Gnucash 1.8.2 first impressions

[Salkind, Lou]

Derek,

Thanks for the message.  Here are some replies to your questions.

> > A) The QIF importer doesn't set a current price for various stocks, 
> > funds and other securities.  I had to set it by hand.  I 
> believe the 
> > information was in the QIF file, but even if not, perhaps it can be 
> > guessed at from the last transaction?
> 
> Pricedb entries are never created by anything except the 
> Transfer Dialog, Manual Entry in the Price Editor, and 
> pulling quotes off the net.  I'm not convinced that the QIF 
> importer (or any importer) should actually add items to the 
> pricedb -- but I could be convinced.

Here are my arguments:  (1) If the prices are not entered by the
importer, I doubt anybody without a fair amount of experience will be
able to track down why the two programs are giving different numbers.
(2) The fact that the price histories exist means that somebody
previously entered them and needed them, so why wouldn't you want them
in the pricedb?

> 
> > B) On the register for each of those stock and funds, the 
> total number 
> > of shares and the current value are correct (this is reported just 
> > below the menu bar and icons, as well as on the account 
> screen).  Yet 
> > when I run the Account Summary report (or Book Value, 
> etc.), the value 
> > of the assets in these accounts is quite different.
> 
> How is it different?  I should note that gnucash handles 
> stock accounts _poorly_ right now.  There are lots of 
> problems where gains and losses are not properly accounted.

Sorry, I couldn't really find any pattern for how they were different or
what the wrong numbers were in fact computing.  I should say, though,
that the numbers are radically different, not just off by small amounts.

> 
> > C) Minor user interface nits:  
> > 	- The most significant digit in the balance of the 
> register is shaved 
> > off (pixel calculation doesn't seem correct)
> 
> I think this depends on your font.  For example, it works 
> fine for me. Note that you can also resize the register columns.

Quite possible, as I do have some additional true type fonts in my font
path.  But shouldn't the software automatically take the font width into
account when sizing the columns?  To be fair, I am getting a few
warnings about missing font characters on stderr.

> 
> > 	- No matter how much I resize the register window, I 
> can't get rid of 
> > the horizontal scroll bar
> 
> Really?  You should be able to get it to save if you resize 
> the window, then close the window, then re-open the window.  
> If that doesn't work then that's a bug and should get fixed.

I'll try this, but nevertheless, I think the scrollbar should disappear
once the window is made wide enough.  The current behavior just keeps
expanding some of the columns to fill up whatever horizontal space I
give it.  This would be OK except for the fact that it seems to allocate
space for the columns PLUS a few pixels, which means there is always a
scroll bar present (although it doesn't scroll very far).
 
> 
> > 	- On the account editing window, the account type and 
> parent account 
> > panel is just one line of text high, which makes it difficult to 
> > scroll Does this have something to do with gnome 2.0?
> 
> Uh, what version of Gnucash are you using?  I thought this 
> was fixed in 1.8.2, but perhaps it was one of those patches 
> that were applied after 1.8.2 and will be fixed in 1.8.3....

It says 1.8.2 on the startup, and the binaries were downloaded from the
web site 1.8.2 distribution.

> 
> > D) If you are doing a balance sheet report, what value do 
> you use for 
> > the set of assets?  Is it the book value or the market 
> value?  If it 
> > is the market value, then you need another balancing entry for the 
> > unrealized profits.  (This is a theoretical question, 
> because I can't 
> > get any meaningful value right now.)
> 
> See above about stocks not being properly accounted for...  
> This is a known deficiency.

I might as well add to the wish list a Quicken portfolio feature I found
helpful:  being able to value the portfolio (or asset) as of a given
day.  Very useful when bringing records up to date and debugging any
data entry problems.  Perhaps there is a way to do this already?

> 
> > E) Is there lot identification anywhere?  I didn't see it.
> 
> Not for stocks.  Indeed, there is no UI to handle Lots at 
> all. This is being worked on as we speak.

Cool.

Thanks again.

Lou