`Balance' dialog box.. what is it for.

[Josh Sled]

On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 09:11, Harry Putnam wrote:
> Josh Sled <jsled at asynchronous.org> writes:

> > If you just want to keep the balance, all you need is a piece of paper.
> 
> I'm noticing a tendency to really oversimplify what it takes to keep
> up with a simple bank account.  One needs to do accurate math,
> incorporate recurring expenses (automatically) have some minimal
> record of what a deposit or withdrawal was for including a date.
>  (The description field)

Fair enough, and there are other packages that do this.
We like GnuCash better. :)

> Nothing remotely like that happens by writing down a balance on a
> piece of paper.  That assumes you've already done all the above.

And in the case of gnucash, there is one more thing: double-entry
accounting.

The second entry can continuously be into an "unbalanced" account, and
that will mostly work [, mostly ...] ... but you violate many semantics
the program encodes.

The account may be simple, but accounting for it [arguably: "correctly"]
is not _as_simple_as recording the account in isolation.


> > But if you _really_ don't care, then -- sure -- just have everything go
> > into an 'unbalanced' account; GnuCash will function fine.
> 
> That looks like what I'll do for now.  
> 
> Back to the annoying diaglog for a moment... if that dialog defaulted
> to what was last used, wouldn't that ease just about any kind of usage
> one put gnucash to? 

Probably; you can file an RFE at bugzilla.gnome.org, if you like ... a
patch would be more appreciated. :)  But, like I say -- you should only
see this dialog in an error case, once in a blue moon... so there's not
a lot of impetus to make it super-wizbang...



> Yes, I can see that already.  Even with my primative usage I'm already
> getting on to some of it.

Your initial reaction to gnucash is a common one ... it can be
overwhelming, and the perceived benefit can be smaller than the actual
benefit.  Our user-facing documentation should make this "bear with it,
it is worth it [and here's why...]" a little more direct.

...jsled

-- 
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