The Heart and Soul of GnuCash

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, Linas Vepstas wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 02:20:16PM -0400, Stuart D. Gathman was heard to remark:
> > - Bite the bullet and cancel Intuit internet bill pay service,
> >   Get some paper checks, and start using GnuCash.  
> 
> what does it take to add billpay to gnucash?

Quicken Billpay uses a proprietary protocol, and there is no 
intent to ever interoperate with anything else (unless substantial
cash is offered).

What I can do is sign up for my Bank's Web Billpay.  This has some
of the benefits, except that:

  a) web interface is klunky
  b) I then have to manually reenter the transactions into GnuCash.

I suspect that there might be some way to automate (b).  Some banks
offer downloadable versions of the transactions in QIF or other
parsable format.  I would be willing to change to a bank with that
feature.

> > - Try to come up with an account structure that will work around the 1D
> >   accounting (no classes / departments / whatever you would call additional
> >   accounting dimensions in GnuCash they aren't supported last I checked).
> 
> There's a weaker concept called 'actions' which has never had a gui
> attached to it.  Could that be made to work?

Probably.  All that's required is an additional component or components
to the account id - after that, it's all in the reporting.  

Here is what I use additional dimensions (Quicken classes) for at home:

classes:

julie	- Discretionary and budget area responsibility spending by my wife 
stuart	- Discretionary spending by me
other	- Fixed expenses
vaca	- Vacation expenses
xmas	- Christmas expenses

You need 2D because of substantial overlap in accounts between the classes.
For instance, 'food' is an item that is part of Julie's budget, an
impulse item for me (my discretionary spending is limited to $150/mo - that
includes computer equipment), a vacation expense, and an xmas expense.
'gas' is an item in three of the classes.

Each of those classes has a cumulative budget amount.  I can spend my $150/mo on
whatever I want.  Sometimes it's computer stuff, more often, I take
Julie out to dinner.  If I spend less, I get to spend more next month.
We can spend the vacation budget differently each year.  Lately, it's
been family camp with the kids plus a few beach trips.

It would be possible to create separate account for foodjulie, foodstuart,
foodvaca, foodxmas.  In fact, with 1D accounting, I would make each of those
classes into its own account tree.  This is not totally redundant, for instance
most of the fixed expenses like mortgage and powerbill don't appear in any
other class.  But then it is harder to get a report on
overall food spending - it is the sum of all four classes.

In short, you need reports that select or sort by class/action, and
reports that ignore class/action.

Some of our customers have three dimensions.  For instance, a property
management customer has accounts,departments,projects.

Each department is a reponsibility area of the company.  Each 
project is a group of properties, e.g. a row house tract.

You can print a profit/loss for each project - to see which projects
are albatrosses, and where they are leaking cash (can it be fixed? or
should it be sold to cut losses?)  You can print a profit/loss for
each department, to see which departments are lean and mean, and which
need some fat trimmed (and where).  You can of course also print an overall
profit/loss for the entire company.

-- 
			Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
      Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
	"[Microsoft] products are even less buggy than others, in terms of
	    per capita usage." - Steve Balmer, Microsoft Corporation