Bump: setting the accounting period

[Geert Janssens]

On vrijdag 18 maart 2011, Karl Auer wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I've seen no reply to this. Even if it's a a silly question, I's
> appreciate a pointer to the appropriate FAQ or manual page...
> 
> Thanks, K.
> 
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au>
> To: GnuCash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: setting the accounting period
> Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 00:24:09 +1100
> 
> Hi all.
> 
> This is probably an embarrassingly simple question but - how do I set up
> for an accounting year that runs from 1 July through 30 June?
> 
> The options available in Edit->Preferences are:
> 
>    today
>    start of this month
>    start of previous month
>    start of this quarter
>    start of previous quarter
>    start of this year
>    start of previous year
>    absolute
> 
> None of those seem very promising. When I tried an absolute date I
> discovered that it applies to ALL sets of accounts. I have one file for
> this financial year, another file for the last and so on. If I open my
> file for 2010/11 and set the accounting period to 1/7/2010 - 30/6/2011,
> then close that, open my file for 2009/10 and set the accounting period
> to 1/7/2009 - 30/6/2010, then close that and reopen 2010/11 again, I
> find that the accounting period for the 2010/11 file is set to 1/7/2009
> - 30/6/2010.
> 
> Should I be setting a per-file value somewhere else, and if so where?
> It's not under the book options.
> 
I'm afraid this is not supported in the current code. The accounting period 
settings are stored per user, not per file. So if you change these settings in 
one book, they will also change for all your other books.

> Or have I misunderstood the concept of "accounting period"?
> 
No, I think you understood them perfectly fine, but unfortunately GnuCash 
doesn't implement them properly.

This would make for a valid and useful enhancement request in bugzilla [1] or 
uservoice [2].

Would you mind adding such a request in one of these two systems ?

Thank you.

Geert

[1] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Bugzilla
[2] http://gnucash.uservoice.com