Gnucash Business: Proposal: handling multiple tax accounts

[Derek Atkins]

Conrad Canterford <conrad@mail.watersprite.com.au> writes:

> To do it properly, its a little more complicated than that. In
> Australia, an extra option "Tax included" would also be appreciated, as
> a large number of small businesses (and especially any retail business)
> will advertise and invoice the *tax inclusive* price. Asking whoever is
> doing the accounts to deduct the tax from every invoice as its entered
> is not going to make you any friends...  :-)

Where should this "tax included" option be stored?  Since prices
are advertized with-tax, how is the tax calculation made?

> I think a global table would be preferable. If someone is running
> multiple entities, this might save them re-entering a lot of data. If
> they are not, well it makes no difference to them.

What do you mean, "global table"?

> >   b) How do you reference tax tables for "posted" entries?
> >      - Tax Tables are immutable.
> >      - Tax Tables are mutable until they are "used" (at which point
> >        they become immutable).
> 
> Personally, I'd go for this one.
> 
> >        I think this might be too confusing for a user.
> 
> Why? A simple dialog pops up saying "I'm sorry, but this entry is in use
> by an invoice and cannot be changed.".
> 
> >      - Tax Tables are mutable, however when you post an invoice the
> >        Tax Table code creates an internal, immutable copy that is
> >        linked to the mutable tax table in question.
> 
> This is really just an enhanced version of (b) as far as I'm concerned.
> Basically (if you think of it the other way around), when the user goes
> to change a tax table entry that's been used, the system automatically
> creates a new version of that entry and isolates the old one. This is
> just as prone to confuse a user as (b). However, I think any of the
> other options are also likely to confuse users, just in different ways.

The reason I prefer this last appoach is that:

 1) to the user, the tax table is always mutable.  They can change it
    at will, but
 2) any posted invoices will refer back to the tax table that existed
    when it was posted, and
 3) all the magic happens under the covers, as far as the user is
    concerned, and
 4) it will save space by reusing tax-tables as much as possible.

Thanks for your feedback.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
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