Mandatory Customer Addresses - Why?

[Derek Atkins]

Wm <wm+gnc at tarrcity.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Sat, 16 Aug 2014 19:38:22 <53EF42AE.9010002 at windwanderer.com.au>
> Jesse the Wind Wanderer <jesse at windwanderer.com.au>
>
>>Dear GNU Cash Development Team,
>> First can I say thank you for creating a professional accounting
>> software for linux and doing so as an open source project! You guys
>> ROCK! In fact your part of the reason I switched to linux in the
>> first place. You see when I started my business in 2006 I didn't
>> have any money and decided that if I was going to run a business I
>> couldn't use pirated software. I found GNUCash and the decision was
>> made :-)
>>
>> My question today is why are customer addresses mandatory? I'm a
>> performer and I often do gigs at parks & public places. My clients
>> pay me cash and I never need to know their actual address. Sure I
>> can enter a dummy address like "Unknown" but I wanted to ask if
>> there was a reason for making this field mandatory, is it used as an
>> index in a database? or is there some other programmatic reason it
>> is required? or was it just a user interface choice? If it's just an
>> interface choice could you please add an option to turn it off in
>> the preferences.
>
> There is no conceptual art or creative accounting involved.
>
> If you have actual customers (Festival A, Fete B, Convention C) then
> Cash Receipts is just another (albeit generic) customer.  I'd have
> thought you'd want to distinguish between various cash performance
> areas (Glastonbury or Edinburgh, etc) to see which was best for next
> year, no harm in accounting for them separately.
>
> Note: no addresses are involved yet, just notions and concepts of
> customer.
>
> However, if you *only* have cash receipts and no customers then you
> needn't run Accounts Receivable / Debtors / whatever they are called
> where you are at all as those accounts are mainly about managing money
> hoped for or expected rather than money already caught in a hat.

I'll note that GnuCash only requires an entry in the first Address
line.  It doesn't care *what* is in that entry, you just need to put
something in there.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available