Time tracking in GnuCash

[Luigi Bai]

Ariel wrote, On 02/05/2007 04:07 PM:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2007, Luigi Bai wrote:
> 
>> As a consultant, one thing I miss from my old program is tracking time.
>> I'm hacking it right now by having an asset account called "Hours Bank"
>> which has an entry for each time interval; the value is interval * rate,
>> and the memo documents the interval. Each entry is a transfer from the
>> correct income account. (This is of course hand calculated for now). My
>> invoice posts items against the Hours Bank, which moves the asset to
>> A/R. This works nicely in terms of tying up correctly; however, I'm not
>> entirely sure that the Hours Bank is a real asset (although I guess they
>> are - they're not invoiced yet but can be, according to the contract).
>> The "Hours Bank" account doesn't work if it's an A/R account.
>>

[snip] I don't like the GUI idea much any more. :-)

> I like the idea, but at least for now: why not just create invoices,
> don't post them, and add entries (line items) to the invoice for each
> time block. Then you don't need a complicated Hours Bank.
> 
>     -Ariel
> 

I like your idea - except that I wanted a way to "roll up" intervals
over a period (week, two weeks) without losing the original intervals.
So I want the best of both worlds.

If I could figure out how to take gnotime XML and XSL it into OFX, I can
populate the "Hours Bank" pretty easily. I could probably also get the
XSLT to do the roll-ups, so the line items show up in Hours Bank already
calculated. Then all I have to do is make the invoice mirror that (by hand).

I realize that probably the best thing to do is to figure out how to use
XSLT to create a guile "program" that I could just load with --load, and
which would create the invoice with the line items just the way I'd want
them. Unfortunately, I'm not a scheme/guile programmer, and in the short
term I don't have the time to get up on the learning curve to see if
it's even feasible to do (I'm not sure if the appropriate invoice
manipulations are available in scheme).

Luigi