Year End Dates

[Derek Atkins]

James Leone <linuxcpa at netscape.net> writes:

> >Oh, so you want the "End of Year" setting to imply June 30 and
> > "Begining of Year" to be "July 1"?
> Yes, many government agencies and not for profit organizations have
> various year ends.

Ok.  This is true, but gnucash did start as a personal app,
not a business app.  The business features are new, and not
all the reports have been updated.

> >Or the "Year to date" to imply
> >"July 1 through today"?  Unfortunately there is no way to do that,
> > currently.  The "year" is currently tied to calendar year.
> What piece of code determines this?   Is it separable, can it go in a
> .conf file?

I dont know, I'd have to look.  I think there is a date-utilities
in the report subsystem that probably determines it.

> > But I can
> >certainly see the value in being able to set the year, so feel free to
> >file a report at bugzilla.gnome.org.
> >
> >
> >>>Question: in what way is Net Income not properly reflected on tha
> >>>Balance Sheet?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>This is only as a result of the year end date, and when compared to
> >>net income as reported on the income statement.
> >>
> >
> >Sorry, which report is the "income statement"?  I don't see a report
> >of that name in the Reports menu or any sub-menu.
> >
> Profit and loss = income statement.

Ahh, thank you.  The P&L report does let you set the start date.
The balance sheet does not.  Please file a bug report at:

        http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash

It only takes a minute, and this way the request wont be lost.

> >>If I were to run an income statement from July 1 - June 30, net income
> >>from that report would not equal net income on the balance sheet. Net
> >>equity would be correct, but net income does not adjust itself to
> >>reflect July 1 - June 30.
> >>
> >
> > Well, the balance sheet doesn't have a start-date setting.
> In general that is true, but Gnu Cash breaks out profit and loss on
> the balance sheet, and profit and loss is a measurement for a certain
> time period.   :-)

Agreed.  File a bug report. :)

> > I presume
> >that it's starting with the current calendar year, but I don't know.
> >So, that could be part of the problem here.  Please file a report to
> >get a from-date set...
> >
> Well, I don't have much else to add here, and I don't have the time. I
> thought the programmers watch this list.

You had the time to respond to my email -- cut-and-paste into bugzilla
would take even less time.  The programmers sometimes watch this list,
but email is emepheral and gets lost.  Bugzilla lets the developers
keep track of what needs to be done and what has been finished.
The developers started to use bugzilla SPECIFICALLY because following
the mailing lists did NOT work...  There is no way to assign a bug
to a specific developer via email.

So please, take the 60 seconds, go to the URL I supplied above,
and please fill out a bug report.  Then you'll get an email update
when the feature has been completed.

> James Leone

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available