Locking transactions

[Birger Baksaas]

Hello,
I saw a discussion about locking transactions on 2008-04-14 GnuCash IRC
logs (http://lists.gnucash.org/logs/2008/04/2008-04-14.html#T16:07:43)
and a sort of specification in
http://www.linas.org/linux/gnucash/projects.html. Does anybody know if
there has been a progress on this?

The background for my question is that the organization behind the
generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in Norway has published
a statement where they consider accounting systems without locking as
manual accounting systems. These are only suitable for businesses with
less than 300 transactions per year, the say. And, everything must then
be printed out on paper and signed at the end of each accounting period.

It should be quite easy to integrate locking with the Close Book
function in GnuCash. A check box could trigger this. The function would
set all transactions with dates before the closing date as read only. If
the user needs to make changes later, she/ he has to enter new
transactions with the needed corrections and with dates after the
closing.  

The point is that normal users should not be allowed to make changes to
transactions after financial reports are sent to the authorities.

It is probably not critical if the user can enter new transactions
before a closing date. These transactions will just cause immediate
problems for the user and have to be corrected. So, GnuCash does not
have to make comprehensive tests on dates in ordinary use after locking.

- There might be problems with users that hit this function
unintentionally, but a warning should tell them to make backups before
locking.

I am programming in C, and could look at implementation if needed.
Guidance towards the relevant modules and functions would then be
helpful.

((GnuCash and other Gnu programs such as gretl are excellent in addition
to own routines, and will be even more useful in the future, I
believe!!!))

Best regards,
Birger