Customer vs Company

[Retracile]

On Monday 31 March 2003 10:11 pm, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Retracile <retracile at earthlink.net> writes:
> > > The employee stuff is in CVS (both the mainline and the 1.8 branch)...
> >
> > Ah.  What I thought would be a simple search-n-replace is snowballing....
> > :/
>
> *nods* Why do you think it's the way it is?  Seriously, it's not like
> this code was just thrown together.

Since I did not come to GnuCash with the premise that all customers are 
companies, it _looked_ like someone couldn't decide whether they were talking 
about companies or customers.  Now that it has been explained, it makes a lot 
more sense.  :)

> I've been working on it for about
> 18 months.  A lot of code is generalized, and the terminology was
> designed to work for the vast majority of cases.  Clearly it's not
> quite accurate for all the cases (such as your wife's case), but if I
> can handle 80% of the cases extremely well, that's really all I'm
> shooting for at this point.  The other 20% can squint hard and either
> fit into the existing model, or they can use another application. :)
>
> So, no, it's not an easy change.  If it were easy I would have already
> done something about it. :)

You have done an excellent job. :)  But I do think there needs to be some 
clarification.  I'd like your thoughts on the following changes:
(Note that these do not consider employees since I have 1.8.2 here.  An 
explanation/overview of how they are used would also be helpful.  I haven't 
gotten the source from CVS yet.)

1) s/customer/customer company/ and s/vendor/vendor company/ in the menus and 
dialogs.  This makes it clear that customers and vendors are all companies.  
It is _not_ clear now unless you have already made that assumption, and many 
people won't.  I recognize that this is more cumbersome, but it is less 
confusing.  And that is more important.
2) Add an explanation that all vendors and customers are companies to the 
documentation.  (I need to look again, but I don't remember a 'small business 
intro' section.)
3) IFF companyname == contact name, suppress one of them when printing the 
address.  (Are there occasions when double-printing the name is correct, and 
single printing the name isn't?)
4) Add a help message if the user tries to leave either the company or name 
blank when creating a customer company that explains that all customers are 
companies, and to enter an individual, just enter the name in both fields and 
gnucash will Do The Right Thing(tm).

And a couple of things that are partly related:
5) Add a 'list customer companies' report.  I use regex's on a daily basis, 
but I really don't want to have to explain them to my wife before she can 
find a customer.  She's bright, but I'd like to make the transition as easy 
as possible, and it's just one more thing.  A complete list can also be 
helpful in getting an overview, or making sure you entered all the customers.
6) Is there a reason to have the user give the customer ID?  I'm assuming it 
is supposed to be a (unique) database key.  If so, why not use a 
monotonically increasing number and hide it from the user completely?  (When 
I first used it, I entered the individual's name into that field, and things 
went downhill from there.)

I probably ran afoul of a premise somewhere, but comments welcome.

Thanks,

Eli