Accountant's comments on GNUcash

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 05:45:12PM +0100, John M Collins wrote:
> Here is what my accountant says about GNUcash - would anyone like to
> comment?

I guess the real question is -- what, specifically, should 
gnucash be doing instead.

> 
> 
> > After several days of pulling my hair out I have managed to get the 
> > trial balance to balance.
> > 
> > The reporting in Gnu is very poor.  I have had to run a general
> > ledger 
> > report on screen, cut and paste this to Excel and then work on the
> > data 
> > from there.  On the general ledger report in many accounts the
> > credits 
> > are randomly reported in the debit column (see accounts for VAT
> > outputs 
> > or credit card) and so I have had to go through and pull them into
> > the 
> > right column.

Strange.  I've never noticed credits and debits in the 
wrong column.  Have you been entering them strangely?

> > 
> > However the main thing is that it still cannot cope with foreign 
> > currency.  In particular when amounts are transferred from Ruesch to 
> > HSBC current, the credit in Ruesch does not equal the debit in
> > current 
> > account (see MEI on 24/11/08 - it has debit 6,413.16 and credit 
> > 6,823.24).  To identify this I have needed to go through the whole 
> > ledger and literally match each debit to a credit.  It is just
> > fortunate 
> > that there are not that many foreign transactions - otherwise it
> > would 
> > be completely unmanageable.

This is a real problem.  What should gnucash be doing 
instead of what it does now?  And just what is it doing now 
to make credits and debits reported so separately that he 
has to track down separate transactions?

> > 
> > Executive summary: you urgently need to ditch this software and get 
> > something that works.

-- hendrik