linking gnucash to data in postgres

[Benjamin Carlyle]

On Sat, 2004-06-19 at 04:05, Joseph Mack wrote:
> I expect any business software would have to do this, eg the 
> database that has the inventory of widgets you're selling would have 
> to connect to the financial database. I'm not in business, so 
> I don't know how this is handled, but I expect it's got to
> be handled by some integrated software system.

I've arrived late in this thread, so I may not be reporting anything
that solves your problems. Nonetheless, here are a couple of cents of
input:

Inventory tracking can be done in terms of purely financial records, if
you have the patience. Consider this transaction:

Payable:Supplier $100CR
Cost Of Inventory $100DR
Bought 10 soccer balls @ $10 each

This kind of inventory handling is the "right way to do it" in financial
jurisdictions I'm aware of. The cost is not an expense, however later
depreciation and shrinkage are expenses. The gnucash manual covers this
to some extent.

Now, let's consider wanting to track the number of balls, too. We could
create a currency/commodity that represents balls. The above transaction
becomes:
Payable:Supplier $100CR
Cost Of Inventory $100DR
Soccer Balls Received 10balls CR
Soccer Ball Inventory 10balls DR
Bought 10 soccer balls @ $10 each

Now our financial records show that we have 10 balls at a cost value of
$100. We use standard reports to show how many "balls rich" we are. We
can create transactions for when balls are lost or damaged. We need to
do that anyway to keep track of the dollar value of our inventory.
Keeping track of the inventory count is just a small stretch further.

When you report your financial position you only take into consideration
accounts with dollar values. When you report on your inventory you can
report separately on ball counts, their costs, and their depreciation.

Benjamin.