Receivable Aging error

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 09:07:50AM -0700, Charles Day wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Andrew Sackville-West <
> andrew at swclan.homelinux.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 08:16:31PM -0700, Charles Day wrote:
> > > The problem is that users can set a custom financial year, which may end
> > > before today. On the other hand, it seems obvious that the aging report
> > > ought to be run with a default of ''today'.  So we'll have to change the
> > > default end date back to 'today', or give the aging report its own
> > default,
> > > or perhaps try to get the best of both worlds by defaulting to 'today' or
> > > 'end of financial period', whichever is earlier.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure which way to go.
> >
> > my .02 is that the aging reports should default to "today". The age of
> > an invoice really has no meaning relative to some day other than
> > today. At least for most cases I can think of. If someone needs to
> > know who old invoices were a month ago or will be 3 months from now, I
> > expect that they would expect to have to change the dates for that.
> >
> > So I say change the default for the aging reports only.
> >
> 
> Yeah, I think the aging reports should default to 'today' regardless of how
> the accounting period is set. For other reports, I kind of like the idea of
> making the date range end 'today' if the accounting period hasn't finished,
> or the end of the period if it has. In other words, if the accounting period
> has already finished, just report over the accounting period. Otherwise,
> report period-to-date.
> 
> But I'm not sure... When you run a balance sheet and the period hasn't ended
> yet, is it preferred to use period-to-date, or the entire period? The latter
> would include any future transactions entered for the period, whereas the
> former would not.

the accounting period is *never* over as one starts at the same moment
one ends. So reporting on today, unless the accounting period has
ended, is meaningless because a new accounting period will have
started... if you follow me there. But maybe I misunderstand the way
the accounting period works. Frankly, I've not looked at it all, even
as a user.

I think the right thing to do, for the aging reports only, at this
point, is default to "today". 

As for the others, I just don't know either. I find, inevitably, that
the default report date is *never* what I want. I just change it, and
if it's a report I use lot (like previous month Income Statement) I
just save it. shrug.

A
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