Income/Expense report

[Stephen R. Besch]

Donald Allen wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Mike or Penny
> Novack<stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> wrote:
>   
>> Derek Atkins wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Quoting hendrik at topoi.pooq.com:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Suggesting that calling the "Income Statement" an "Income and Expense
>>>> Statement" might have saved someone a lot of work.
>>>>         
>>> It was originally called the Profit & Loss report.  Then it was
>>> completely renamed to Income Statement, which confused a lot of people
>>> (and still does!).   So in 2.3/2.4 the P&L is coming back -- the
>>> same report will have two different names.
>>>
>>> I don't remember who did the work so I can't point my finger anymore.
>>>
>>>       
>> Nobody's fault. By accounting custom, what this report is called depends
>> upon the nature of the enterprise for which the books are being kept. So
>> there is simply no one right answer that can make everybody happy. For the
>> non-profit for which I keep books it's a "Revenue Statement". For small
>> businesses usually "Profit and Loss" statement and as already mentioned, for
>> larger ones usually just "Income Statement" (though of course it might be
>> showing a loss for the period). For personal books perhaps "Income and
>> Expenses" makes the most sense.
>>     
>
> I agree with this.
>
> I actually don't like the name "Profit and Loss", since you don't have
> the two simultaneously, at least not at the bottom line. "Profit *or*
> Loss" might be more accurate in that regard :-) But kidding aside,
> while I can understand how the name "Income Statement" got chosen (as
> described in my previous post), I think Michael is right that "Income
> and Expenses" is best in Gnucash, especially given the number of
> people confused by "Income Statement".
>
> /Don
>
>
>   
>> Michael
>>
>>
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>>     
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>   
I have always received complaints/criticisms/suggestions/etc regarding 
caption text in any program I've written. A while back I solved the 
"caption" problem by permitting users to put replacement caption text in 
a user configurable "captions.conf" file. The structure is simple: the 
target control's name followed by the desired custom text (optionally 
followed by custom tooltip text, but that's another issue). When the 
program starts up, if the file is present, any control names present in 
the file will have the normal (default) text replaced with whatever text 
the user has entered into the file. Any controls that do not appear 
simply have their usual captions left alone. The file has no language 
dependency, since it is assumed that the "customizing user" will have 
already put the text into his/her chosen language, and, since it is not 
included in the normal distribution, any changes survive across program 
updates. Then people can resolve all of these terminological issues to 
their hearts content.

Stephen Besch