2.3.16

[Geert Janssens]

On Saturday 6 November 2010, Yawar Amin wrote:
> Hi Geert,
> 
> On 2010-11-06, at 05:47, Geert Janssens wrote:
> >> […]
> >
> > The other part the is not documented at all is the business functionality
> > in GnuCash. But this has never been documented before, so there is no
> > loss compared with the previous versions if it remains undocumented.
> > Personally, I would love some basic documentation for this section
> > though, perhaps at least a simple description of the menus in the Help
> > manual.
> 
Yawar,

Thanks for pointing these chapters out.

> The Help Manual has §5.2.1.5 Account Tree - Business Menu (admittedly quite
>  a ways down into the docs). Does this need to be updated?
> 
I remember stumbling on this overview in the past and finding it rather 
insufficient to start working with the business features. There was way too 
much that was not explained.

I think the help guide needs some more basics on the business part of GnuCash. 
Like it explains how to work with accounts and perform basic accounting 
operations, it could have a basic overview of creating 
customers/vendors/invoices etc. These are all part of the default GnuCash user 
interface, but not explained at all.

There is also the Business reports section (§8.4) which only lists the reports 
with no explanation at all.

These are the main points regarding the help manual.

Other than that, there are some minor changes in the gui that require tweaks 
in the documentation. I'll see if I can work on them in the next few days.

> The Guide also covers business features in chapters 12 and 13 (Accounts
>  Receivable/Payable), also somewhat confusing placement.
> 
These chapters completely escaped my search foo. I can hardly believe that I 
never found this information in all the years I have been using GnuCash! Yet, 
the file history shows this documentation exists at least since 2001.

I remember searching for this more than once and I never got something useful. 
Oh boy, I obviously looked in the wrong places...

Looking back, I think I never got to the Accounts Payable and Accounts 
Receivable sections because I was looking for information on Customers, 
Vendors, Bills and Invoices. These key words are not obviously found in the 
chapter titles (only in subsections), yet these are the names you find in the 
GnuCash gui. Additionally, the sections for Business users start with 
depreciation, a topic I would move further back in the guide. I think most 
people would first want to learn how to set up the business objects 
(customers, invoices and friends) and then worry about depreciation once some 
invoices are booked.

Looking at the depreciation chapter a bit more, it looks like it is partly for 
personal finances and partly for business finances. That's probably why it was 
added in between the sections. It would probably be more clear to simply split 
this chapter in two: one for the personal finances part and one for the 
business part.

> What I could do in the Guide immediately is divide it roughly into three
>  parts using the DocBook ‘part’ tag, let’s say ‘Getting Started’, ‘GnuCash
>  for Your Personal Finances’ and ‘GnuCash for Your Business Finances’. This
>  is already laid out in §1.3 so adding the part tags would just formalise
>  this structure.
> 
> I’ve created a bug # 634181 for this.
> 
I think that would be a good idea.

I haven't read through all of the business chapters yet, so I can't comment on 
it's completeness or up-to-dateness right now. If I find some time later, I'll 
try to review them and add more comments here on in bugzilla.

Geert