[GNC-dev] Report with Fiscal Year

[David H]

This is getting ridiculous, can we stop the personal attacks now please.
Let's just accept that different countries call it Fiscal Year and others
call it Financial Year - my own accountant here in Oz calls it Financial
Year and that is also what we called it in NZ when I lived there.  I guess
we're a bit more relaxed about it down under :-)

As to your last comment well, it is an uphill battle sometimes.  Just think
about why there is even a Deposit/Withdrawal flag option - because users
struggle to think in terms of statement debits and credits and whether they
are from the banks point of view or their own.  Gnucash is littered with
users that are totally new to double entry accounting and sometimes seem
unable to even read a User Guide/Tutorial and Concepts guide :-(

Cheers David Halverson.


On Wed, 8 Sept 2021 at 04:50, Borden via gnucash-devel <
gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:

>
>
> >
> > I wouldn't after 4 years of animal science (humans plus) plus a lot of
> home
> > butchery. Look up the Dunning-Kruger Effect, two blokes got a nobel prize
> > for saying you're full of shit. Your GP knows bugger all about lymph
> nodes
> > anyway.
> >
> 1) In what year  did David Dunning and/or Justin Kruger win the Nobel
> Prize? And in what category? There is no Nobel Prize in psychology. So
> they'd either win in medicine or economics, but I can't see their names in
> either roll since 1999 - when they published their paper describing the
> phenomenon. I could be wrong.
>
> 2) If you think I don't know what I'm talking about with respect to
> accounting, it appears that the institutions that awarded me my CFE pass,
> MBA and BComm in Accounting (with honours) made terrible mistakes.
>
> 3) The way to fight the Dunning-Kruger Effect is constantly challenging
> yourself to learn more:
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/dunning-kruger-effect#how-to-avoid-it .
> That means developing your critical thinking skills so you can reference
> from reliable sources and verify with people who know more than you. <
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/dunning-kruger-effect#how-to-avoid-it
> >
>
> 4) Basic anatomy is a prerequisite for doctors in most parts of the world.
> I don't know what the state of medicine is in your part of the world where
> you have to butcher your own animals, but in mine, it's pretty good. The
> doctors I've had have been excellent in their professionalism and diagnoses.
>
> You might want to take Dunning and Kruger's advice before flame baiting
> someone clearly more experienced and trained in this than you.
>
> >
> > If you know your stuff you should be able to explain it in simple terms
> but
> > communication skills are often more of a challenge for people with a
> maths
> > focus.
> >
> Yes, that's for teaching. But every discipline has its technical language
> so that it can agree on a simple word to communicate a larger idea.
>
> Actually, some more education for you: my professional exams were about >
> 90% essay writing and < 10% calculations. Most of my daily work is reading
> rules and standards, interpreting facts, and giving opinions as to how the
> rules apply to facts:
> https://www.cpacanada.ca/en/become-a-cpa/why-become-a-cpa/the-cpa-certification-program/the-cpa-way
>
> So, again, I'd encourage you to learn more about accounting before saying
> that we lack communication skills.
>
> > Use plain English minimising technical terms to where they are
> > needed but assume nobody knows what they mean. Credit/debit are a special
> > case because the community *know* what they mean, and it's exactly
> opposite
> > to the accounting definition, so I agree deposit/withdrawal are better
> > terms.
> >
> They actually aren't the opposite definition. "Debit" and "credit" are
> relative like "left" and "right." The statements are written from the
> _bank's_ perspective, not the account holder's. If I enter a transaction
> with you, my debit is your credit, just like if I hand you something with
> my right hand, it arrives on your left-hand side.
>
> Deposit/withdrawal are fine for simple bank accounts, but they scale
> poorly outside of bank accounts. If I want to "deposit" $100 into a
> shareholder loan or equity account, I make a credit in the books, not a
> debit. That means you need to reverse your terminology depending on the
> situation. How does that reduce confusion? It's even worse when you get to
> revenue and expense accounts. What does a "withdrawal" from revenue even
> supposed mean?
>
> > I checked the docs and only found Fiscal Year referenced twice, both in
> the
> > Guide [better in wiki faq]. Interestingly the accounting period
> definition
> > in the glossary meant nothing to me but the depreciation section has
> > "accounting period (IE: fiscal year)" so I Googled fiscal year, found
> > financial year then understood it.
> >
> And I'm talking about the standards and textbooks written by people who
> know far more about accounting than I do. The GNUCash manual, with respect,
> is not taught in any high school, university or professional programme that
> I've been exposed to.
>
> You're evidently very passionate about your position for reasons that
> don't make any sense to me - so much so that you fall to the very mistakes
> you accuse me of making. In my line of work, though, I'd rather help
> clients understand the basics of accounting - including proper vocabulary -
> so I can advise them on the difficult stuff. I didn't spend almost 10 years
> in post-secondary education to be a glorified data entry clerk (and nor
> would people want to hire me for data entry on the rates that I have to
> charge).
>
> My opinion is based on doing this for a living and relying on the evidence
> I've collected. The evidence has taught me that using proper terminology is
> more efficient than weak synonyms for communicating and training. If you
> want to convince me that I'm wrong, show me the evidence that GNUCash users
> are too stupid to learn accounting vocabulary.
>
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