more newbie q's

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

"Anthony F. Mazza" <anthony at prometheusradio.org> writes:

> i am the bookeeper at a small upstart non-profit.  i have been using
> gnucash for about six months now.  we are using an accountant for the
> first time.  she had heard about an open source accounting program, but
> had never seen it before.  when she visited our office recently, she gave
> the program 'the once over'.

Excellent.  We need these every once in a while...  They help feed
back into our bug report system and enhancement requests, although
right now our main problem is lack of developer resources to actually
IMPLEMENT these features. :(

> a few 'basic' question came up that we had a hard time figuring out on our
> own.  i checked out the help manual and concepts guide, but couldn't find
> the answers to our questions.  they are:
>
> 1)how do you make the organization name and information appear at the top
> of reports? on screen, and when you print?

You can edit the Style Sheet (Edit -> Style Sheets) and set your company
information there.  That's probably the best way of doing it.  You may want
to create a new Style Sheet if you don't like the existing ones.

This should probably get added to the documentation.  Jon?

> 2)how do you enter fiscal year, so reports will be on a fiscal year basis?

You have to do this on a per-report basis.  Click on the options and set
the date settings.  MOST reports have a start/end date; some just have an
end date.  You can set it to a fiscal year.  UNFORTUNATELY right now
a fiscal year is defined to be July 1 - June 30 and there is no way to
change that.  (see bug #101519)

Another issue is that once you close a report, all your report option settings
go away.  There is no way to save the report settings and re-use them later
once you close the report.  (see bug #104156)

> 3)how do you change date options for reports?

Click "options" when you have the report open, and then go to the
General page, which is usually where the option would be found.

> 4)how do you print out a bank reconciliation report?

What's a "bank reconciliation report"?

> 5)how do you print out a chart of accounts, or account tree?

Unfortunately you cannot at this time.  (see bug #95551)

> 6)how do you do journal entries?

You mean like "Tools -> General Ledger"?  It's not the recommended way
to enter transactions, but it'll work in a pinch.  Or do you mean
something else by "journal entries"?

> also, i've posed this question here before, but i thought i'd ask again:
>
> are there any gnucash user group meetings in the philadelphia area?  the
> help list is great, but it would be very helpful to have a face to face
> skill share for local users.  especially to those of us that aren't as
> technically savvy as what i assume to be the average linux user.

I doubt it.

Your best bet is to find a LUG in the area and ask them to do a
GnuCash-feature periodically.

> thanks again.

Hope I've helped.

> -anthony

-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