interesting feature suggestions (was: GnuCash vs. Quicken)

[Christian Stimming]

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On Sonntag, 8. Dezember 2002 02:08, Shayne Lennox wrote:
> The main issue with double-entry (or the way it works in GnuCash) is
> handling of foreign currency transactions. Doing a withdrawal from my USD
> PayPal account to my AUD bank account can be quite confusing, and having
> separate accounts with " - USD" tacked on the end is a pain as well as
> being kind of ugly to look at.

In the upcoming version, you can actually make transactions between your USD 
paypal account (Asset type, I guess) and your normal AUD expense accounts. We 
are (well, namely Derek is) still working hard to get this implemented 
properly.

> Most other issues I have with GnuCash have nothing to do with double-entry.
> For example, the accounts tree always being collapsed when I start the
> program, 

Right. Bothers me too. I work around it by having a "account summary" report 
always opened, showing my favorite accounts so that I can directly click on 
them.

> the description column in the accounts tree not adjusting properly, 

Huh? What precisely is the bug here? Maybe this one might be easy to fix.

> the lack of auto-save, 

Oh. A perfectly valid feature request. Why don't you file this in bugzilla as 
"enhancement" request? Shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

> not being able to clear a split easily,

Err... can you explain more what you mean by this one?

> not being able to do an automatic "balance adjustment" in cash accounts,

Right, we have had this discussion every so often, but nobody found a "real 
easy" way to correctly implement it. It's a perfectly valid feature request, 
though. Maybe another "enhancement" request in bugzilla?

> everything after the "&" character in the memo field disappearing, 

Right, that's a bug, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100428 so we'll 
be fixing this one pretty soon.

> the "find" function not working half the time, 

I don't know anything about this one, though.

> having to do update-finance-quote (worked in Red Hat, didn't work in
>  Mandrake), the price editor updating currencies but not my ASX shares, 

There are improvements coming here, too.

> the lack of scheduled transactions, 

Hey jsled! Here's your guy. 
Seriously, scheduled transactions are one of the Big New Things in 1.8.

> the lack of forecast-based reports/graphs, 

Cool. Interesting idea. Never thought of this. There have been discussions 
about Budgeting (which basically said that's it's quite difficult to get it 
right), but maybe forecast reports are much easier. This would still need a 
lot of discussion about what can be done and what cannot be done -- but if 
you can come up with a very simple case that would be an improvement for you, 
then maybe somebody will quickly do it?

> P.S. How come David Gilbert's excellent user guide at
> http://www.object-refinery.com/gnucash/ doesn't get mentioned more often?

Gee. I haven't seen this at all. Chris, what do you think of this manual...

Christian
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