: USD  <=== required
  last: 115.53   <=\
   nav:  <=== one of these
 price:  <=/
  timezone:  <=== optional

C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\bin>perl gnc-fq-dump australia BHP
Finance::Quote fields Gnucash uses:
symbol: BHP  <=== required
  date: 11/09/2020   <=== recommended
  currency: AUD  <=== required
  last: 36.195   <=\
   nav:  <=== one of these
 price: 36.195   <=/
  timezone:  <=== optional

C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\bin>

Geoff
=

On 10/11/2020 6:56 am, randix wrote:

I'm using GnuCash 4.2 on Windows 10 Pro.

On a separate laptop, I installed GnuCash, and copied over from my regular
laptop where I normally use GnuCash, the files that I thought contained the
customization needed for the new install.

Everything works great, except for one component, price retrieval.  The
"remove", "edit" and "get quotes" buttons are greyed out.  I did enter the
API key, and strawberry perl is installed.

Any thoughts?  Screenshot below.





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[GNC] Price retrieval

[randix]

I'm using GnuCash 4.2 on Windows 10 Pro.

On a separate laptop, I installed GnuCash, and copied over from my regular
laptop where I normally use GnuCash, the files that I thought contained the
customization needed for the new install.

Everything works great, except for one component, price retrieval.  The
"remove", "edit" and "get quotes" buttons are greyed out.  I did enter the
API key, and strawberry perl is installed.

Any thoughts?  Screenshot below.


 



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Re: [GNC] Your Classification / Tagging Implementation

[David Cousens]

Will,

The confusion often arises because your bank regards a savings/checking
account in your name as a liability in their books while in your own books
it is an asset. Conversely your credit card is an asset in the bank's books
and a liability in yours

See
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_accts.html#:~:text=The%20accounting%20equation%20that%20links,rearranged%20Assets%20%2D%20Liabilities%20%3D%20Equity.

Wikipedia also has a few good articles dealing with the Accounting equation
and Debits and Credits to accounts.

Summary Accounting equation
Assets = Liabilities +Equity + Income - Expenses

If you rearrange it as
Assets +Expenses = Liabilities +Equity +Income
then
Increases to account balances of accounts of the type on the LHS are Debits
and decreases are Credits
and conversely
Increase to account balances for accounts on the RHS are Credits and
decreases are Debits.

David



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Re: [GNC] Switching to/from Flatpak keeping Saved Reports

[Jon Schewe]

Tommy,
Thank you for the tip about the symlink, I'll need to do that.
Here's the menu entry file that I have in
~/.local/share/applications/personal-gnucash.desktop. I have similar
desktop entry for each gnucash file. This allows me to press the
"windows" key, then type "personal gnucash" and I get the icon and the
right file is launched.
[Desktop Entry]Version=1.0Name=Personal GnuCashExec=flatpak run
org.gnucash.GnuCash
"/home/jpschewe/Documents/banking/gnucash/accounts.gnucash"Icon=/usr/sh
are/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/gnucash-
icon.pngTerminal=falseType=Application
On Sun, 2020-11-08 at 18:17 -0600, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> A couple of months ago I upgraded GnuCash 3.8 on my Ubuntu LTS system
> tothe latest GnuCash using Flatpak. I wanted to keep my saved reports
> and Ididn't want to have to worry about losing them again if I
> switched fromFlatpak to a distribution version. Here's what I did to
> keep them (\ lineendings and whitespace added for clarity):
>   # Close all running instances of GnuCash  # Save any existing
> Flatpak report configurations  mv
> \ ~/.var/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/data/gnucash
> \ ~/.var/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/data/gnucash.orig  # Create the
> symlink  ln -s \ ~/.local/share/gnucash
> \ ~/.var/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/data/gnucash
> The paths above seem to be correct for any Debian derived
> distribution, andI believe may be the same for any linux
> distribution. (I hope someonecorrects me if I'm wrong.)
> BACKGROUND:
> I was putting off upgrading via Flatpak for a long time for two
> reasons:
> 1) My primary system running GnuCash didn't quite have the memory
> orprocessor capacity to handle Flatpak applications. (It's impressive
> howlittle RAM or CPU you need to run GnuCash. Or maybe it's
> impressive howmuch of a cheapskate I am. Your pick.)
> 2) I have books for eight organizations at this point and I would
> hate tolose my custom reports and launcher shortcuts.
> I upgraded the primary system earlier this year, so that addressed
> itemone. Item two took a little digging amongst the FAQ entries.
> I created a symlink as shown above and the saved reports have been
> workingperfectly. I expected to have "sandbox" permission issues with
> the Flatpakbut didn't. So why does the Flatpak have to use its own
> directory insteadof looking in the same place the distribution
> version uses...?)
> I'm still not completely happy with my Gnome launcher shortcuts --
> I'm ableto get the right-click launcher menu to open my different
> GnuCash books,but they do NOT share the "favorite" GnuCash icon in
> the task bar as thedistribution application does. I figure I'm either
> missing some Gnomelauncher secret sauce, or maybe Gnome doesn't know
> how to handle
> Flatpakinstances.___gnuca
> sh-user mailing listgnucash-u...@gnucash.org
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Re: [GNC] Cannot Obtain Lock error?

[Jack Slater]

It wasn't the sync. It was my "work flow" which always included a saveas to
a remote drive for backup (obviously redundant along with my 2 other
automated backup routines). That process (whichI will no longer perform!)
was removing/retaining the .lck file in a way that my next file opening
didn't like.  So I think with all your help (including the clearly written
explanation of the file .lck process, I think the problem is gone - for now.

On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 8:46 AM Jack Slater  wrote:

> Now that’s a possibility. I’ll look into and reply back soon.
>
> > On Nov 8, 2020, at 12:51 AM, Liz  wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 8 Nov 2020 13:57:29 +1000
> > David H  wrote:
> >
> >> Perhaps another thing to consider is are you using any sort of syncing
> >> software that could possibly be copying this LCK back from a backup
> >> location after Gnucash has deleted it ?
> >>
> >> Cheers David H.
> >
> > If so, set the software not to copy the *.LCK and the *.LNK as well as
> > the *.log files.
> >
> > I use a complex system of syncing to allow me to use the laptop for
> > Gnucash when away from home and have all the data automatically updated
> > to the primary copy on the laptop.
> >
> > Liz
> > ___
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[GNC] GNOME shortcuts WAS Re: Switching to/from Flatpak keeping Saved Reports

[Tommy Trussell]

see my response below

On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 8:09 AM Jon Schewe  wrote:

> Tommy,
>
> Thank you for the tip about the symlink, I'll need to do that.
>
> Here's the menu entry file that I have in
> ~/.local/share/applications/personal-gnucash.desktop. I have similar
> desktop entry for each gnucash file. This allows me to press the "windows"
> key, then type "personal gnucash" and I get the icon and the right file is
> launched.
>
> [Desktop Entry]
> Version=1.0
> Name=Personal GnuCash
> Exec=flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash
> "/home/jpschewe/Documents/banking/gnucash/accounts.gnucash"
> Icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/gnucash-icon.png
> Terminal=false
> Type=Application
>
>

Thanks for the reply! Your icon line only works for flatpak if you still
have the distribution version of GnuCash installed. But it prompted me to
get the icon to work with flatpak by changing that line to (sorry this will
almost certainly break in email)

Icon=/var/lib/flatpak/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/current/active/export/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/org.gnucash.GnuCash.png

SO now the flatpak link has the correct icon.

I keep many active GnuCash books, so I like having a right-click launch for
each of them. At the end of this email is an anonymized and shortened
sample of my GNOME desktop file containing four right-click launch items.

1) Unfortunately it STILL doesn't "consolidate" the running application
icon into the Favorites icon on the taskbar as a distribution application
does.
2) I never could get the "edit" gedit entry to work as expected
3) The crash warning at the end may no longer be true; it was for Ubuntu
Bionic.
4) Even if it doesn't crash, Alt-F2 r  is handy for reloading the edited
file.

  -

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]
Version=0.9.4
Type=Application
Name=GnuCashFlatpak
MimeType=application/x-gnucash;
Exec=flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash
/home/tzt/Work/03Financials/TdA/TdA_Financials
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Icon=/var/lib/flatpak/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/current/active/export/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/org.gnucash.GnuCash.png
StartupWMClass=Gnucash

Name[en_US]=GnuCashFlatpakAnonymized.desktop

##Gnome Define Actions
Actions=TdA;Cordon;LZX;spacer;edit;

[Desktop Action TdA]
Name=TdA Financials
Exec=flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash
/home/tzt/Work/03Financials/TdA/TdA_Financials

[Desktop Action Cordon]
Name=Cordon Corp
Exec=flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash
/home/tzt/Work/03Financials/Cordon/Cordon.gnucash

[Desktop Action LZX]
Name=LZX Books
Exec=flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash
/home/tzt/Work/03Financials/LZX/LZX_financials

[Desktop Action spacer]
Name=__
Exec=

[Desktop Action edit]
Name=Edit Launcher
Exec=gedit ~/.local/share/applications/GnuCashFlatpakAnonymized.desktop

##End of actions menu
# modified by TT
# INSTRUCTIONS
# 1 copy this file to ~/.local/share/applications/
# 2 update [Desktop Action Edit] section above
# 3 Use GNOME "Show Applications"
#--> Gnucash --> right-click on icon --> add to favorites
#
# using
https://askubuntu.com/questions/79583/adding-custom-applications-to-gnome-launcher
# using
https://askubuntu.com/questions/64222/how-can-i-create-launchers-on-my-desktop
# using
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#example
# and !!!
# using
https://askubuntu.com/questions/967409/cant-add-custom-desktop-files-to-ubuntu-dock
# and also (to keep things tidy)
# using
https://askubuntu.com/questions/403766/duplicate-icons-for-manually-created-gnome-launcher-items
#
# WARNING WARNING for some reason the top Exec line sometimes makes
# favorites/dock disappear or restart. It HAS to contain a valid exec
# line; commenting it out OR having an error makes desktop restart.
# After making changes you can reload this file with Alt-F2 r
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