Re: [GNC] Use of cash discounts in business account tree
On 5/14/2024 8:52 PM, nisp1953 wrote: OS; OpenBSD 7.5 GENERIC.MP#82 amd64 Gnucash Ver.: GnuCash 5.5 Build ID: 5.5+(2023-12-16) I have set up a simple business account tree using the wizard. I have Cash Discounst under expenses like so: \/ Expenses Bank Service Charge $0.00 Cash Discounts$467.82 Cost of Goods Sold$67.41 What exactly is allowed in Cash Discounts? I'm not an accountant. The wizard is only a starting point giving an example of TYPICAL accounts. There is no guarantee tat the set of accounts would =meet the needs of YOUR business. If your business never offered cash discounts, then your business wouldn't have that account in its ledger. Are you saying that you never encountered cash discounts? You never got an advertisement from a vendor saying "this week only, 10% discount site wide"/ Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] sales tax liability report?
On 5/9/2024 2:57 AM, Deva via gnucash-user wrote: Ted, If you have setup your accounts based on suggestions in the tutorial and concepts guide, you can try the following report - Reports -> Income & Expense -> Income and GST Statement In your case, GST = Sales Tax We MIGHT need a clarification, but my sense was that the sales tax amounts collected but not yet sent to the gov't were (correctly) being credited to a liability, not an income account. So would not show up as an account under an I report. In other words, the amount collected (on behalf of some gov't) not being considered income so when paid to the gov't not an expense. Never YOUR money, just holding it for the gov't till sent, quarterly, or whatever. Maybe what we want here is a better description of the report that is wanted? What is it supposed to show?. For example, were I running a business that was collecting sales tax for many states, I'd probably want a report showing how much I owed each << and I think I would be using part of a Balance Sheet report to get that (ignore the rest of it). in other words, I'd have a parent under liabilities "sales tax owed" under which a child for each jurisdiction. Run each quarter (or whatever) looking at JUST this parent and its children to see what payment to make to each jurisdiction >> Michael D Novack Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Help request starting out with Gnucash
On 5/5/2024 11:55 AM, ph hermes wrote: what are the accounts you have set up in assets? it sounds like you only have your equity balance. in my asset section, i have all my bank accounts, petty cash, etc. as well. and i have separate accounts for each of my equity assets (often sub accounts)... not just 1 account called equity. Equity assets? a) Equity reflects OWNERSHIP. You can indeed have sub accounts under equity, and need them when there are multiple owners (partners, shareholders, etc.) b) You may be confusing "equity assets" (assets that represent equity in something) and "equity" in your books. Under "assets" you could have investment assets that are of type "equities" meaning representing an ownership interest in something (stocks, for example) as well as ones that are of type "liability" (some entity owes you something, say a bond). Do not confuse with "liabilities" and "equity" in your books. Keep in mind "from whose perspective". From YOUR perspective those investment holdings are just assets (though you might want them under separate parents). Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Help request starting out with Gnucash
On 5/4/2024 10:53 PM, flywire wrote: David, the guide even warns that accounting debits and credits are used contrary to the way most people understand them. The average punter will be wrong, and if they get it right the next punter will likely bet they are wrong. Yes, depends on perspective, your point of view or the bank's. But also and explaining where YOUR point of view comes from (the origin of the terms) think of who in say 1200 CE would be needing to keep books. What sort of business would you be in? A moneylender, of course. And keep in mind that in 1200 in Europe, if literate, probably Latin not a strange language (especially not when dealing across multiple local languages). Debit comes from "he owes" (me). In other words, your assets are debts owed to you as well as cash on hand available to be loaned out. Thus the money you have on deposit at some bank is a debit because the bank owes you that money. Credit comes from "he trusts" (me). In other words, your liabilities. Money you owe somebody else that they are trusting you can pay back. It's why on the statement from the bank your account balance is a credit (you are trusting the bank will give you this money of you ask for it) but in your books a debit because the bank owes this money to you. Initially (way back then) there were no special accounts of type "income" and "expense" so the other side of a transaction we would call income or expense was equity. Immediately entered against equity. That made it easy to see at any moment what to see what total equity was but hard to look up the totals for any particular expense. Had to do work to answer questions like "how much was our interest income last month?" (remember, we are moneylenders). So a couple hundred years ago (I don;t know exactly when) somebody got the bright idea to have TEMPORARY accounts of type "income" and "expense" of fundamental type "equity". Instead of the other side of the transactions immediately being main equity use these "temporarily" and only every so often transfer to main equity through a process known as "close thew books" with this process, along the way, creating a report called "profit and loss" << originally this was another temporary account, closed to equity by the net profit or loss amount >> BTW, a moneylender WOULD be wanting to have liabilities. These would have come into being by exchange with another moneylender in some other town/country. These documents were useful in TRADE, serving as a way of transporting money without the risk of bandits stealing the gold or silver money on the way. You are a moneylender in place A. A merchant planning to travel to B might come to you and ask "Do you have a debt document from a moneylender in B?" If you did, you could sell him that debt (endorse it over to him) collecting a fee for the service. He then could travel to B and present it there for payment. Useless for a bandit to steal as it wasn't made out "pay to the bearer" but "pay to some specific person" (the merchant). Note something here. If two banks are exchanging these IOU's no silver or gold has changed hands. Who says that the silver or gold has to actually exist? In other words, these banks have created money and all will be well only as long as they have enough gold and silver on hand to pay out when any of these IOU's are presented. Does the term "he trusts" make more sense now? There was no FDIC guaranteeing the deposits. That is a very recent change. A hundred years ago you WERE trusting that the bank could give you back what you had on deposit there. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Help request starting out with Gnucash
On 5/4/2024 1:18 PM, Brian Higgins via gnucash-user wrote: I really need to talk with someone to get this right. My equity opening balance is $ 6802.59 ( close enough) on 1/1 24, and my check register is $3892.258 on 1/1/24 and my petty cash is $5 on 1/1 /24, so why does my equity account value on show up as equal to the assets? I thought the equity account would show as the balance of all owners investment in the business, and as a liability, and thus a negative number. Would a bookkeeper or accountant who may not be familiar with Gnucash be able to help me figure this out? Note: I have returned the Equity parent account to placeholder, and I see there is an Opening Balance Equity as a child account of that. So really, is my opening balance equity just the total of my assets on 1/1/24, or is it a register snapshot of a capital account, as of Jan 1st, meaning all the $ I have shoveled into this turkey since day one, starting back in 2021? I feel I should enter $ 6802.59, and I think that goes on the credit side, ( an increase in GnuCash)) since it is a 'special liability', where the bank account was debited that amount, over time, in 2021. I am starting these books fresh as of Jan 1 2024. Thank you, I just need some hands on help getting me started. You need to get a grasp of double entry bookkeeping concepts, not just "doing it using gnucash" as opposed to say "pen and ink on paper". The tutorial might or might not be enough. If you need more on basics, seek out a standard "bookkeeping or accounting 101" .text. a) At the start, it might (or might not) forget all about negative numbers. After all, double entry bookkeeping goes back to before European math accepted negative numbers (yes, it IS that old). The "senses" are debit and credit (not positive and negative) b) Yes, if you have NO liabilities, then total assets (debit) equals total equity (credit) c) In a set of books, total debits will equal total credits. Easy to see. The set of books starts out empty. Each transaction will have at least one debit and one credit and the total debits on the transaction will equal the total credits on the transaction. d) The shortcut of allowing you to create accounts with "starting values" has confused you by hiding the "c" (the underlying transaction). You possibly would've been less confused had you been required to create accounts at zero and then enter an explicit transaction to set the initial value because then you would have SEEN the other side of that transaction << the "starting balance" account under Equity >> This would especially be true if this business had multiple owners. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] One LLC pay expense of another LLC
On 4/28/2024 12:17 PM, Fred Tydeman wrote: If LLC-a pays an expense of LLC-b ie, cash from LLC-a goes to expense of LLC-b, should I also show a transfer of equity from LLC-a to LLC-b? It seems that needs to be done so that the Balance sheet for LLC-b is correct. This is an accounting problem, not a gnucash question. Although I am adverse to giving business accounting advice, you seem to be forgetting a major part of the (total) transaction. I assume, of course, that there are separate sets of books, one for LLC-a and one for LLC-b << they are separate legal entities >> When you say LLC-a paid an expense of LLC-b don;t you really mean that there were TWO parts to these transactions? The first part affects only LLC-a's books. LLC-a is making a loan to LLC-b << that it is for an expense of LLC-b is irrelevant >> So that would be creating an asset account "Owed by LLC-b)" and you debit that and credit cash (checking, or however this bill of LLC-b was paid. On LLC-b's books you need a liability account "owed to LLC-a" and you debit the expense and credit this account. Do you see that both books remain in balance? Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Recommended Accounting Books
I want to thank everyone for their input. I did come across this interesting book wriiten in 1868: Book-keeping By Double Entry Explained by John Findlater https://tinyurl.com/4zkws7dc -- Not necessarily a bad idea, because an understanding of the old fashioned way, pen and ink on paper, will help you understand the process that gnucash is automating for you. You will certainly understand "splits" faster, and if your book goes into the "cashbook accounting" shortcut (where "cash" and a small subset of the most popular accounts are in a separate book serving as both journal and ledger) since THAT closely mimics the way we enter simple (not split) transactions using gnucash except instead of a small subset, all ledger accounts <> If you have NEVER done any double entry bookkeeping not crazy being taught "T" diagrams on up. As a second advantage, means you are learning independent of any particular software implementing modern double entry. Even if you are using gnucash for your own books not bad if you understood the underlying process so could volunteer to be Treasurer of some org that happened to be using something else. Would be a very minimal learning curve. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] can't open files
On 4/21/2024 4:23 PM, Kenneth Maze via gnucash-user wrote: I hadn’t used gnucash for several months due to illness. I tried to open and access my data but got a message the file 'could not be found. The file is in the history list, do you want to remove it?’ I selected ‘no’ and the app quit. This means that it can't find that file (full path file name). The most likely cause (assuming you did not accidentally delete the file or its directory) is that during those several months you made SOME change to your data directories than mean it is different now. I don't know how you have data files structured on your computer so what follows is just an example. Let's say several months ago you had gnucash data directory under documents and you had another directory "financial stuff", You decided, hey gnucash data is financial data so I'll just move the gnucash directory into the financial data directory << BTW, when I say "directory" you might know that as "folder" >> OK, IF you made a change like that gnucash now wouldn't be able to find because you changed the path to it. I downloaded the latest version of the app and tried again with the same result. THAT was irrelevant/useless. The data is NOT in the program. It is a data file separate from the program. I don’t want to accidentally erase years of data. Do I respond ‘yes’ to the message? Not really relevant. Your first step is to FIND that data file. For example, you might ask your system to find all files ending in .gnucash. If there are more than one of these, perhaps the name you gave it will help you find the right one. Once you know the FULL NAM (the path) you can open gnucash. If you can't get to file=>open without answering YES, do that as it is just the "latest recently open list" you are affecting <> File=>open will allow you to type in the full name of the file you want gnucash to open. When you leave gnucash, that name will be the "last open" Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Identify error transaction in QIF import
To address your specific inquiry, just looking at the line you posted, the date format looks kind of wonky. I would expect something like " 5/ 4/21" or better would be something like 2021-05-04. I don't recall if Quicken will let you specify the date format when you export to QIF (the last time I did this stuff was 2018). Given that QIF files appear to be binary, I don't know how you could go about correcting things even if you knew which part of a record was bad. At least the ones I have from when I did the process are binary. That last is an experience/tools question. Hard if you never used a hex editor (if editing a binary file manually) or didn't have one. Hard if you have never written any serious shell scripts if writing a batch editing process or where in an environment lacking the standard tools of a 'nix OS. Hard if you have never written a program in any computer language to write a program to correct bad records. But not hard for all of us. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Recommend Accounting Books
On 4/21/2024 7:48 AM, flywire wrote: A significant limitation for small business is GnuCash will not do cash accounting *and* automated sales tax. Worse than that. I do not believe Gnucash can do "automated sale tax" at all -- not in the sense that a POS system can. Gnucash can do "automated sales tax" when this is simple (special case). For example, you are selling "widgets" -- where exactly would gnucash be storing the information widgets of type A are taxable and widgets of type B not when being sent to a delivery address in jurisdiction X vs jurisdiction Y. As soon as you say "you can mark the line in the invoice" I say that is "manual", not "automated". And even if you did want to call that "automated" because it calculated the tax for you, how about if not just "non-taxed" vs "taxable" but "non-taxed" vs "taxable at rate X", "taxable at rate Y", etc. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Recommend Accounting Books
Please be aware that the inventory part won't be handled via GnuCash: while you can record your purchases and sales easily (e.g. buy $1000 worth of raw materials, sell $2000 worth of products), it's difficult to account for the raw materials inventory levels and products waiting to be sold, calculating profit margin etc. Other (expensive) products would likely be more suitable for your needs. Not exactly. Gnucash can do the "general ledger" part of inventory processing. But it cannot do the other parts of it because this is JUST "general ledger": So yes, when you make a sale, besides :sales and cash, can also make the changes to inventory (cost of) and "cost of goods sold". BUT -- an inventory system does more than that. It would track how much left of (physical) inventory and where shelved. It would do something when the amount remaining fell below some level, provide information about suppliers and alternate suppliers, etc. Gnucash can;t do things like that for you because those parts are outside of "general ledger" A full business system has all sorts of components, of which "general ledger" just one component << the one that all would have in common >> There are commercial products out there to do "business system: for your sort of business and there may or may not be "free" products. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] What account name do you use to record the apartment/house expenses related to the building?
If the events are fixed, such as "Memorial Day Celebration" and "Independence Celebration", you could make an expense category and then have sub-categories for it. I assume that you can run P on one set of categories. Would that work? You'd have similar sub-categories. I'm pretty sure you could get a breakdown for the events, but if you also want a total (for example) "postage" from each category, I'm not sure how to do that, especially if you want all the sub-categories summarized. Perhaps exporting to a spreadsheet and creating a pivot table? (or something along those lines?) _ Richard Losey rlo...@gmail.com Micah 6:8 a) Accounts of type "expense" and accounts of type "income" are really the same type of temporary account of fundamental type equity. If you know the historical development of double entry bookkeeping over the last several hundred years you will know where they came from. They really differ just in the sense of their normal balance, debit for expenses and credit for income. We get the top level types "income" and "expense" only so that we do NOT have to specify them for the P b) That means we can create the subtree for an event EITHER under income or expense and put all children of this event there whether they are "really" income or expense. The "wrong" ones are simply contra in sense. A debit balance account of type income is a "negative" income, that is, an expense. c) Assuming we consistently made all the printing and postage accounts the same (all expense) we can produce a report showing all of them. Surely you can picture and income and expense report where JUST some expense accounts were included. Don't have to export to a spreadsheet. BUT the latter is exactly what I would do in practice. You have run the FULL P (all accounts) and exported it and opened as a spreadsheet. Now say you want just a few accounts. COPY the spreadsheet giving it a name like "Printing and Postage" and then delete everything but the accounts for printing and postage and the spreadsheet will total those for you. Do the same for whatever else you need, say each event by itself, say all of the events (but nothing else), say the events each without it printing and postage (if you have ever done a 990/990EZ you'll know where that goes depending on whether your events make revenue or are an expense. d) But WHAT is this "category: business? Why are you (still?) talking about categories.If you mean account, say account. We're doing standard double entry bookkeeping here. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] What account name do you use to record the apartment/house expenses related to the building?
d) What you can;t do is have it both ways. Traditional double entry bookkeeping allows only one tree structure for the CoA. To get it different in different reports you would have to BOTH set up the CoA correctly AND select just certain accounts for the report. Of course you can by running the report filtered for transactions with or without tag(s). (It is an unfortunate term because most searches will find the term used in the context of computer code rather than filtering transactions for reports.) I don't think you are picturing what I meant by both ways. Say doing organizational reporting, and this organization (among its other activities) conducts several "events" every year. naturally the BoD will want to see accounting by event (what were the expenses and revenues for THIS event; how much did it cost us to put on the event or how much did we make, compare the separate event report with those of prior years, how about all events together (will come back to that). One of the expenses associated with each event would be for printing fliers, postage for mailing, etc. (things that can be considered "printing and postage") so under each event, such an account. BUT "printing and postage" is a line item on the 990/990EZ and also going to have to report the total for this activity sort WITHOUT printing and postage since that's a separate line item. So -- if the CoA structured correctly will be able to produce reports. a) For each event, P (select just the accounts of that event) b) The totals for all events NOT including the "printing and postage" expense (again, by selecting the accounts to include) c) Printing and postage total for the organization (again selecting all the "printing and postage" accounts -- note that some of these will be other than as an expense of some event) You aren't thinking of all the things the Treasurer of an org is going to be wanting from the books. ONE set of books, able to produce reports for various purposes, at different levels of detail. For example, the BoD might want to see the total for "independent contractors" but not how much paid to each let alone how much of what was paid to each was "compensation" and how much "reimbursement of expenses" (so whether a 1099-MISC will be needed to be filed to whom and if so, for how much) That's why I am stressing "get the CoA" right so you can get all that you need out of it. You can always reduce the amount of detail in reports, specialize reports, etc. later but only if captured in the first place. And keep in mind that you do not necessarily have to do all the reduction of detail, specialization, etc. INSIDE gnucash. You can also export reports and then do the rest of it using your favorite editor << that's how I was told to do it by a lawyer/accountant on one of the BODs -- he said that's how any of us accountants would do it -- and mind, as a "pro" I could have coded custom reports ->> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] What account name do you use to record the apartment/house expenses related to the building?
or more expenses (at least interest; maybe insurance, fees, and others depending on the terms of the loan) and principal payment that reduces the loan amount. Property owners also need to distinguish between maintenance and improvements: The latter increase the value of the property, the former are an expense. Mortgage payments usually just principle, interest, and escrow (payments into an asset account being held for you by the mortgage company from which taxes, insurance, etc. are paid. You possibly will not know the dates and amounts of those transactions (for example debit RE Tax, credit escrow) until you get your annual escrow review statement. At least it was that way in the old days of pen and ink on paper. Wrong to consider what is going into escrow a current expense. The amount they calculate you must pay into escrow each month is enough to keep the balance in that account positive at all times throughout the year << as various amounts go out for RE tax, insurance, etc. >> In other words, the amount you must pay into escrow will usually change annually based on the current balance in the account, and the dates and amounts payments from the account will be made. NOT simply add up annual taxes, insurance, etc. and divided by twelve! Michael D Novack PS -- This may be dependent on jurisdiction, but so far those were the rules in the states in which I have lived/had a mortgage. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] What account name do you use to record the apartment/house expenses related to the building?
On 4/14/2024 8:45 PM, Oleander via gnucash-user wrote: Hello, is "Housing" a proper account name if I want to include only my apartment expenses like Rent/Mortgage and Repairs? I'd like to record my Utilities expenses separately within another account so that my "Housing" account adds up only the expenses related to the building. If not, what would you use? Thanks, a) The name you choose to give an account is whatever is meaningful to YOU. Just avoid any of the (few) reserved account names (like "asset", "expense", etc.) b) You can either have "utilities" totally elsewhere OR you can consider those expense intimately related to housing and have that account a CHILD of "housing". Your CoA (chart of accounts) is logically of structure type TREE where accounts can be children of an account that is their parent. So you could have "rent" and "utilities" as children of "housing". That would allow you to see the separate totals of "utilities" and "rent" as well as the total for "housing" (I am referring to reports) c) But say you were thinking of entering OTHER sorts of utility expenses under "utilities", say you bill for phone service << we used to think of a phone associated with a place but now many of us carry them in our pockets. You could have "utilities" separate.. d) What you can;t do is have it both ways. Traditional double entry bookkeeping allows only one tree structure for the CoA. To get it different in different reports you would have to BOTH set up the CoA correctly AND select just certain accounts for the report. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Split Transactions Version 5.6
On 4/11/2024 8:38 AM, Kalpesh Patel wrote: Just to add some distinction, if you are coming from Intuit's Quicken world then its split is not same as GNC's split . If you are coming from Intuit's QuickBooks, the same as gnucash. If you are coming from Intuit's Quicken, not. QuickBooks is standard double entry bookkeeping just like gnucash. Quicken is not. << prior to the 2006 fire, I was using QuickBooks Pro for Non-Profits to keep the books for several organizations (one of them owned a copy). Although insurance would have replaced that, chose to switch to gnucash as the QuickBooks version for non-profits did not in fact offer any of the "extra" features a non-profit would want. The insurance allowed the money to be used for any IT stuff so got other things for the organization >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Zorin os
On 4/10/2024 10:04 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: The distro does not matter. (with perhaps some caveats concerning dependencies) While you technically can jump from 2.6.21 to 5.6 (current version), that isn't officially supported, nor recommended. See the Wiki FAQ about upgrading procedures from one major version to another. (In this case, you are upgrading from one major version to one THREE versions later.) The recommended and safest path would be: 2.6.21 -> 3.11 -> 4.14 -> 5.6 keeping a backup/copy of your data file at each stage and running 'Actions > Check & Repair > Check & Repair All' upon first opening your file after each upgrade. Based on my decades in the cypher mines: a) Be Prepared to follow the recommended and safest path b) But given the number of steps, I would think it worth while to conduct an experiment to see if you couldn't just jump all the way. It's just a matter of first making a backup of the data AND also a backup of the program directory (make a renamed copy of the directory -- quick to back-off by renaming back. IF the jump all the way from 2.3.21 works (you've tested opening the books and entered some test transactions, run all the reports you usually do, etc.). If it worked, you can delete the program backup and rename back the data back-up (unless you used real data not yet entered for testing) If it didn't work, a bridge too far, you haven;t lost a great deal. Revert to the step by step method. Michael D Novack PS -- this is really a test of the developer's prowess since ideally they would have managed to maintain backwards data compatibility. The issue is being able to open an OLD back-up if/when necessary << say to see something that has been removed from current books >> ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Split Transactions Version 5.6
On 4/10/2024 7:11 PM, Kevin Wilcoxon via gnucash-user wrote: Thank you both for your responses. I see I have been using the term "split transaction" wrong. I was using Ace Money where this term was used to signify a single transaction, say from the Checking Account, to two different categories, say Household and Groceries. Is there a term for this in GnuCash and can it be done here? Thanks Again Kevin Yes, that is a useful way to think of "split" in gnucash. The credit side of the transaction involves just one account, Checking, but the debit side involves two, Household and Groceries. When "split" on only one side, start with the other account, in this case Checking. You begin entering the usual way (what I call the shortcut) and then hit the "split" button. What that does is switch you to journal mode for this transaction. It will have that first account and amount filled in and have that amount on the debit side with account Imbalance. On THAT line you change the account to be one of the debits AND CHANGE THE AMOUNT to what it would be for that account. Now the remainder shows up on the next line account Imbalance. You change that to the correct second account. You should now not have anything left Imbalance. After you hit to enter the transaction your view will switch back to normal "shortcut" view << in the ledger account were you began >> BUT --- you could have asked gnucash to show you all in journal view (could enter all transactions that way). That's why I suggest if totally new to double entry bookkeeping might be a good way to begin. The "shortcut" gnucash is using is what we (in pen and ink on paper days) used to call "cashbook accounting" where a small subset of the ledger, including "cash" (checking) plus the other most popular accounts bypassed entering in the journal << and say at the bottom of each page the totals entered into the main ledger >> If we did "cashbook" (for the most popular subset) what gnucash is doing is very familiar to us, except covering all accounts << we were limited by the width a the widest accounting paper, usually 12 columns >> Michael D Novack PS -- That's why adjustment transactions not involving cash were called "journal transactions" as they could not be entered into the cashbook subset ledger. Note that folks who are coming to gnucash from using spreadsheets (columns like accounting paper) might have used less limited "cashbook" since the spreadsheet could have a lot more columns than a physical paper page. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Split Transactions Version 5.6
Best not to think of the two sides of a transaction as "splits". In double entry bookkeeping there are ALWAYS two sides of every transaction. It would be silly to think of every transaction as split. Confusion for new users is perhaps because gnucash allows a shortcut method of entry when the transaction has only one debit account and one credit account. While that is in effect a special case, the overwhelming majority of transactions will only affect two accounts. So it is very worthwhile to have a time saving shortcut. But I question if that's the best way to LEARN using gnucash, especially if you are learning double entry bookkeeping at the same time. If you have never done double entry bookkeeping before, other software or back in the old days of pen and ink on paper (or spreadsheets could mimic that) I suggest learning without the shortcut. Turn on "journal mode" for transaction entry. This will more closely mimic the old days (and typical accounting texts). Transactions were first entered into a book called the "journal". Each entry would have a date, a list of accounts being debited (that is, possibly more than one) each with an amount, a list of accounts being credited (again possibly more than one) with their amounts, and finally a description. Our old books had a box to check whether posted to the journal, but with gnucash or similar software, when you hit enter automatically posted << transcription errors during posting were the bane of our existence -- the computer will never transpose digits, etc. >> See, so far no mention of "splits". That comes into p;lay only when we use the shortcut. If the transaction involves only two accounts, gnucash will let you enter that transaction directly in the ledger starting with EITHER. In this mode you enter date, check number if any, amount (you don't have to specify account because you are IN that account) and then select the other account <> In other words, you didn't have to enter in the (virtual) journal. But what if there is more than one debit or more than one credit. Now we have to hit the "split" button, which puts us in journal entry mode. That's all that "split" means in gnucash, either the debit side or the credit side (or both) are split into more than one account making up that side of the transaction. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Recording transactions (date)
On 4/9/2024 12:50 PM, R Losey wrote: Thanks; I wasn't sure if those (cash vs accrual) were the correct terms. Legally, are you saying that if I write a check for $50 and send it to my uncle, it's "paid" whether or not he ever cashes it? As as aside, I am actually in this situation; I sent e check many years ago to someone who has never cashed it; when I asked about it, the person told me that they had no intention of cashing the check, but also couldn't find it to return it, so I've been carrying that check now for years. Sadly, the cost of issuing a "stop check" is not worth it, and the bank says it will honor a check, no matter how old, so I don't see any way out of this. What are the laws of your jurisdiction and/or the banking customs? Or the rules of your bank as to how long they will consider a check "live" (will honor it if presented). Most places I have ever lived, most banks I have dealt with, have definite rules that apply unless the check itself specifies a shorter period. Haven't you ever gotten a check marked "void after 60 days" (or whatever) Your bank told you WILL HONOR or CAN HONOR? It is common for banks to say CAB HONOR to relieve themselves of liability in a case where they did honor a check after the date their policy (or jurisdiction laws) specify. In other words, "we normally will not honor checks more than six months old but can honor a check no matter how old". But back to where this started, you paid your uncle on the date you gave him that check. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Recording transactions (date)
That's not the difference. I understand you are using the credit card as a "30 day net" account with each vendor (I also do that) but for accounting purposes it's not the same as if each vendor were giving you a 30 day net invoice (and the bank just bundling these for a single payment of all such outstanding). Yes "cash basis" is differing from "accrual basis" just by timing but the "cash" in "cash basis" does not refer to physical money. When you paid the vendor with a credit card you no longer have a liability with that vendor (so record the expense then). When you later pay the credit card balance that was not an expense but a transfer between assets and liability. How you date the expenses (paid by credit card) cannot depend on how you pay the credit card company. Cannot depend on that you paid the "new purchases" balance in full. Using your example, suppose in some month you were unable to pay that entire balance in full, just paid half of it. Do you propose booking each of the constituent expenses as one half the amount? << leaving the other half till when you eventually pay down that part of the outstanding credit card debt >> Michael D Novack On 4/9/2024 9:42 AM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) wrote: On 2024-04-09 01:19, David Carlson wrote: Nearly every time [the bank's] list doesn't match my list, the difference is precisely the difference between when I wrote the check or when I initiated a payment online or when I swiped a card and when they posted the transaction to my account. That is what we users often consider to be the difference between accrual basis vs cash basis. I must respectfully disagree. That difference is simply timing. It can occur whether you are on a cash basis or an accrual basis, but in itself it is not a difference between cash and accrual basis. The chief difference between cash basis and accrual basis, for a person as opposed to a business, is whether you record money you owe but haven't paid (liabilities) and money owed to you but not yet received (assets). For example, suppose you have a credit card, and to avoid paying finance charge you chose to have your bank automatically pay the latest statement balance on the payment due date. How is a restaurant dinner recorded when you pay by credit card? On cash basis, it's not an expense until it's paid. Therefore, _nothing_ is recorded until the payment date after the statement date after the meal. Then you record Dr: Expenses:Restaurant Dining Cr: Assets:Cash in Bank and a similar entry for every charge on that month's credit card statement. On accrual basis, it's an expense when it's incurred. You make this entry when the meal happens: Dr: Expenses:Restaurant Dining Cr: Liabilities:Credit Card and then when the payment happens, you make _one_ final entry: Dr: Liabilities:Credit Card Cr: Assets:Cash in Bank Since the payment is automatic, you and the bank will record it as of the same date, whether you are on the cash basis or accrual basis. Stan Brown Tehachapi, CA, USA https://BrownMath.com ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] gnucash-devel list down?
On 4/7/2024 9:39 PM, Bruce Schuck wrote: Odd, after sending a message to the gnucash-devel list early this morning, I received an email saying my message was in a queue because I'm not subscribed. Odd, I've been subscribed for at least a handful of years. I also notice that it does not show up in the list of lists at https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo. At least I *think* I remember it would be listed. Is the gnucash-devel list down? Or have I somehow become unsubscribed? I have received nothing from that list since 3/22 The on-line site for the mailman list is still up (but I never communicate with mailman that way) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] QIF import "Unspecified" transaction
On 4/5/2024 6:43 AM, Joseph Keithley wrote: When importing a QIF in the "Match payees/memos to GnuCash accounts" window, an "Unspecified" transaction will be listed under "GnuCash account name". When you double click on the item, a window pops up that lets you scroll through the different "accounts" and assign the item to a specific one. Is there some way to just type in the account name directly instead of surfing around with the mouse? Perhaps not. As a retired senior systems analyst/senior business analyst I can see a very good reason requiring you to select from the list of existing accounts. Answer this question --- if free entry of an account name were allowed, what would you want the system to do if the string of characters you typed in were NOT the name of an existing account? Do you want it to give you an error message at that point? Do you want it to not let you enter an invalid character*? Is introducing this error process (and how user recovers) worth the complication of the user's work flow? Michael D Novack * That's possible because the set of existing accounts can be expressed as a tree structure with the nth level of the tree being the possible nth characters. So this is like the nth character entered causing the "not (yet) in dictionary" of the Lempel-Ziv algorithm. Notice that even this "not letting you" would, have issues. because as a user, how do you know "well what character am I allowed to enter?" -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] first post
On 4/4/2024 12:44 AM, tburmas wrote: Hello, Apologies if this is the wrong list to send this to. I wanted to express my appreciation for this program. I'm coming from Quickbooks which has served me well but I'm tired of the costs increasing, every few years losing support and being tied to Intuit. I love how GNUcash has been in development for many years, is lightweight and powerful. To those who have worked on it, thank you. One suggestion I have as a small business owner: add a COGS (cost of goods sold) and an advertising account as part of the new file wizard for chart of accounts. It's the right list. As a new user, you might be unaware that YOU can add any accounts you need. The "wizard" to produce a skeleton CoA that includes accounts that would meet the needs of many users is just that, a skeleton/sample CoA. It's a matter of adding the additional accounts you need AND deleting the ones irrelevant to your needs. If the developers expanded to "wizard" to create a fuller CoA that would include all accounts that almost anybody might need, that second step of deleting would become onerous. Since switching to gnucash after the 2006 fire* I have set up many sets of books. In all cases deleting all but a few of the "skeleton" accounts, keeping just the few that were needed, and then adding lots of other accounts that were needed. It is outside the scope for us to decide what the CoA of any particular user should look like. For example, I lack the "qualifications" to give accounting advice. If you do need help setting up a CoA appropriate to YOUR business, that has to come from an accountant. Michael D Novack * Insurance would have replaced the organizational copies of "QuickBooks Pro for Non-profits". But why, since that did NOT in fact support much of what a non-profit wants out of the box. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Updating gnucash
I am currently running version 4.12 for two different organizations. If I was to update to 5.12 would I just download it and install it into the same folders or would I need to transfer the data files? Nathan Because this keeps coming up ... The DATA files (your books, etc.) and the program files (the executable) are NOT the same thing. You do not have to do anything to the data files just because you are changing the program. That said, ALWAYS make back ups before a major change (in addition to your normal back up procedure). As a retired pro, in addition to making a "build" back up of the data, I would also copy the executable, make a copy of the directory containing the executable << rename it --- then do the reinstall. If all goes well with the "build" you later delete the old (renamed) directory. But if the build fails, you can back it out quickly by deleting the new directory (created during the install) and rename the old one back. This is NOT specific gnucash advice. It's for any application you use. Michael D Novack PS --- If you had an application that did store data in the executable STOP USING IT. Find an alternative. Data in programs would be really bad practice for anything written in the last 60 years << before then you did sometimes see this >> ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Help
On 3/18/2024 8:37 AM, Kalpesh Patel wrote: No one other than your self can remove you from the list. Well.. << my last several have been straying from gnucash specific topics, so here goes again >> This would apply to ALL mail lists managed by the same mail list program. But since it is a popular mail list management program (many mail lists use it) maybe a good idea to learn how you can give it orders to do this or that. Most people would go to the website, but "mailman" also responds to commands sent by email. To learn these: Send an email to gnucash-user-requ...@gnucash.org with just the single word help (on the safe side, both subject line and body) Note that the "command" address for an elist managed by "mailman" will typically have this format Mailman will respond to that with an email, the body of which will tell you ALL the things you can tell "mailman" to do. If you go through that list, you will see that ONE of the things you can do is remove an email address (somebody else's) from the list if you know their password << if you try it and don't know their password, mailman will communicate with them about the unsubscribe request >> It's what you would use (should use) when your email address changes, at least that's how I did it in the days when no broadband so no way to use the website method (and not all elists had that back in those days). In other words, "mailman" cannot distinguish whether that is really "somebody else's or two addresses of the same human. So you CAN remove "somebody else" from the list if you know their password and the admins can do it with their more powerful password << some commands require that >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] UNSUBCRIBE and Lemmy.World
On 3/17/2024 12:39 PM, Kalpesh Patel wrote: If the e-mail client is configured via IMAP access to email server, then whatever email is deleted on your client is also removed from your server so you don't need to clean up multiple times... IMAP keeps "one" view for all of the email clients that access those emails. Or with POP, when POPed. But I was being fussy because MY provider's server isn't a trained seal. It will disregard that "delete" UNLESS I configure my my account with them to not use THEIR default of "disobey" that delete. In other words, besides configuring my email client to "delete when POPed" I had to also have gone into my account with the provider and made a change there also. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] gnucash suggestions
On 3/17/2024 12:15 PM, J. A. Harris wrote: I have been using gnucash for almost 10 years now. I have downloaded the source code and even made some changes to it that I consider improvement. There are other changes that I think would be a good idea. If this is not the place to share such comments, I apologize. 2. Add a new Generic and INC+EXP account. No doubt this violates basic accounting rules but for an amateur like me, it is useful to have a single book in which I can separate sections like reserves, retirement, and operating items. Accounts of type Generic could have sub-accounts of any type. Your lack of accounting and understanding of the history of double entry is confusing you. You might think of BOTH types "income" and "expense" as having a single generic type "temp equity" (not yet recorded against equity) with the ones with type "expense" just those "temp equity" accounts whose balance is normally debit and the ones with type "income" those whose balance is normally credit. Because it is usual to want reports that group all income accounts together and all expense accounts together our books tend to reflect that. But sometimes we want to group a subset of income and a subset of expenses together instead. Some of the organizations I kept books for did "events" and so might want to group all associated with an event together. Not hard, there is no magic in the names "income" and "expense". If the balance is debit, it's and expense, if credit, an income. Thus for an event were EXPECTED to make a profit for the organization, I'd make them all of type "income". Understand? Yes, what we pay to rent the venue is an expense of the event, but we can still have an account name "venue costs" of type INCOME a child of the account that totals all income and expenses for that event. What makes the charges (the transactions for) hall rent, chair rent, cleaning, etc. expense is that they are debits to that account. 4. Give the users the ability to create new "currencies". There are a number of occasions where I have assets which have a dollar value but the accounting of that asset uses a different measure. Those are "commodities" - "currency" means something is the legal tender of some sovereign power. BUT --- there might be need to account for some "local currency" which might not be exchangeable for legal tender, and commodities are expected to have some money value. Note that I am not talking about things of no value, just not a money value (conversion might not be allowed/encouraged). Thus if I were dealing with something like "Ithaca Dollars I might use gnucash to track my balance, what I received or used them for, etc. in a separate set of books. More awkward, perhaps, assets which have value, possibly significant value, but unclear/uncertain exactly how much. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] UNSUBCRIBE and Lemmy.World
On 3/16/2024 5:40 PM, Ken Farley wrote: Unsubscribing isn't done by the list, it's just posts of questions like yours. To unsubscribe, you need to go to: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user To be honest, I don't allow the deluge of emails to come to me, either. Too many to have to sift through every day. << not about gnucash -- but about this specific issue >> If you are an EMAIL user (not WEBMAIL) then your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) almost certainly provides a facility for you to create "message filter rules". You can then add a rule so that emails coming from a particular source (say this email list) get moved to a dedicated folder instead of appearing in your inbox). The only emails that show up in the inbox here are ones for which I haven't written a rule. Then you either sift through them in this other folder or not depending on whether you have time. Nor do they have to take up space in that folder forever as you can specify retention policy for that folder. Webmail users --- I have no idea if whatever provider you are using offers similar facilities. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Bill total does not match real total
On 3/11/2024 10:13 AM, Alan Johnson via gnucash-user wrote: I've looked at odoo, but haven't decided to pull the trigger on it. To use the sales/accounting features you need to subscribe and I'm not ready for that yet with my business needs. Well ... if it is really "open software" they would have to make the source code available for free (technically can charge reasonable cost for a copy on medium -- the 'rule" was made before we got things by download). The "open software" rules do NOT forbid charging for providing executables, support, etc. The originally concept was that nobody could charge excessively for that or somebody else would step in and provide at a more reasonable price. Yes, I am old enough to have followed the original "open software" discussions real time. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Bill total does not match real total
On 3/9/2024 5:12 PM, Carl Linkletter wrote: Thanks for all that Michael. So the summary is, why would I think that one system could possibly handle all the regulations that incompetent and narcissistic bureaucrats could come up with?What was I thinking??? :-) This is equivalent to asking why we have independent countries, each making their own laws and setting taxes rather than a centralized world government. In the US, "sales tax" is not federal. Except in the sense of certain "excise taxes" we have no national sales tax. The problem is not that any particular state's sales taxes have bizarre regulations but that there is no reason why the regulations adopted in one state should be the same as in another. The differences are NOT because of incompetent/narcissistic bureaucrats --- and in any case, the bureaucrats of a state do not set sales tax regulations, the elected politicians do. But in any case, what I was really saying is that dealing with this issue is OUTSIDE the normal scope of a "general ledger" system. It is the job of a POS system to handle that and send a feed to "general ledger" with the transaction having the correct amounts. It would also send a feed to "inventory" to record the depletion of items (and "inventory" would then send a transaction to "general ledger" for cost of goods sold. Gnucash is a general ledger system, not a complete business system with "payroll", "inventory", "POS", etc. Or if for an organization, maybe also things like "pledge accounting" Gnucash does not have these partner systems. AFAIK no team in the open software world is trying to organize a "business system" project. BTW --- I am STRONGLY on the "modular design" side of that issue, so would want separate teams doing the components << the "business system" team would be in charge of making sure the pieces all cooperate, well defined interfaces, etc. >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Bill total does not match real total
On 3/9/2024 1:34 PM, R Losey wrote: Regarding below, perhaps Amazon does it that way because some states (locations) exempt certain items from sales tax: Wisconsin, for example, used to not tax food. In Texas also, food is not taxed. And Massachusetts does not tax food or clothing. The necessary assumption is that every taxing authority is different. Nor do they handle "rounding" the same way (in some states always "rounding" UP fractions of a cent). This sort of thing is NOT normally handled by the "general ledger" system. That's what a POS (point of sales) system is for, although that system would also normally feed inventory as well as "general ledger". You are asking way too much of gnucash. It's more than a sales tax rate for each state (and city or other jurisdiction that charges a sales tax). It is for each how rounding is to be performed, what the sales tax does or does not apply to, etc. To go back to my own state of MA and clothing. That is NOT all clothing. Articles of clothing costing less than a certain amount are exempt from sales tax (*I think that's $175). But "clothing" considered for athletic use is not exempt, nor is protective clothing. That means WHERE BOUGHT can matter. Buy sneakers at the department store, exempt, but at the sports shop, taxed. Buy gloves at the department store, exempt, but at the hardware store, taxed. You expect gnucash to be ale to handle that sort of detail. Michael D Novack * Understand? Buy two pairs of X shoes costing $100 each and the line would be "X shoes $200 no tax charged but buy one pair of Y shoes costing $200, the line would be "Y shoes $200 sales tax $13.50 ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Bill total does not match real total
On 3/6/2024 12:49 PM, Carl Linkletter via gnucash-user wrote: OK, Found the bug. The problem is that the tax is totaled up using sub-penny calculations. That causes a 1.004 + 1.004 to equal 2.008 which is then rounded to 2.01. Each line should be rounded to the penny first, then rounded up. So if 1.004 is first rounded to 1.00, then that would cause this calculation to total 2.00, not 2.01. If that makes any sense :-) Guess I will enter a bug on this. Does NOT solve the problem (rounding to the penny first). It is simply the case that rounded(A) + rounded(B) /= rounded(A+B). You have given an example where 1.004 + 1.004 would give 2.00 if rounded first and 2.01 if rounded after adding. But how about 1.004 + 1.004 + 1.004 which would give 3.00 if rounded before adding and 3.01 if rounded after. The problem is actually because of using "reals" to represent decimal quantities. Now MY working days were spend with machines whose architecture directly supported expressing decimals in BCD (binary coded decimal). But the fact that our current CPUs don't directly support BCD representation and arithmetic does not mean couldn't emulate that in software (in our higher level language). Most of us using c++ are doing that so we don't have to "roll our own" << c++ is actually a "pre-processor" for c >> Somebody like me COULD come up with a BCD arithmetic package and I assume existing developers could also. The point is that people like the late Admr. Grace Murray Hopper (WWII cryptologist, designer of COBOL) understood that using reals to express decimals would have this problem and so used BCD for money amounts. That's because intended for business and business implies money amounts. THEN machine were made with architecture to directly support it. Michael D Novack PS --- BCD is essentially "integer" representation and math with the "display amount" handling the editing to insert the decimal point. Now the only arithmetic operation raising a rounding issue is division. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Bill total does not match real total
OK, Found the bug. The problem is that the tax is totaled up using sub-penny calculations. That causes a 1.004 + 1.004 to equal 2.008 which is then rounded to 2.01. Each line should be rounded to the penny first, then rounded up. So if 1.004 is first rounded to 1.00, then that would cause this calculation to total 2.00, not 2.01. If that makes any sense :-) Guess I will enter a bug on this. Speaking as somebody who spent decades in the cypher mines (a rather senior systems analyst/business analyst) a) There is no rule in mathematics how/where rounding should take place. It is simply true that rounded A + rounded B does not necessarily = rounded (A+B) b) So a program might be defined to be correct (or wrong) depending on what it does during rounding COMPARED TO THE FORMAL PROGRAM DEFINITION. I other words, during the "requirements phase" of the project when a committee of "clients" sat with business analysts and this formal document was created << this process normally budgeted for about 20% of project time -- "people-hours" >> c) OH --- this is software produced by volunteer designers/coders. There was NO formal definition of what was t be done in all situations because no corresponding team of volunteer "clients" (program users) for that phase of the project, coming up with the formal definition. THEN this sort of thing CAN'T be a "bug". Can't be because there never was a defined "should do". Understand what I am saying? The "client community" can most certainly request a change to what has now been decided. That is not one person. Instead of filing a "bug report" ask fellow gnucash users to volunteer for a TEAM to get together and decide what the program SHOULD do, and once decided, ask for that change. Wearing my old business analyst hat for a moment, sitting at a meeting of that committee I'd ask ":what are the sales tax rules for YOUR jurisdiction?" < when multiple items are bought at the same time> That's what we do, ASK QUESTIONS (based on what our experience tells us will likely be a problem -- that there will NOT be uniformity about that. FOR EXAMPLE --- many (most?) US states that have sales tax do NOT use rounding if you are worrying about cents. The tax is a cent for any fraction of a cent (round up the cents) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] How can I book Sales when invoice is paid vs when posted?
I'm not going to comment on "does that sound right?" The accounts used and workflow to temporarily convert accrual to cash are an accounting matter, not a gnucash matter. As for there not being a "setting", that make no sense. The difference between "cash" and "accrual" is LOGICAL (the timing when certain financial events are considered to have happened). In other words, suppose you were keeping books on the "cash basis". You sold a customer some goods or services and sent them an invoice (maybe just typed one out). At this point, for legal purposes that amount IS a "receivable", and you could sue in court if the purchaser refused to pay (or say died -- you are asking the estate to pay). That you do not record this in the books as a "sale" until paid is besides the point. Note also that whether you can freely choose to report on the cash basis or accrual basis or be forced to use one or the other may depend on the rules for your jurisdiction. Michael D Novack On 3/5/2024 12:34 AM, Blake Hannaford wrote: Thank you all for helpful responses so far. It is too bad that accrual vs cash invoice accounting is not a setting. At any rate I usually only have a handful of outstanding invoices at a time.I propose the following: 1) At end of year, figure out the total dollar amount of unpaid invoices. 2) Create a new Income account "unpaid sales" 3) Debit sales by the unpaid total and credit "unpaid sales" 4) Ideally see if "unpaid sales" can be omitted from the income statement report. 5) Otherwise, manually subtract "unpaid sales" from Total income to get income tax liability 6) At start of next year, keep "unpaid sales" but zero out all other income accounts (transfer to year-end equity - my usual system for income and expenses) 7) During the year, either move the total back to sales immediately or when each invoice is paid, manually debit "unpaid sales" and credit "sales" for that amount. Does that sound right? BH -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] gnucash-user Digest, Vol 252, Issue 3
On 3/4/2024 11:25 PM, R Losey wrote: Best wishes -- I'm still waiting for a check from 2018 to clear. I checked with my bank (I thought a check would not be valid after a certain time), and they said they'd honor it if it showed up today. I don't want to spend the money to issue a stop-check order. The amount of time a (personal or small business) ordinary check remains valid depends on the institution. The bank MAY use six months as the period before declaring stale (the "uniform") but is allowed to use a longer amount of time AND is not liable for damage it might cost you if they allow a "stale check". This is a "check with your bank" situation. It is important to know if your bank uses moire than six months. Michael D Novack PS -- This is for the US. I have no idea about what the time period might be for other jurisdictions. And even here note I said personal or small business. Large businesses often have specified on the check "void after" and Treasury checks by law are good for one year. Also, things like certified checks, cashier's checks, etc. have different rules. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] split transaction description field length limit
On 3/4/2024 10:43 AM, Alan Johnson via gnucash-user wrote: You don't have to have 'a business' to use the business features. You would need to set up an AP and AR account to post the invoices to. To me, the vendor bill - payment system is the proper way to store the data, rather than kludging the memo fields. Here is an example of a Costco receipt entered as a bill, then paid with a credit card through the vendor-payments section. Well, it's a little more complicated than that if you are keeping books on the "cash basis" and gnucash only supports invoices if on "accrual basis". Essentially at year end (or whenever before the usual reports typical of year end are run) you would need to make temporary adjusting transactions. That could be a lot of work or not much work. For example, if only using invoices (and AR and AP) for very limited purposes as in this example, not such a big deal to adjust for a couple of invoices still "open" at the end of the reporting period if there would be at most a couple of them. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] How can I book Sales when invoice is paid vs when posted?
On 3/3/2024 10:46 AM, Blake Hannaford wrote: Sometimes I send an invoice to a customer in year 1, but the payment is received in year 2. Gnucash always seems to credit the Income/Sales account when posted, but then my income for Year 1 taxes is overstated, and Year 2 is understated.I know you can select different accounts receivable accounts for the post but how can I not boost Sales until the invoice is paid? Thanks! Are you keeping your books on the cash basis or the accrual basis? Are you asking about how to adjust (at year end) if your intent is to be on cash basis but gnucash does not support invoices unless accrual? If you are keeping the books on (and filing taxes on) the accrual basis it is IRRELEVANT in what year the customer pays the invoice. You received the income for that sale when the order was fulfilled/customer invoiced. At that point you have a RECEIVABLE for the amount. Receivables might be sold to a FACTOR (at which point not longer relevant to YOU when the customer pays, or even if the customer pays. If any of this is not making sense to you then you need more learning about "accounting for a business". And "cash bass" vs "accrual basis". It's basics you need help with, not gnucash (or not gnucash yet). Michael D Novack -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Net Assets
On 2/24/2024 2:10 PM, Fred Tydeman wrote: I am looking at the Accounts account screen. At the bottom of the screen, is Net Assets: $xxx and Profits: $yyy I assume Net Assets is the current value of Assets - Liabilities. If that is the case, numbers are wrong by a lot. Wrong assumption. If that is not the case, what is Net Assets? Net Assets. You need to go back the the tutorial until it is clear to you what are "assets", "liabilities", and "equity" Net EQUITY would be net assets - net liabilities Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Removing Scheduled Transaction From a Closed Year
On 2/23/2024 4:02 PM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) wrote: On 2024-02-23 10:46, Grace wrote: I am needing to revisit my GNUCash records for 2022. I forgot to erase all the scheduled transaction before I "archived" it, so now when I open the app, it applies all the scheduled transaction for 2023 and 2024! Did not think about that!! Is there a way of stopping GNUCash from doing that before I open the app? BUT if you are opening this 2022 file to look at data entered only before 2023, you should not have a problem. a) Run whatever reports you need with explicit dates (any date would be before 1/1/23) b) Do not save changes (turn off autosave; do not save at end) OR first make a copy of your 2022 archive file and use that. c) If these scheduled transactions ARE interfering with what you want to look at, consider HOW you are looking at it and what alternative ways (for example, reports where you can supply explicit dates) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Can't open old GnuCash file
I would these sorts of things before trying to reinstall older versions of the programs. You really want to make sure that the problem isn't one of these things, because if it is, an older version of the program won't help. Michael D Novack I might be wrong, but I would expect even an old old file would not crash the program! First of all, I hope you made a backup of the entire data directory and put it aside. Second, make sure you are opening the DATA file and not one of the .log or backup files (backups include a string of digits indicating the date and time the backup was saved). Do you remember if you saved it using the default xml data format, or could you have possibly saved it as a sqlite database? I imagine you might not remember. It is possible you haven't installed the libdbd-sqlite3 package GnuCash needs to read sqlite. That is an easy fix and worth trying (because it won't affect anything if it's not needed). Could you try opening a terminal and launching gnucash there and seeing if you get a more helpful error message? P.S.: You are extremely likely to be able to read the old file, but it may require a bit of help, so let us know by reporting back to the list. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] New user error
On 2/7/2024 11:11 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: Michael, Transaction Journal View is simply the same full transaction accessible via either 'Split' or 'Auto-Split' but for all transactions - *not* one at a time. Yes of course, can have on your screen "journal view" for all transactions affecting the account. But that is NOT "full journal view". Gnucash is "virtual journal" but you can get gnucash to show you that (full journal). By "full journal" I mean something looking like what would have been used in old pen and ink on paper days. The entries in date order no matter what accounts were involved. See what the report "General Journal" gives you. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] New user error
On 2/7/2024 4:59 PM, R Losey wrote: I was intrigued by the Transaction Journal mentioned, but I don't have a Transaction Journal in my View menu... after additional digging, I discovered it doesn't show up on the Accounts page; one must be in one of the accounts to see it. Gnucash is "virtual journal". Those of us who learned in the old paper and pen on paper days will remember we FIRST entered transactions in the journal, then posted them to the ledger accounts. IF you select "journal view" you can enter transactions that way, and when the entry is complete, automatic posting. BUT except for one transaction at a time, you can't see the journal directly while in interactive mode. There IS however a report which will show you the journal (the date ordered transactions) if for some reason you wanted to look at that. This is not the time or place to discuss that some reports have misleading names (in gnucash) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Change Printed Invoice
On 2/6/2024 9:27 AM, Glenn Fowler wrote: You can edit invoice.scm and replace "Invoice" with "Tax Invoice". All invoices after will say "Tax Invoice". Putting my old senior business analyst hat back on for a moment, this is presumably NOT what is being requested. I am pretty sure if we ask (business analysts ask, do not tell the client what the client wants) we will find out that the request for is a SELECTION ox, so only specific invoices would be so titled. But the real point I am trying to make is that at any time a jurisdiction can impose requirements, even things like font and font size, etc. And what one jurisdiction requires independent of what the next requires. THAT is why things like this best handled with editing outside of gnucash. We should ask of the gnucash developers that the CONTENT not be lacking for any jurisdiction, not the editing details. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Change Printed Invoice
On 2/6/2024 2:42 AM, Lester Bennett wrote: Apparently Australian Tax Law requires an invoice over AU$1000 to be titled Tax Invoice. How can I change the default first line of a printable invoice to read "Tax Invoice #"? At present I save to a pdf then edit it with a pdf editor but it would be simpler to have it read correctly from the start. This is precisely why the lawyer/accountant on the board of one of the organizations for which I was treasurer told me NOT to do that sort of editing within gnucash. But instead to do exactly what you are doing. Edit it afterwards when the full power of a general purpose editor was available << even though in MY case as a retired IT pro, something I could have done -- gnucash is open source >> THINK about it. You want the ability to do this editing WITHIN gnucash. Doesn't seem like a big deal, and for THIS particular example, not a big deal. But consider ALL the possible differences that this or that jurisdiction might require for any and all outputs going to that jurisdiction. In other words, what would really be needed would be the ability to edit just about everything from within gnucash. And that would be a big deal, and a waste of time as excellent full power editors already exist. Michael D Novack -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Multiple Fiscal Years
On 2/3/2024 7:13 PM, Jay McSkimming wrote: Hi Is there any solution (other than repeated manual system-wide changes) to allow for multiple fiscal years for different sets of accounts arising from different country tax years? Are there any add-ons or means to allow this? Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance Means to allow this" 1) Use explicit dates for all reports rather than relative to "current fiscal year". You don't NEED to utilize "fiscal year" in the program sense as opposed to the ;logical sense. Note that you are not being clear when you say "different sets of accounts" whether you mean in separate books or in the same books. 2) If in separate sets of books, you can use "current fiscal year", etc. by creating multiple users on your computer (multiple logins). For example, you probably have (should have) at least two, you yourself as an ordinary user, and as a user with supervisor rights). Well you can create additional ordinary users, just as if multiple people were using your computer. The computer isn't going to know or care all the same human. I don't think Stan's objection is very strong. IF the reason this is being done because reporting for different countries then having shared preferences, report formats, etc. is probably not what you want as the requirements of each country might be different. Even if currently the same, might become different at any time. Yes, a bit more work for the ones where at the current time the requirements the same, but allows for change to any if/when that happens. In other words, look at this in reverse and look at the question "I report to a number of entities and because they were all requiring the same report format, I was sharing this. But now one of there entities requires a different format for some of the reports. Not a BIG change. So how do I unsplit the shared saved format so I can alter one of them?" Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Advanced portfolio report picking up wrong price
On 2/3/2024 2:13 PM, Dan O'Brien wrote: (With screen shot attached this time). I can’t make heads or tails of scheme code, so I’m not sure where to even look for the issue here. LOL You would want to have experience with LISP or at the very least, some experience with some "functional" language. Most of us who do programming were first exposed to a "procedural" language, might even be fluent in several "procedural" languages, but are more or less helpless faced with a "functional" language. Even those of us who learned c have only used it as a procedural language (except, of course, for function calls) even though c CAN* be used as a "functional" language. With a procedural language, we do something step by step. With a functional language, we evaluate some function. But note that we might not be interested in the final result of that evaluation (might be just "true" or "false") but what happens along the way. That's what can make a language like scheme (a dialect of LISP) seem very strange. But again referring to c, when we call a function, what it returns might just be a pointer (to a structure whose contents were altered during evaluation of the function -- THAT is what we cared about as opposed to where it happened to be located, which we knew before the function was called) Michael D Novack * When I was learning c "for fun" after retirement, because of a discussion on a c list, I was challenged to rewrite one of my c programs as a pure function. Yes, it is possible. Keep in mind that origins of c at Bell Labs. It was intentionally designed not to be committed to much so the lab engineers could use it for anything. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] End of year
On 1/30/2024 4:37 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: Michael, if I recall correctly, the OP was bifurcating their checking account *every year*. That is: Checking -2022 -2023 -2024 -etc. I was discussing in general. And in any case, standing accounts (asset, liability,equity) are NOT "closed." And I was certainly not meaning to include something as questionable as doing this for a CHECKING account. Some assets have a defined "statement value" at a point in time so I suppose you COULD do this with them. But a checking account does NOT. I will repeat this. The checking account in your books has an amount as of some date and the bank statement for that checking account will have a value as of some date, but it in the very nature of checks that these need not be the same. You normally would have some checks that have been "constructively delivered" (mailed, for example) but that have not been received by the payee, not been de[posited by the payee, not gotten back to your bank. That is why we reconcile checking. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] End of year
On 1/30/2024 12:12 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: You can't. I thought we described that already. If you start a new file/account each year, you will lose all auto-complete from the previous year's entries. The auto-complete list is generated on the fly from the other transactions in the register you have open at that time. If that register doesn't contain previous transactions because you started a new year, then you don't get auto-complete suggestions. If auto-complete is important to you (it does save lots of time!) then don't start a new file/account each year. Let's not confuse two very different things under the name of "year end closing" ONE refers to closing all the accounts of type income and expense (temporary accounts of fundamental type equity) into equity itself or accounts under equity. You will have to be doing the latter if the entity type isn't "sole" (personal books or a sole proprietorship) because need to allocate to the individual partners or shareholders. Just closing the accounts of type income and expense WILL start the new year off with these at zero. Gnucash can produce reports without closing the books, but if you like to see the current income and account balances (just for the current accounting period) you might want to close the books. Making a backup copy of the books is just like making a backup of any other file. Hopefully you are not JUST making a year end backup, but that's the one you might be sending additional copies to safe keeping. While just doing this does not prevent you from altering the past it does make that detectable. The SECOND meaning is to also "start fresh" with just the balances of all "standing accounts". This file would have no past that could be altered. But as noted, you will lose things like autocomplete. It more closely mimics the old days when books were kept in physical volumes, starting in a fresh volume each year. THAT is why we still call these financial records "books" because for many hundreds of years, they were books. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] How do you record the rounding of your netpay?
You are over complicating matters.
You are trying to record (account for) an UNKNOWN situation. At least I
think unknown. Are they telling you "we rounded this up by y amount and
will later round down to make up for it". Or, as I rather suspect, it is
just happening.
How about each month simply recording from your pay statement, ignoring
whether that was rounded up or down by a few pence.
You seem to be worrying about what your REAL pay is as opposed to what
is i-on your statement. In other words, thinking "my pay is REALLY X but
they paid me X + epsilon (or X - epsilon) so I owe them (or they owe me)
epsilon. A lot easier for you to not think of REAL amount being constant
but rather that your pay amount varies up an down by epsilon.
Michael D Novack
On 1/27/2024 11:11 AM, Oleander via gnucash-user wrote:
Hi,
suppose that today I received my first paycheck from my new company, I add this
entries:
First Paycheck
Income:Gross Pay €-1799.50
Expenses:Taxes €300
Liabilities:Rounding €-0.50
Assets:Bank:Checking €1500 ;; net pay
€0.50 is just lent to me, the next month this amount will be charged from my
gross pay along with taxes and if the result is a floating point number it will
be rounded up to the next integer and so on.
Now the questions are:
1) Is the above entry Liabilities:Rounding €-0.50 correct?
2) How do I record the amount that will be charged in the second paycheck?
Second Paycheck
```
Income:Gross Pay €-1799.80
Expenses:Taxes €300
? {€0.50 to be charged}
Liabilities:Rounding €-0.70
Assets:Bank:Checking €1500 ;;net pay
```
Original Message
On Jan 27, 2024, 16:23, Maf. King wrote:
I don't have this sort of rounding arrangement on my paychecks, but I do have similar with one shareholding I have. I suggest you use GC to model reality, as far as possible.. Each paycheck gives you pennies of a
liability (loan) from your employer. So use a liability account in your GC tree for "payroll rounding", and transfer into and out of that each cycle. HTH, Maf. On Saturday, 27 January 2024 08:17:03 GMT
Oleander via gnucash-user wrote: > Hello everyone, > > how do you record the rounding of your netpay? > > After subtracting taxes from my gross pay, if the result of my net pay is a > floating point
number, my company rounds this number up to the next integer > then credits the amount to my bank account. But the rounding is just a > loan, the next month it will be charged from my gross pay along with taxes
> and if the result of my net pay again is a floating point number, it will > be rounded up to the next integer and then credited to my bank account and > so on. > > Eg: > > 1st Month > >
Gross Pay = €1800.50 > > Taxes = €300 > > Netpay = 1500.50 --> 1501€ (amount credited to my bank account) > > 2nd Month > > Gross Pay = €1800.30 > > Taxes = €300 > > 1st Month
Rounding = €0.50 > > Netpay = 1499.80 --> 1500€ (amount credited to my bank account) > > Thank you > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list >
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Re: [GNC] Compare two sets of accounts?
On 1/21/2024 11:05 AM, Myron A Schroeder wrote: Where do I find the " --nofile runtime parameter." Looks like an interesting way to have more than one set of books on my computer. What operating system are you using? Perhaps as much to the point, if you are getting to gnucash by a "shortcut" (an icon that you click) do you know how to look at what that is actually doing? How to edit that? For example, if you are running under Windows and have an icon for gnucash, and you RIGHT CLICK on that icon you get a drop down list of things you can do with that shortcut. At (or near) the bottom of that list is "properties" (let me look at the properties of this object). If you click on that choice (and the shortcut was to the application gnucash) you'll see those properties. That it is an application (the type of the target), where located (in a binary library) and exactly what the target is (what clicking on the object sends to the command line to execute, since that's what is done for an application. WELL -- you can edit that line to add a runtime parameter, in this case, append --nofile (space in between) Michael D Novack PS --- STRONG SUGGESTION --- Do not simply do this. First make a copy of that object (the same dropdown list where "properties" was) and rename it. THAT is how you can back out a failed attempt. Now try to do the edit of the target (add the --nofile) Back out and see what happens when you click the icon now. If it works (brings up gnucash without opening any file you are done (delete the backup copy). Otherwise you can use "copy" again to retry. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] QIF import ignore account
On 1/20/2024 7:24 PM, Geoff wrote: Conjecture - Edge is also the default app for opening XML files on Windows? Repeating the import in debug mode, the trace file contains lots of information, no obvious (to me) error messages, and no mention of Edge: https://bugs.gnucash.org/attachment.cgi?id=374989 Geoff NOT really a gnucash matter. But the "defaults" for which app to use for objects of type X are something you as the user get to specify. Naturally, Microsoft wants you to use THEIR apps, so "out of the box" Windows has all of the defaults set to THEIR apps (if Microsoft makes an app to handle objects of type X) I consider this to simply be one of the tasks to take care of with a new install of a Windows OS is to change all the "out of the box" settings that aren't to my liking to the apps I want to be using. So in a case like this, you go to the place where you make the association settings and see what app is specified for .xml Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Compare two sets of accounts?
Just make sure that after you save a copy (B4A) that you aren't using that file going forward as GC usually opens the last saved file. Unless you have "told" gnucash not to. Those of us who are keeping multiple sets of books (f0r multiple entities) can make like easier by using the --nofile runtime parameter. Gnucash will then start without opening any file, letting you choose which you want to open. The last four open will be in a drop down list you can select from but if you have more than that you'll sometimes need to explicitly enter the file name. While in the past I was keeping more than four, 90% of the time it was one of the last four open (some of the entities only had a few dozen transactions a year -- and often most of those within a month or two and inactive pretty much the rest of the year. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Liability Balances - All payments disappeared
On 1/17/2024 10:04 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: A little more detail to what Michael is asking for: While viewing the Checking account register, click on View > Transaction Journal. That will show all splits in all transactions. Except I would never refer to a transaction that affect JUST TWO accounts to have any "splits". When I use the term "splits" I mean that either there is more than one debit account, more than one credit account, or both. ALL transactions involve at least two accounts, at least one debit and at least one credit. That is fundamental to double entry bookkeeping. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Liability Balances - All payments disappeared
On 1/17/2024 2:14 PM, Khristine Ann Ramella wrote: Hi there! So I opened my gnu cash this am and all of my credit card accounts show huge balances. My checking still shows them as paid, but all liabilities look as if they never rcd a payment. It was fine when i closed it the other day. A glitch in the matrix? Thanks! Khris Ramella So your checking account shows transactions. Well take a look at those transactions to see what the debit side accounts were. And we are just talking about your books, yes? not what on-line banking on-line credit cards shows << in other words, YOUR books as opposed to the books of the banks >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Deferred Income << the general case is "imputed income"
On 1/16/2024 1:42 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: I'm thinking of a case where someone starts using GnuCash either at the point they start taking disbursements or after. I'm about to help a family member in that exact situation. While Deferred Income wasn't tracked along the way, I'll set up the account with the present total as an opening balance and have them transfer against that each distribution. That's a reasonable solution. I'd do it under equity. You can create for them there an account with a name like "deferred income". Presumably when you started the books for them, the other side of the transaction(*) entering the IRA balance as an asset was equity. All you would be doing now would be to "partition" equity transferring the remaining IRA balance form undifferentiated equity to ":deferred income:. Then as distributions are taken, the debits would be bank account and deferred income and the credits the IRA balance and income (current/taxable income) While this isn't necessary, could just debit equity, if you have the deferred income separated out it SHOWS. I'd certainly want my balance sheet to show that some of my net worth has a tax liability associated with it. Michael D Novack * If you used the "starting balance" tool no explicit transaction. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Deferred Income << the general case is "imputed income"
On 1/15/2024 9:47 PM, Jediator wrote: I am not an accountant, so please excuse my ignorance. I was wondering is it really necessary to create a separate deferred income account when you could just do a transaction report on your IRA account to see how much distribution you had in a year or a month? -- JC Yes of course, and you will get a 1099 for the distribution so you would be able to do your taxes using that. But we are keeping books. The situation is different for those of us where money is still coming in to our IRA's or 401k's. Think for just a moment how you would be recording your salary as it came in. PART of what you are getting, both your contribution and the employer's match is NOT going to be reflected in your current taxable income. It is deferred income. You presumably DO want that reflected as adding to your net worth. For those of us at the other end, those distributions might be a significant fraction of our (actual) income. If you aren't having the distribution showing up as (part of) income, you are likely to have expenses totaling more than income. You presumably do want a realistic Statement of Revenues and Expenses (P) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Deferred Income << the general case is "imputed income"
On 1/15/2024 4:02 PM, R Losey wrote: Thank you; this is helpful. I never really thought about recording Deferred Income previously because the investment people track it and let me know what has been taken out every year. But after the discussion in this list last year, I thought it might be good to track, at least the taxable withdrawals. I see that Deferred Income should have been recorded, but it wasn't. Instead of using "Opening Balance" when they were set up, the amount should have been more appropriately credited to Deferred Income, right? The fact that the government considers the TRANSFER of assets between two asset accounts (the IRA and checking) to be a taxable event even though no new money coming in can be considered as special case if "imputed income" and you COULD simply treat all imputed income situations the same. For example --- you might have as an employee benefit employer paid group term insurance and your employer might even offer options like 5 years salary. Now the US government considers up to $50,000 face value a non-taxable benefit but the premium for coverage above that amount as "imputed income". In other words, this will appear on your pay stub as part of your total taxable income even though you didn't actually receive that as money. Well in the big split where you enter your salary you could handle that little piece using equity for the other side. As I have already noted, NOT actually changing total equity to both debit and credit equity by the same amount (the credit side being an income account, but both income and expense accounts "really: of type equity and the net of all unclosed income and expense accounts appearing with equity as "retained gains (or losses)" Some of us had to deal with other "imputed income". Thus if we had a "split dollar" insurance benefit* the premium for that amount of term coverage would show as an "imputed income" amount. Michael D Novack * The employer buys a cash value type policy on your life, and pays the premium. You get the right to name the beneficiary and the option (if you leave) to either buy and keep the policy (pay the employer for those premiums) or have the policy surrendered and keep the difference (after several years the policy should be worth more than the sum of the premiums paid in). In other words, you have a favorable "adverse choice" situation <> ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Deferred Income
Let me ask you a question (that should make it obvious what one* of your problems is --- and yes, this has been discussed before) HOW did you record this deferred income when it was received? Or since it might have been received before you began using gnucash, how did you enter the accumulated deferred income when you started with gnucash? Forget for just a moment that the term "deferred income" in it << you might not be using an account of type "income" to track it --- types income and expense are temporary accounts of fundamental type equity and would be zeroed out IF you did an actual "close the books" -- you presumably want this amount in a standing account, one that persists through a "close the books" Hint --- suppose I were starting to use gnucash and I had an IRA balance of $500,000 and all of that is "deferred income" (not taxed yet, so will be when withdrawals taken). HOW did I record that starting balance? NOT by using the "starting balance tool". I would have an account under equity with a name like ":deferred income" and I would enter a transaction debit Assets:Investments"IRA and credit Equity:Deferred Income << in other words, it IS part of my equity, just kept separate >> Now we are taking a distribution (your transaction) You would have the first two lines right but that would be a CREDIT to Income:Taxable:IRA distributions and a DEBIT to Equity:Deferred Income And no, you are NOT decreasing your total equity (because an account of type income is a temporary account of fundamental type equity --- so no net change to equity) Michael D Novack PS: IF you never kept the accumulated deferred income as a separate part of equity don't try to go back and fix that. Just use equity itself for the second debit. * The other is that you don't seem to understand the "sense" of an account of type "income". That's where your wrong sign comes from On 1/15/2024 11:52 AM, R Losey wrote: Last year, there was a discussion here about tracking taxable distributions from IRAs which included a deferred income account. I had not been tracking taxable income, and thought that this would be good, so I tried to do this last year, but I think I did it incorrectly. I wanted to avail myself of the knowledge and wisdom here. I have "Deferred Income" as an "Income" account. When I take out, say, $1000.00, I made the following split: Assets: Investments: IRA credit $1000.00 Assets: Current Assets: Checking: debit $1000.00 Income: Taxable: IRA Distribution debit $1000.00 Income: Deferred Income credit $1000.00 I suspect that I have the last two entries reversed because the IRA Distribution balance is negative, and all other income accounts are positive. I don't remember if I created the "Deferred Income" account; perhaps it should not be under "Income"? Many thanks! -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] End of Year?
On 1/13/2024 10:27 PM, R Losey wrote: Absolutely; there is no reason to do anything special at the end of the year; for many years, I have just kept using GnuCash and have had no issues, but some people like to make yearly archives, or do the "close the books" thing. This perhaps bears repeating. MOST of us are using gnucash for personal accounting, sole proprietorships, organizations, etc. In other words, our entity type is "sole", which means no need for any accounting of ownership share in equity. So MOST of us have no NEED to do any special YE processing beyond "journal entries"* for things like recording depreciation. Things that would be done BEFORE a "close the books". We can do special YE processing but do not have to. Gnucash can produce the normal YE reports without actually closing the books first. BUT --- other forms of entities that are not "sole", that have to be able to show how shares of ownership and/or shares of income/losses are allocated to each owner, probably will have to do a "close the books" and will have to do much of that manually << the "tool" assumes all going to undivided equity >> They will also need some "equity reports". That means is that either we need to be very clear we are only speaking about entities that are "sole". Maybe a reminder once a month? Something in the documentation? Michael D Novack * adjusting transactions where there is no money in or out ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] End of Year?
Folks trying to imitate Pen & Paper using a computer are always going to have to adjust their workflow or make concessions for the difference in formats. This is true no matter the task at hand, or the software used, and is true of things not even accounting related at all. I'm glad GnuCash gives the choice. Some software forces you to do what *it* wants. Not as much as you think. Assuming you were using "journal view" to enter transactions the only real difference is that software like gnucash is "autoposting" (when you hit enter closing the transaction entry process the journal entry is posted to the ledger accounts WITHOUT ERROR --- errors made during the manual posting of pen and ink on paper days were the bane of our existence and we had to learn all sorts of tricks* to find the errors). That's why we had to do a periodic trial balance> Simply entering simple (two account) transactions directly in the ledger is very like the shortcut sometimes used in pen and ink on paper days known as "cashbook accounting" where a small subset of the most popular accounts had their own book separate from the main journal-ledger. Gnucash (or other similar apps) is simply expanding the subset to the entire ledger. But unlike pen and ink on paper days, gnucash can produce as a report the virtual journal of these transactions (they were never entered in journal form) THAT is why I keep saying "if you don't know how you would enter something pen and ink on paper" then your problem is really a bookkeeping question as opposed to a gnucash question. Michael D Novack * example --- "if the difference (the oob amount) is divisible by 9 then look for a transposition of digits" --- thus 51 -15 = 36 which is divisible by 9 251 - 152 = 99 which is divisible by 9 There were other such rules, but transposition errors during posting were the most common error so this was the most import "rule" ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Budget car payment
On 1/13/2024 1:34 PM, Dennis Powless wrote: Are there other options to export besides HTML? Say to excel in csv or txt? If you open an HTML document, do you know how to get the content saved as .xlsx or .cvs or .txt? The point here is that asking the developers to add the option of adding export to format X just kicks the can down the road to "how about format Y:. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Maddening!!!!!!!!
On 1/11/2024 12:11 PM, Jack Slater wrote: 90 minutes of reconciling down the drain with a crash near the end of the final account. Oddly, even though GnuC auto saves periodically, it seems none of any add/delete/balance transactions were saved in any account! Why would that be Horses and barn doors and all that. This is really a work flow issue. Back in my working days I would NEVER work for 90 minutes without having done several HARD SAVES (save, close, reopen file). Especially when doing something stressful like editing/writing in assembler. Thirty minutes, take a 5 minute break. Do it for 90 minutes straight and I'd expect to have made attention loss errors even if the computer didn't misbehave. The "autosave" is a "soft save". You could use the last interim back-up to recover (to the point of that autosave). But you won't have a "mark" in your work to show you where that was << say you were entering a big pile of transactions >> Returning from a hard save you probably know where you were. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Moving from Quicken
On 1/9/2024 2:15 PM, Glenn Serre wrote: Good morning Barry, Regarding entering transactions into gnucash: I import QFX files that I download monthly. I migrated from Quickbooks and Quicken more than a decade ago (I last ordered Quicken in 2008), Both are Intuit products, but QuickBooks and Quicken not the same thing. Moving from Quicken to Gnucash has a learning curve, because Gnucash is standard double entry bookkeeping while Quicken is sort of faking it. Have to learn the basics of double entry bookkeeping. Moving from QuickBooks to Gnucash has a minimal learning curve because like Gnucash, QuickBooks is standard double entry bookkeeping. I consider it good advice that absolute beginners to double entry start out using formal labels (debit and credit) and enter in "journal mode". That way you get to see what you are (actually) doing, and the closeness to pen and ink on paper (except automatic posting; none of those pesky transcription errors during manual posting) will let you use almost any book to learn from. Switch to using the shortcuts later. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] posting of Switching of Mutual Fund
However, I think I have confused you with my question or term used in it. The term of "Equity Fund" was meant to signify the name of Mutual Fund that invest in all stock (Equity of the companies, that is the term used here in India for such types of fund as in like Debt Fund, Liquid Fund, Multi Assets Fund etc) I did not mean to Debit Equity as it is a standard of the accounting parlance. No, I was NOT confused. I understood that you ":Equity Fund" was an asset, a fund that invested in shares of ownership of companies. I was saying that you might record the "short term gain" (an item of income) using equity as the other side of the transaction. I even explained why that was not changing anything (that an account of type "income" was actually a temporary account of fundamental type equity, so like moving an amount between two equity accounts at the same time you were moving the amount between to accounts of type asset) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Moving from Quicken
On 1/8/2024 12:33 PM, barry milliken wrote: Thanks for your answer. When I said personal accounting I oversimplified. My wife and I both have independent consulting businesses. That means we have 3 bank accounts and six credit cards for a total of 9 "accounts" (transaction sources) Managing downloads manually would be too cumbersome. How does Gnucash allow me display my source accounts separately? Thanks This question means you have to learn the basics of double entry bookkeeping. Start with the tutorial and then perhaps work your way through a typical bookkeeping/accounting 101 text (paper or on-line) EVERY transaction (in double entry bookkeeping) has at least one account being debited and one account being credited. And best to forget about ideas like "source" (of money), especially as you might have a few transactions where no money is actually being moved << note: not only is Quicken not proper double entry bookkeeping but it is mimicking just the "cashbook" subset of double entry << when the "cashbook" shortcut in use for the majority of transactions, the simplest ones -- I did this in the old pen and ink on paper days >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] posting of Switching of Mutual Fund
How to do it using gnucash is not your problem. How to do it even were you using pen and ink on paper is your problem. In other words, you don't know the account to debit in order for the transaction to be in balance. Hint: Accounts of type income and expense are both temporary accounts of fundamental type equity. So if you credit an income account and debit equity by the same amount you have NOT really changed your total equity. If you closed the books, that income amount would have ended back up in equity, just as the Balance Sheet report includes the net of unclosed income and expense accounts as unrealized gain or loss (the amount that WOULD be transferred to equity were the books closed). Michael D Novack PS -- Then tutorial is intended as a very basic guide just to get you started. If you are needing to record transactions involving more complex situations then bite the bullet and work your way through a typical "Accounting 101" text (ideally, one for accounting under the rules of YOUR jurisdiction I am just wondering, how this transaction can be effected in GNUCASH. I tried to search for wiki and some old communication on this subject but could not get the clear idea. Hence, thought of seeking help here. Will very much appreciate any help With my best regards Paras ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Moving from Quicken
But THESE are done differently in standard double entry bookkeeping. - allow me to assign a category to each transaction. - create categories (or import quicken categories) and assign each as tax deductible or not. You will be creating ACCOUNTS and these can be in a hierarchy. Thus under the account "expenses" you could have two children, "tax deductible" and "non-tax deductible". Under these you would create child accounts. I suggest at a minimum you read the tutorial about the basics of double entry bookkeeping. A standard "101" text would be even better. The issue is that there can be only ONE hierarchy of accounts (called the chart of accounts, aka CoA) so when you want the effect of a transaction being in more than one "category" you have to give the CoA a finer structure, and for reports on just a "category" you may need to to account selection* Michael D Novack * quicker/easier to just run the full report, export that, and edit the raw report data to discard what you don't want. milliken wrote: I've been frustrated using Quicken for years. Maybe GNUcash will do what I want. My list of functions is small: I use Quicken for personal accounting, mainly to categorize transactions for tax reporting. Can GNUcash do these things: - import data from a Quicken QDF file as a starting point. - allow downloads of transactions from my bank accounts and credit cards. - allow me to assign a category to each transaction. - create categories (or import quicken categories) and assign each as tax deductible or not. - report and summarize tax deductible transaction at tax time. That's all I care about. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] When closing books, equity statement report is incorrect
On 1/4/2024 9:34 AM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: GnuCash is not getting in your way here. You are free to do what you would do if you were keeping books using Pen & Ink. That process would require the same accounts. What GnuCash is not doing here, that you are asking for, is providing a report so you don't have to mimic the formal methods of Pen & Ink. And I'd say that GnuCash is correct in this approach. Recognizing Dividends and disbursing them is, at least in the U.S., supposed to be explicit in the books - thus requiring specific accounts. It can't be done with just a report as Users should keep in mind that when we say things like "you don't have to close the books; gnucash can produce the necessary reports without doing that" we are talking about PERSONAL books and sole proprietorships. Equity in these cases is simply the equity of the "sole". Businesses with more complex ownership will need a complex structure under equity because the ownership is not sole. That structure is keeping track of how equity is divided up among the "owners" -- plural. In that case probably will have to close the books to get the net income/loss properly distributed among these interests. And the "close the books" tool provided by gnucash might or might not be of use (it won't do the distribution part of it). Sorry, but I think "how to keep books for a partnership" and "how to keep books for a corporation" is not what we should be giving advice about beyond "when using gnucash as the accounting software" (any peculiarities vs other software or pen and ink on paper). Both of these organizational forms will require equity to be structured. Not the same structure and the activities to be tracked will be different. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] When closing books, equity statement report is incorrect
On 1/3/2024 1:19 PM, Quinn Wood wrote: On Wed, Jan 3, 2024, 09:13 Michael or Penny Novack < stepbystepf...@comcast.net> wrote: Although I am NOT "qualified" to give advice I will give one example related to the above to show not free to do just any old thing. If keeping books for a corporation, as soon as the Directors declare a dividend, it becomes a liability. BTW, I disagree things like "how to keep books for a corporation" belongs in a gnucash wiki. We are NOT "qualified" to be giving this sort of accounting advice. And in any case, these things can vary somewhat by jurisdiction. You already give advice on how to keep books on the wiki. HUH? I have made NO contributions to the wiki content. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] When closing books, equity statement report is incorrect
On 1/2/2024 12:49 PM, Quinn Wood wrote: On Tue, Jan 2, 2024, 10:43 Michael or Penny Novack wrote: Other than the suitability/unsuitability gnucash provided "tool" for closing the books this isn't really a gnucash question. I've identified a solution for this issue that does not require a custom report. Sweep revenues and expenses into a Retained Earnings account and do not include it in the equity report. Take dividends / distributions out of a subaccount called Dividends / Distributions declared and do include it in the equity report. Put investments into an account (e.g. Common Stock) that is included in the report as usual. If people think this kind of thing is out of scope, feature creep, outmoded, etc., ok. If you want to give people a way to get their work done that doesn't involve changing the way GnuCash works, I'd get this workflow on the wiki so people have the option in their toolkit. Please "solutions" are a matter of accounting/law and have little to do with gnucash per se (if you could have done something the old fashioned way pen and ink on paper then you can do it with gnucash) Although I am NOT "qualified" to give advice I will give one example related to the above to show not free to do just any old thing. If keeping books for a corporation, as soon as the Directors declare a dividend, it becomes a liability. BTW, I disagree things like "how to keep books for a corporation" belongs in a gnucash wiki. We are NOT "qualified" to be giving this sort of accounting advice. And in any case, these things can vary somewhat by jurisdiction. Michael D Novack -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] When closing books, equity statement report is incorrect
Other than the suitability/unsuitability gnucash provided "tool" for closing the books this isn't really a gnucash question. Yes, partnerships, corporations, etc. will not simply be lumping all components of equity together. But worst case you so the "close the books" manually putting the net income/loss into what accounts under equity you need it. Just like we all did in the days of pen and ink on paper. Need a report of equity after? (all those accounts, just those accounts). Remember you can throw away those parts of a standard report that you don't need/want. That is easier than creating a custom report << in other words, the report you want is PART of the Balance Sheet >> Michael D Novack On 1/1/2024 10:41 PM, Quinn Wood wrote: On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 10:28 PM Quinn Wood wrote: On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 5:11 PM David Cousens wrote: Have you investigated customizing the reports for the particular situation and renaming the report sections to meet your needs. The Edit->Report Options alows selecting particular accounts, date ranges etc but modifying the report code (Scheme) allows you to customize them to whatever you want with regard to heading names etc. Requires an invetment to learn to program in Scheme though. I was planning to start from the current Equity Report, since I think I see where it is calculating withdrawals and investments. I have to figure out what the Scheme does to see if it can use the already-present "Closing Entries pattern" option. I've taken a look at creating this new equity report (that defines retained earnings as a snapshot of all accumulated net income kept by the business, when it could have been paid to owners instead) a few times but I don't have a complete answer. I *think* I could start creating the desired report by collecting four things: * what the total equity was before the report start date * what the total equity was on the report end date * what the total revenues were between the start and end date * what the total expenses were between the start and end date then populating some of the report fields * starting equity * ending equity * change in equity * net gain or loss I see some comments here and there about a form of metadata that hints at a journal entry being a closing entry. Is this metadata something that can be used in reports? My reading suggests it can't, but I don't have much to go on. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] GnuCash getting worse?
On 12/28/2023 3:56 AM, G R Hewitt wrote: My two pennyworth is similar. My two cents is a little different. Also a retired pro, a very senior sort of systems analyst who toward the end mainly handling what had the department programmers stumped or was beyond them in the first place. This is a CHOICE. Do you immediately upgrade to the newest version or do you wait long enough for the new version bugs to be found and corrected? Do you like being on the "bleeding edge" or not? Do you NEED some feature that has been added with the new version? With a full testing protocol, a new version would spend some tine in "beta" with only designated "beta testers" using it (experienced users who would report bugs to the development team, people able to identify actual bugs from things that simply might require explanation what some new feature does and doesn't do). This project does NOT have a large enough "testing budget", nothing like what I used to have available to me (around 20% of the total new system budget). Lack of a user/tester base is why I am not helping with development. So I'll put it plainly. If you don't need a new feature of a new version, and if you dislike being an involuntary beta tester (during this initial unofficial beta period) then wait a little while before upgrading. Monitor this list for the complaints about the new version and upgrade only when these have died down. Skip ever upgrading to versions that were particularly buggy. Yes, you will likely always be one or two versions behind the newest, but you won't be complaining. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Accounting Period Change issue
On 12/19/2023 10:40 AM, Kalpesh Patel wrote: Thank you, for being flameless. My ears are all yours to listen to the explanation... I actually didn’t tell the whole story ... I did software development for good chuck of my early career in the computer field (worked with through MIL-STD-2167/A when it was de-facto). I am concurring that DATA is in a file of "program data" that gets read in when the "program" starts and that the "change accounting period" function changes this data. I am not sure I concur that to get it to take effect the program has to be shut down and start again manually. During the input phase of the change, upon confirmation "click" a call to start again just that portion of the program is doable, IMHO. It may require implementing a different sub-routine or sub-function if the existing one is not sufficient to do so. Quite so, could (without closing and reopening) change the value the program would use for any NEW reports, etc. that were run (mew = post change). But remember, gnucash saves what reports were open (in other words, if I had an "Income Statement" and "Balance Sheet" on the bar, they are still there when I reopen. Some of which could have been dependent on "current accounting period" BTW -- this calls for a test, because I think we don't necessarily know WHAT got saved for those pre-existing reports. I am always using absolute dates in reports, and I know THAT gets saved. But has gnucash converted things like "current accounting period" to actual dates when it runs the report. In other words, the details of how "open" reports are saved. In other words, depending on what saved, even save, close,open might not work. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Accounting Period Change issue
On 12/18/2023 3:11 PM, Kalpesh Patel wrote: Hmmm! For 1) see the attached jpg. It describes the situation that no one wants to be in (fyi - I am current practitioner in IT/Systems/Engineering/Software world) ... it's a defect; not a bug. For 2), if I am spending energy to change it deliberately then I want to see updated values; why else would I be making that change? Definitely not to have a self-exploding time bomb for the future. It is a refresh/redraw issue and is not an error in calculation issue, as it does eventually displays correct values. I get feeling that I am going to get flamed... No, not flamed, explained. So you have enough experience in the IT world to understand that this is a "refresh" issue. That the DATA (that defines current accounting period) is going to be in a file of "program data" that gets read in when the program starts and that the "change accounting period" function changes this data. To get it to take effect the program has to start again. If you don't want to "leave a time bomb for the future", want to "see it now", just do a save, close, (re)open immediately after making the change to accounting period. If you don't want to interrupt your work flow (say entering a stack of transactions), the change will appear the NEXT TIME you open gnucash (not far in the future). Not having it automatic gives you the choice. Personally I like all saves to be explicit, known points in my workflow. I am rarely entering transactions "real time" or in date order so want to know exactly where I was in the work flow each save. Michael D Novack PS -- that "not in real time" means I would be using explicit dates for reports, etc. and not things like "current accounting period" which are relative to real time. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Accounting Period Change issue
In trying to track down a Total (Period) issue, I used Edit -> Preferences -> Accounting Period to change the Start Date and End Date fields to Absolute dates. After doing Close of that dialog, there appeared to be no change in the values in the Total (period) column. I expected a change, but maybe it is working as designed. However, after closing and reopening GnuCash, there then were changes in the values. Did you want an EXPLANATION of this behavior? (why you had to close, then reopen the application before the change "took effect") As a retired senior systems analyst who has designed a lot of software, even without examining the code: 1) I am not surprised by this behavior and almost certain about WHY the program behaves this way. Definitely not a "bug". 2) If the user desired behavior were to have this action take place upon closing the dialog (without doing a manual save/close/reopen) the change in the program to make that happen would be an automated save/close/reopen. That could cause its own user confusion. I'd rather KNOW when each "save" was done (where was I in the work flow) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] End of year Archive of Accounts
On 12/11/2023 12:19 PM, Grace wrote: Hello, As we approach the end of the year (Happy Christmas everyone) I am wondering how I would archive off 2023 accounts leaving opening balances for 2024. I don't see this an action available, so is there a process I need to know? Thanks Grace a) You can make an "archive" at any time. Your books are a file. Make a "keep forever" copy (I do my backups to a removable drive, normally kept in a safe location. Back when doing organizational books, would burn a copy and hand that to another officer of the org) b) But you mean something in addition to the archive. You are asking to only see opening balances for the current year. Now did you mean for ALL accounts. In the old days, it was common to do a "close the books" and so all income and expense accounts would have zero balances at the start of the new accounting period. It was NOT common to do that for the "standing" accounts. IF you do an end of year "close the books" (either with the tool or manually) and IF you have few standing accounts you COULD do what you want manually (from the post closing Balance Sheet). In other words, just start a new set of books entering the starting amounts from the balance sheet << in that case you might want to change the name of you books -- include the year in the name >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Selling an unpaid invoice to another business at face value?
On 12/6/2023 8:40 PM, Adrien Monteleone via gnucash-user wrote: The amount owed stays in AR. Who owes it is what changes. Look, this isn't really about gnucash. And selling of A/R is far from unusual. But a list helping people use gnucash isn't the place to discuss "factoring" from scratch. But I will say this much. If a business sells some or all of its A/R then it should be obvious that for THAT business those amounts no longer receivable but already received. Those become the business of the factor to collect. The factor would need to have the invoices. I assume we are NOT talking about the unusual situation where you are keeping the books for both the first business and the second (separate entities, separate books). Michael D Novack PS --- In addition to sale to a factor, we also can have sale of "bad debt" to a collection agency. Again, once sold no longer receivables of the business. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Reports for Personal Finance
For the case of an individual or a family, what are the most useful reports? Common advice is that your emergency savings account should hold enough to cover 6 months of expenses. In order to to do that, I need to know my average monthly expenses. I guess I can use the Cash Flow report, look at "Money Out" and divide that by how many months have gone by in the year. Is there a better way to get average monthly expenses? Stop . and this applies to a business as well as personal finances. Cash flow IS important, but it is very different from overall financial status. You need to be looking at BOTH, and being in financial good shape requires that you need to be OK in BOTH senses. To make this clear (in terms of personal finances) assume that your net cash flow is positive but your net credit card liability is increasing, and that increase in credit card liability is greater than the former. On the other hand, you might be perfectly OK in terms of net worth increasing but be subject to a cash flow crunch where at some point in the period you don't have enough cash on hand to pay all expenses << Note -- this is more likely to apply to a business than to personal finances in cases where you DO have a cash cushion in the bank of several month's expenses >> Now as to how to get a monthly average of expenses, the key thing is to realize that you can throw away (ignore) part of a report. Thus an "Income Statement" is always run for an interval between two dates. It shows all income accounts and all expense accounts. You COULD go to the trouble of excluding all those income accounts, but simpler to ignore that part of the report and only look at expenses. For the average, just divide by how many months the report covers. Or if you want to see how varies over the year, run every month and enter that number in a spreadsheet, etc. << the average for the year by itself is likely less useful if seasonal variation is large >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] How to export reports to spreadsheet format(s)?
On 12/5/2023 8:57 AM, Eric Chapman wrote: How do I export data from reports to csv files or Excel/LibreOffice Calc files? a) To use the last (as an example) LibreOffice Calc does NOT require the files it opens to be "LibreOffice Calc files" << it of course does prefer the open document version, .ods. >> The same is true of Excel, etc. You are confusing the actual data format of a file with the file extension (of present). b) Have you tried? Have you tried exporting a report from gnucash? It was exported as .html, yes? And so if you click on that object, it will use a browser to open it (because you surely have the extension .html associated to a browser. BUT --- have you tired this? Started the application LibreOffice and from there the application calc. That will assume you are doing a new spreadsheet, but see that "open" in the upper left. That lets you choose what file you want calc to open. Did you find it was unable to open the .html file? You can then do a "save as" choosing the type .ods, .xlsx, etc. Michael -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Why or why not to do year-end closing journal entries? (Close Books?)
On 12/4/2023 8:07 PM, Eric Chapman wrote: Hi, Geoff, OK, it looks as if it's just as good not to close the books, if, e.g., I might want to run an income statement comparing 2022 and 2023. Eric But THAT would unlikely be a good reason unless you were not regularly running/storing such reports. Thus for every set of books I keep, that entity has a directory, with sub directories under it. One for the books (and the logs, etc.) and one for "financial reports". After a report is run, export to there. So you would have all back reports to compare. But also, a matter of dates. IF you have a YE date that is not a fiscal date (no external transactions on that date) you could use that date for the close the books transactions. For example, Jan 1st is a bank holiday so you could use that date. You could still run an end of the year income statement/P at the end of business 12/31. Note that some of us closing the books would be doing it for entities where we would do it manually, not using the the tool << for example, "pass through" entities, so we want to distribute gains and losses to accounts under equity, not just to equity itself. >> Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Navigation through chart of accounts: shortcuts or bookmarks?
Sam is suggesting what I was going to do, but this idea might not be intuitive. So let me make it clearer (and these tricks are more general in application than just gnucash) YOU (and not how a name is normally spelled) are the master. Just because all of these funds are "500" doesn't mean YOU have to name the accounts that way. You could have 500A, 500B, 500C, etc. You could have 501, 502, 503, etc. Michael D Novack As far as I know, there's no way to advance from one account containing "500" to another account containing "500". However, if you type additional characters in the name of the account you're trying to get to, the highlight will move to that account. In other words, as I understand it the account name matching is recalculated from the beginning each time you type another character. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Can I produce a trial balance as a simple CSV file?
On 11/21/2023 7:58 AM, David Kirkby wrote: I was a bit concerned about the complexity of the CSV files exported from GnuCash, since they contain information my accountant does not want. I wrote to him and received this as a response (slightly edited from his reply) *Thank you for your email. Do not worry about sending me over complicated CSV files - we are very used to this. * *The way in which we normally work is that a client sends across the trial balance, we make relevant adjustments to which we use for the accounts and send these adjustments back to you to make within your software. * Check what he/she REALLY wants. Ask that question, "How would you really like them?" As opposed to asking "Could you accept the data in xyz format?" Also keep in mind that .cvs (comma separated variable) is a basic level description of the data. Thus typically a spreadsheet application is using this basic level format to store its data BUT that does not mean that any file in .cvs format would be meaningful data for a spreadsheet. Thus when he/she is saying "Do not worry about sending me overly complicated CVS files" perhaps saying don't worry about sending me the data from a spreadsheet that has additional, extraneous columns. The point here is that people are telling you that you can export into an HTML file that a typical spreadsheet app can open and then save that in a more normal format (for a spreadsheet). And THAT is perhaps what your accountant wants (because can edit in the changes as he/she described and send back to you) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Trail balance Imbalance / multi-currency transaction
Perhaps easier/more usual: Create a special accounts for rounding/bank errors* to hold the discrepancies either permanently or temporarily* (in the case of bank errors). Then your books will be in balance. Michael D Novack * LOL, once one of my non-profits had a small bank error. It would have been in the bank's favor. But instead of immediately correcting it when I brought it to the bank manager's attention, she decided there was no POLICY in place in the case of non-profits (correct, or treat as a donation to the non-profit). It took many months to get on the bank's BOD agenda << this is a local bank, donates significantly to local non-profits >> By "temporary" I mean that when a bank errors account is not in use (zero balance) I can be hidden. This led me to almost throwing gnucash out the window when I got a 1c rounding error on the GST for a transaction. The way the vendor calculated GST and the way gnucash calculated GST were not... balanced. The end result of this was that I was always going to have this 1c difference on the books and it was bound to grow. The books would never be balanced as a result. Luckily I thought of making an extra entry in the sales tax tables for 1c and added a tweak line to the bill entry that made it match and everything was "good enough" in the world. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] noobie question about split transactions
On 11/18/2023 2:33 PM, timothyscu...@yahoo.com wrote: Ah. I think I see my error. When I get a credit card bill, I should open the credit card account and enter each line item as a transaction. I should be able to check my work by comparing the balance on the account with my bill (I always pay in full every month). Then as you say, paying the bill is a simple transaction between the bank account and credit card account. Have I understood correctly? Thank you for your patience. Tim In theory, you enter transactions as you make them. But there is no actual need to be entering transactions "real time". If you wait till you see the statement, remember the correct date to use (for each charge) would be the transaction date (not the posting date and certainly not the date of the statement). HOWEVER --- you are losing information during reconciliation << that's more important with you bank account >> Also note that delayed entry is safe only when your credit limit is WAY more than you might charge in a month. If you have to consider the credit limit, enter transactions as you make them. . Good for you on paying the balance each month. I also treat our credit cards as a "30 day net account". Why pay interest? For those who respond "then why not pay cash or debit card?" note that these days many things require "by credit card" and you might also have greater fraud protection. Since have to use credit card for some, why not all. As long as you can resist the temptation to not pay the entire balance. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] noobie question about split transactions
I came to entering a credit card payment, which I enter as a split transaction with line items for every line item in the credit card bill, after I had spent many laborious minutes entering 50 or 60 line items I accidentally hit enter and all of my work was deleted. Stop right there. NOT a split transaction at the time you make a payment on your credit card debt. THAT is a simple "transfer" transaction, debit credit card and credit bank account. Those things you purchased with your credit card? Those became expenses when you used your credit card to purchase them. debit to the [particular expense account and credit to the credit card << if you had paid by check or cash from your wallet, would be credit bank account or credit wallet >> You were thinking about CASH FLOW which is different << you can be "in the black" in your books but in trouble with a cash flow crunch or be fine (for now) as far as cash flow goes but deep in the red for the long term. Separate things. >> Gnucash is proper double entry bookkeeping. You need to get a good grasp of the fundamentals of double entry bookkeeping and concepts of accounting. Nothing advanced or fancy, just the fundamental. If what I have written about entering (these) transactions isn't making sense to you, reread the tutorial. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Old book not opening
On 11/12/2023 8:45 AM, Ken Farley wrote: I'm using Gnucash on Mac OS, but I would think the file locations are used for the same functions. The directory for "books" on my machine is "~/Library/Application Support/Gnucash/books". Different location, same purpose. This directory contains a bunch of files with names like .gnucash.gcm. These are not Gnucash files that you'd open with File->Open. The files you want to open have names of the format "Name>.gnucash". You need to find those files, without the .gcm or any other suffix. To which I will add --- that is the default location and not necessary the directory in which you chose to put the file. For example, I keep more than one set of books under gnucash (only a couple now, but used to be lots when treasurer of a number of non-profits) and each would be in a directory dedicated to that organization. So let's confirm that your problem really is "cannot open file" as opposed to "cannot find the file to open". For SOME of the gnucash books on the hard drive of this machine they have not been opened in many years but I would have no problem finding them, correctly identifying them, etc. The NAME of the file would tell me what org that was as well as the name of the directory it was in. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Old book not opening
On 11/10/2023 8:55 PM, Phil Reynolds wrote: I am about to start using gnucash again after giving up a few years ago (for personal reasons). However, I want to reopen my old accounts to get the figure I was owed. I can see my old files, but gnucash as supplied in Debian 12 does not seem to be able to open them in any way. Can someone possibly advise how I might do this? a) If you have not checked permissions on the old file, do that first. b) When you say cannot open the file, what do you mean? Does not open the file with gnucash when you click on the object? (the file). Or does not open the file even when you start gnucash and then use "open file" to choose that file by full name? It is the latter you should describe as "cannot open file". c) Have you in between upgraded the version of gnucash? Or are you using the same on as when you last had this file open? d) What, if any messages are you getting on this failure to open. Michael D Novack -- There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] GC Best Practices for Investment Management
On 11/8/2023 4:42 PM, R Losey wrote: On Wed, Nov 8, 2023 at 12:17 PM Jediator wrote: After dumping QB and using GC for couple of months, I started really enjoying its features and simplicity. \ I dumped Quicken about 7.5 years ago and went with GnuCash and haven't regretted it. Both QuickBooks and Quicken are products of Intuit but they are NOT the same. QuickBooks is double entry bookkeeping like gnucash is. Users of QuickBooks should have a minimal learning curve because they are not having to learn double entry bookkeeping at the same time as differences between how you use QuickBooks and how you use gnucash to do double entry bookkeeping. Quicken is not double entry bookkeeping. So making the transition to gnucash the user has to learn the fundamentals of double entry bookkeeping at the same time. Those fundamentals have little to do with how to do it using gnucash (same fundamentals if the old days of pen and ink on paper -- the shortcut of entry of simple transactions directly in the ledger without a journal entry existed back then too, if only applicable to a subset of the ledger) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Recording medical reimbursements
On 11/6/2023 10:53 PM, Andrew Gross wrote: I have various expense accounts for medical expenses. When I receive an insurance check, I record these against the medical expense accounts so the yearly totals will show (approximately) what I have actually paid over the year. Lately, I have been wondering if these reimbursement checks should be going to their own account, not necessarily an income account as reimbursements aren't income (right?) -- maybe a medical expense contra account? This is the one case I can think of when old fashioned ledger paper worked better, an account with a single contra account. That's because debits and credits were on separate facing pages (when the ledger was open). Essentially every account had a "contra" in the form of the opposite facing page. My way (with modern software like gnucash) is to use a parent account < say "medical expenses" > under which I'd have two children, "paid" and "reimbursed". But if reimbursements were very rare, I might just have them as credits to a single "medical expenses" account. << if there are only one or two, "which one?" or "is a reimbursement missing?" not troublesome. But if 50 of them, both questions could arise, so want easier to find/see. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Dealing with escrow account
On 11/2/2023 12:49 PM, Alan Johnson via gnucash-user wrote: Your mortgage payment should be fixed, adjusting one a year for escrow review. You can automate / enter a year's worth of payments from bank to mortgage account. You should also have a the 360 (or other) payment amortization table as part of your loan packet which shows you what each payment will be for Principal and Interest. Unless you are paying extra, you can just follow that to pre-enter your transactions. a) You are unlikely to receive an amortization table for free (I would have had to pay a bit extra for it and that was four? decades ago. Since software was how I made my living, I wrote my own program. Note that this is NOT as trivial as some here think when the problem is to match one done by somebody else. You don't know which of the methods they used, where they were rounding, or what the final payment would be (it's NOT going to come out exact). My program began with a standard "present value" method, then began some trail and error adjustments till matched to the penny what the lender had for the payment amount and minimized how different was the final payment. b) If you DO have an amortization table, ideally you make extra payments in the amount of the next principle payment (or sum of the principle payments of the next several payments) and then you just cross off those payments. In other words, you next principle/interest division will be that of the next uncrossed off payment. In effect, you are "buying" time off the end of the loan (mortgage ends sooner). This can be very cost effective in the early years of the mortgage when interest is a significant percentage of the payment. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Dealing with escrow account
On 11/2/2023 12:33 AM, Jediator wrote: In addition to setting up the proper account structure, I would make your mortgage company as a vendor and set up a bill each month with split transactions to map to mortgage-related subaccounts (e.g, property tax, insurance, interest and principal) as such: * Mortgage Payment o PMI + Tax (expense) + Home Insurance (expense) + Managment Fees (expense) + Escrow (remaining asset, balance may go negative) o Loan Payment + Principals (asset or loan) + Interests (expense/deductible) The advantage is that you have a vendor report to track all mortgage payment and each bill payment will automatically split the transactions. You may set up a limit in tax and insurance account each year so that when the payment reaches the max, it goes to the escrow account (remaining balance), and reconcile these accounts at manually at tax time. Hope this helps. Except might be more suited to business mortgages (say in the rental property business) a) The amounts principal vs interest going to be changing each payment (if here in the US with amortizing mortgages). How to automate that not easy especially as the lender may have calculated the amortization table differently (chance you and they used same method very small) . b) The private homeowner much more likely to be on the cash basis. Things like the amounts for RE tax, property insurance, etc. periodic. Thus likely RE tax quarterly, property insurance annually, management fees only if a condo, etc. Remember that gnucash only supports invoicing for accrual basis. MOST private individuals would be keeping books on the cash basis. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Dealing with escrow account
On 11/1/2023 5:05 PM, Anthony Della Cioppa wrote: I set up two saving account, one taxes, one for insurance and my one for my Lian. When that gets paid I pull it from the corresponding savings account. Would that be wrong? You can THINK of like a "savings account", an involuntary savings account, similar to one you might have set up to deduct X form your paycheck and have it automatically deposited in that savings account. BUT -- why not learn to think of it more properly. Bank accounts aren't the only sort of assets under "current assets" (liquid, and available to you). However in this case, an escrow account isn't "liquid". You can't take money of it until the mortgage is ended (you would then get back any balance remaining). However you perhaps have other asset accounts of this type. For example, you may have potential taxes withheld. If so, why not create under assets "escrow accounts" and there you could put the mortgage escrow account, federal tax withholding, state income tax withholding, etc. Notice they are similar in that you can't get money back (any remaining balance) until after your taxes have been filed. So in the same sense, an "escrow" account. Michael D Novack PS -- BTW, these are not really gnucash questions. Not how do I do using gnucash to keep the books but how do I do it no matter how I am keeping standard double entry books. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Dealing with escrow account
On 11/1/2023 12:03 AM, Edwin Booth wrote: Hi. How do y’all deal with a mortgage escrow account? Specifically, each month I pay into the escrow account along with my monthly PMI payment. It is all an expense. But when the mortgage company pays out money from that escrow account (for taxe and insurance payments) how do you account for them in GnuCash? Or do you just wait until tax time and record it on your return w/o even putting into GC? Thanks, Edwin "each month I pay into the escrow account along with my monthly PMI payment. It is all an expense." No it is not. In order to learn bookkeeping you need to unlearn the mental habit "if money leaves my pocket, an expense and if money not leaving my pocket, not an expense." When you make a mortgage payment it is a SPLIT transaction. What you pay (a credit against your bank account) and debits to THREE accounts. Only one of these, mortgage interest would be an expense account. The escrow account is an ASSET, your money being safely set aside in order to pay expenses when they come due. Expenses like real estate tax, water and sewer bills, property insurance bills, etc. It is quite possible that the lender will send you a statement for that account just once a year. You might want to be using the previous statement to enter ESTIMATED transactions on estimated dates and then reconcile (manually) when your next statement gives actuals. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] DOS Payroll, Inventory, A/R, A/P, and G/L program
On 10/30/2023 1:37 PM, Bruce McCoy via gnucash-user wrote: David, Here are the source code text files, *.EDT, for the program. They are in BKS.EDT.zip. These files are corrected. To make them easier to read, like TAXCODE.txt (q.v.), run them with TAS, which is in TAS.zip. BKS.EDT.zip, BKS.EDT.zip.txt, TAS.zip and TAS.zip.txt are in General at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/d323887f48f9gote69ohm/h?rlkey=gudyrc3o8r8wf0icti0k705gn=0 All we need to do that is find someone with DOS. I do not have a DOS machine any more. I'll ask my contacts to see whether they still have that capability. You may find people who use DOS. If so, you will be able to make the source code files read like TAXCODE.txt yourself. Best Regards. Bruce Confusion? What would DOS (the operating system) have to do with SOURCE CODE files? It's the compiler's job and the link editor's job to turn that source code into an executable for running on some specific (these days generic) hardware under some specific operating system. Thus if I had a program written in c that was once compiled and linked to run under DOS I would expect to be able to compile and link that program to run under the machine I now have (using the c compiler on my machine) and it should work just fine. Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] New Balance entry
On 10/30/2023 6:45 AM, Mahon Finbar via gnucash-user wrote: Exactly my experience, and why I asked, despite previous experience. I am now at the stage where my Gnucash file is y but my bank account is not Further searching needed, Barry BESIDES actual errors, a difference between what the bank says is in your account and what your books say is the account is normal UNLESS all transactions are instantaneous. When I write a check, stick it in an envelope, and mail off that envelope THAT is the time when I have made "constructive payment" < its why postmarks have legal significance"> So that is the date of a reduction in the bank account in MY books. The check has to arrive, be deposited by the recipient, and return to my bank before it gets deducted in the bank's records of my account. Even when I do an electronic transfer between my account at one bank and my account at another (transfer of funds) it is usually not instantaneous. The point I am making is if during the time interval when I have any such event outstanding, what I have in my books and what the bank has will NOT agree. In the old pre computer "bank reconciliation" process accounting for everything "in transit" had to be done first before looking at differences as an error or errors. Michael D Novack PS1: Legally, you are not allowed to utilize "float" << write checks where there are not sufficient funds WHEN WRITTEN but expect the funds to be there before the checks arrive back at the bank.>> PS2: If you are not entering in your books when written, waiting to download transactions from what the bank has you are never going to be able to spot one sort of bank error where a check is misread?misentered. Can also get into problems where a check takes a long time to get back so there could be insufficient funds in your account. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] GnuCash_user: rounding errors and significant digits
Beating what should be a dead horse. Let A, B, and C be rational numbers (ie: expressed in the form X/Y where X and Y are integers). Let D be a function that represents the decimal equivalent of a rational number to some finite number of decimal places. A + B = C does NOT imply that D(A) + D(B) = D(C) In other words, the fact that a set of books is balanced when the amounts are represented as rationals does not mean would be balanced once these rational numbers are converted to decimals. By and large, we keep our books as decimals (the books as we see them) and entities that require reports from us are going to require values as decimal (possibly rounded to some specified whole units of some currency << THAT introduces a second level of complexity as it might be required that those reports balance >> Gnucash is not making "errors" in arithmetic. Simply differences intrinsic to the operation "round". Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] How to display account total with subaccounts in a report
On 10/26/2023 5:03 PM, Jediator wrote: The P report for instance displays the account hierarchy and the account balance for each account. However, all parent accounts show zero balances. Is there anyway to display the account balance of a parent as a sum of all its child accounts? This may have been asked before, but I searched the mailing list archive but couldn't find any answer for this. The answer is yes. You can have the subtotals before or after as you prefer. But might I suggest that with EVERY report you run for the first time (until you become familiar with it) you begin by running "test" (learning mode). You go to edit=>report options and see what ALL your options are. The only odd thing about gnucash is that you don't select these first (before running the report). In other words, you only get to set the options the way you want them after the report exists. But might I ask you a question? If you didn't go into report options how did you set the begin date and end date for the P (always for an interval between two dates) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] I need basic help
Back when I paid it, I just made a payment out of my bank checking account straight to the CC company. Now, how do I assign that transaction? It’s not a CC expense but it is an expense of some kind—just from a different place. My CC statement will go into my Liability Account, right? So does my payment to the CC company come out of Assets and into Liability? And, if so, how do I assign it on the CC Account transaction line? Thanks All, Edwin No, it is NOT an expense of any kind. The expenses were when you used your credit card to buy things or pay for services. Forget that nothing left your pocket. You incurred a debt at THOSE moments. Not when you get around to making a payment on your credit card bill. When you do make a payment, you debit the CC balance by that amount and credit the bank account the check was written against. It's not an expense, even though money left your bank account but a transfer (reduced your debt). In other words, the transaction had no effect on your net worth*.. Michael D Novack * This is another case where "history" might (or might not) make it clearer. If we go back many centuries, there were no accounts of type income of expense. The transactions (representing income of expense) were immediately written against equity. In other words, they immediately affected equity wile a transaction paying against a debt would not affect equity. But it was hard to report on total income or expenses for a time period, had to search for those transactions. Many hundreds of years ago somebody got the clever idea of having TEMPORARY accounts of type "income" and "expense" --- they are fundamental type equity but until closed into equity provided information about income and expense since the last time they were closed. That closing process produced things like the P report. With software like gnucash, most of us never close the books as gnucash can produce the reports "pretend we did" (as if closed at the start of the time period and closed again at the end) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] When closing books, equity statement report is incorrect
GnuCash is designed to not need to. You can happily just keep plodding along until the Sun consumes the Earth. Closing books was necessary in pen and paper days because books were physical volumes with limited space. They were not infinite. This had the added benefit of catching errors periodically that weren't caught before, and which were likely due to transcription mistakes. (transactions and accounts were rarely even looked at much less referenced or reported on in between closings) Actually, there was a lot more to "closing the books" (inn the old days). The process produced the P report (it was an ACCOUNT used in the process), And depending on the type of entity, it might be important to get profits into an actual account under equity. For what the person asking the question wants to do, yes, would want to be closing the books (in his case, apparently quarterly) Michael D Novack ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
