Income/Expense report

[Stephen R. Besch]

Donald Allen wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Stephen R. Besch<sbesch at buffalo.edu> wrote:
>   
>> Donald Allen wrote:
>>     
>>> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Mike or Penny
>>> Novack<stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Derek Atkins wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> Quoting hendrik at topoi.pooq.com:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>>>> Suggesting that calling the "Income Statement" an "Income and Expense
>>>>>> Statement" might have saved someone a lot of work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>             
>>>>> It was originally called the Profit & Loss report.  Then it was
>>>>> completely renamed to Income Statement, which confused a lot of people
>>>>> (and still does!).   So in 2.3/2.4 the P&L is coming back -- the
>>>>> same report will have two different names.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't remember who did the work so I can't point my finger anymore.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>> Nobody's fault. By accounting custom, what this report is called depends
>>>> upon the nature of the enterprise for which the books are being kept. So
>>>> there is simply no one right answer that can make everybody happy. For
>>>> the
>>>> non-profit for which I keep books it's a "Revenue Statement". For small
>>>> businesses usually "Profit and Loss" statement and as already mentioned,
>>>> for
>>>> larger ones usually just "Income Statement" (though of course it might be
>>>> showing a loss for the period). For personal books perhaps "Income and
>>>> Expenses" makes the most sense.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> I agree with this.
>>>
>>> I actually don't like the name "Profit and Loss", since you don't have
>>> the two simultaneously, at least not at the bottom line. "Profit *or*
>>> Loss" might be more accurate in that regard :-) But kidding aside,
>>> while I can understand how the name "Income Statement" got chosen (as
>>> described in my previous post), I think Michael is right that "Income
>>> and Expenses" is best in Gnucash, especially given the number of
>>> people confused by "Income Statement".
>>>
>>> /Don
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>         
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>>>       
>> I have always received complaints/criticisms/suggestions/etc regarding
>> caption text in any program I've written. A while back I solved the
>> "caption" problem by permitting users to put replacement caption text in a
>> user configurable "captions.conf" file. The structure is simple: the target
>> control's name followed by the desired custom text (optionally followed by
>> custom tooltip text, but that's another issue). When the program starts up,
>> if the file is present, any control names present in the file will have the
>> normal (default) text replaced with whatever text the user has entered into
>> the file. Any controls that do not appear simply have their usual captions
>> left alone. The file has no language dependency, since it is assumed that
>> the "customizing user" will have already put the text into his/her chosen
>> language, and, since it is not included in the normal distribution, any
>> changes survive across program updates. Then people can resolve all of these
>> terminological issues to their hearts content.
>>     
>
> But, if I am understanding what you have written correctly, it doesn't
> solve this problem. People are trying to choose a report that has some
> desired content from the set of names of available reports. So each of
> those report names needs to provide the best clue as to what it does
> (assuming no tool-tip and that people aren't doing this with a copy of
> the documentation in hand). So the issue is not that people want to be
> able to customize the names of the reports; it's that they need the
> most help in initially finding the report that produces the content
> they want.
>
> /Don
>
>
>
>   
>> Stephen Besch
>>
>>     
>
>
>   
Alas, that's true...You do need to know what you're customizing before 
you can customize it. And, by then, the need is usually gone.

Steve