Startup time

[Derek Atkins]

Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> writes:

>>I do it because there are some reports I want to see all the time.  For
>>example, I keep open an Income Statement, Balance Sheet, because I'm
>>always interested in how I'm doing.  They are always based on "Today" so
>>I see how they are doing as of when GnuCash starts (or when I reload the
>> report). 
>>
> That's the question I am asking. See I would never be expecting to be
> running a meaningful "Income Statement" or "Balance Sheet" in "real
> time". I would be expecting to be running those as of specific dates
> only after I think very unlikely to be any transactions affecting the
> time period (otherwise going to need a lot of "correction"

I use it to see how I'm doing in real time...  It's just another
way to crunch the numbers and show me results of all my inputs.

> entries). But if a lot of us are doing "real time" bookkeeping (don't
> need to await the arrival of information about transactions not yet
> reported to the "bookkeeper" -- me in this case) then maybe we need
> some changes?

I dont know what changes we really need here.

> I could see a single person might have use for "real time"
> (problematic even for family finances use if more than one person in
> the family economic unit ''By the way Honey, I put X dollars of gas in
> the car last Wednesday"). But that single person would have to be
> really on the ball of entering everything immediately.

True... But that's the case in any event.  If you never balance your
checkbook then you never know how much you have in your checking
account.  Yes, you can get a balance report when you pull money from the
ATM but that doesn't include transactions that haven't cleared the
account yet..

This is why you run reports..  To tell you things beyond the base
numbers.  And yes, the "standard reports" are useful as well.

> Michael

-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