[GNC-dev] New balsheet (and P&L report), API considerations, and (slow?) KVP in Account.cpp

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

Am 06.08.2018 um 14:40 schrieb Christopher Lam:
> 
> (*: we all know Gnucash has evolved through generations rather than a
> grand design <g>)
... because there is no all-purpose, all-country grand design.

> 1) Frank et al requests some analysis of accounts for grouping into
> Short/Long, etc. I disagree. The current balance-sheet does not make any
> judgements into the types of monies held in various asset/liability
> accounts, and I do not particularly think it is universally agreed which
> assets should be long/short-term, which ones are fixed etc. The current
> balance-sheet will just take a nested list of asset/liability accounts,
> and simply list them sequentially, up to depth-limit. The ways that an
> account can be tagged fixed, long or depreciation, contra, etc is not
> something the current balance-sheet can understand, nor am I willing to
> impose my judgement to report. The Tutorial and Concepts Guide does
> encourage that Fixed Assets are held in account structure
> Assets:Fixed:Asset1 and its depreciation amounts are recorded in
> Assets:Fixed:Asset1:Depreciation, and I see no problem in that, and
> balsheet (old or new) will diligently report all amounts.
> 
> However I do understand there may be a wish for a customized balsheet to
> apply heuristics/rules for depreciation/current/fixed etc assets but
> this requires expert accounting knowledge.

No, the grouping should be part of the account template - at least in
the current state. At some point in the future one could think about
additional account attributes to improve reporting...

:
> 3) In the screenshot, EUR Amounts not converted to USD is not confusing
> at all. In the test book there are USD/GBP prices but no USD/EUR prices.
> The old balance-sheet would convert any EUR amount to 0 USD and display
> an incorrect total.4) The amounts being links are a new feature - the
> new income-statement links to a transaction report detailing the
> amounts, and the new balance-sheet links to the register entry which
> documents the exact balance-sheet figure.

At least for official reports, I assume, all assets are expected to be
appraised in local currency. But because the rules differ between
governments and over time, GnuCash can not do it automagical.

Perhaps we should explain in the documentation, that the user should see
this as their input error. They should have at least one price per
commodity. And if they have multiple they should select the "price source".

BTW has somebody a better expression here? For "source" I would expect a
selection from transaction, price database and online quotes.

:
> 7) The sections are copied from balance-sheet and they need
> experimentation... I'd be grateful if anyone can review the section
> amounts are selecting the correct amounts. I don't think I've got it
> 100% correct and need feedback.

From
https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/556716da-ba2e-4bed-9bd7-c7232542ab6f.png
I am confused. I would have expected:
Liability and Equity (header)
  Equity (group)
  Liability (group)
Liability and Equity (footer)

BTW an option, which to show first (equity or liability) would be fine
here bacause country specific rules differ here.
Compare the position of "Eigenkapital" in the german and swiss
subsections of
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilanz#Aufbau_der_Bilanz

Frank
> C
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