gnucash in Australia

[Derek Atkins]

Derrick Ashby <daeroncs at fastmail.fm> writes:

> Hello list,
>
> I've been looking at gnucash for about a week, and in general I'm a
> fan.  This is the first accounting program I've found that seems to be
> useful for both personal and small business accounts.  (I've so far
> set up files for me, my wife, our business, our joint affairs and our
> super fund...) Not only that, but it gives me something useful to do
> with my linux box!  However, there are a couple of issues that bother
> me.
>
> (1) Down here in Australia we start our financial year in
> July. Gnucash seems to assume a January - December year, and I can't
> find any way of changing this.

All reports let you set the date; you can choose "financial year"
which is July 1 - June 30.

> (2) GST (Goods and Services Tax - similar to VAT). I've read quite a
> few posts on this issue in the archives. When collecting GST from
> customers the advice seems to be to set up a tax table, and I tried
> doing that. It works fine if you use accrual accounting, but that
> involves paying tax to the government for invoices that haven't been
> paid yet, and who wants to do that? If one uses cash accounting, one
> is forced back to doing the thing manually, the way you need to do
> with purchasing.  I guess I can live with that, but it's a pain.

Bug #95700.  It's really just a reporting issue, not an accounting
issue (except for the dates, but if you work with periods it's all ok
-- except gnucash doesn't support real periods yet).

> No doubt I'll find more things to gripe about in the next week or so ...
>
> Derrick Ashby

-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