general feedback - invoices, reports et al

[Shane Litherland]

Hi Gnucash world :-)

I've been using gnucash for about three financial years now, but haven't
kept abreast of daily mailing list stuff for several months. so short of
wading through it all, I'm just throwing my bits in here - apologies in
advance if I address things that have already been improved/amended
Note I'm using 2.2.9 on Ubuntu 10.04 installed from the synaptic package
manager. I realise the 2.3.x work has moved a long way but is mostly
developmental.

I use gnucash for 'work' i.e. a small farm/family business, so the
AR/AP/ printing invoices has been the main area of use/interest.

At some point, I tried to read up on scheme, to improve the 'tax
invoice' reports to get a nice (standard) layout that could work for
other users in Australia (e.g. include GST, position addresses for
customers to match envelope windows, etc...)... but learning a computer
language was more than I had time or brainpower for then, unfortunately.
I managed enough to make my own copy of the 'easy' invoice and do small
adjustments (most of those already had answers in the mailing list, yay)
I know that there has been some nicer work since, using eguile/html...
but when that popped up, didn't have time to learn/play with that so
just stuck with the basic scheme reports (probably check these options
out again once 2.4.x arrives!)

One thing of interest in invoices, was that after tweaking a 'custom'
invoice/report, many hours of confusion later... I realised that my
tweaks were successful (e.g. adding an 'INVOICE TO' text above client
address) BUT only available through one particular menu choice. 
Using FILE - PRINT INVOICE didn't give me my 'custom' template in the
report options...gave me all sorts of confusion for awhile... but
REPORTS - BUSINESS - 'CUSTOM INVOICE' did magically find my tweaked
template/stylesheets :-)

There was also bits that I couldn't address when printing the
invoice/report to pdf. often, the layout on the report screen in gnucash
didn't keep same proportions etc on the pdf. (e.g. the pdf would end up
with wider margins and narrower columns). for the life of me, i couldn't
find a way to adjust this in the pdf printer or gnucash, without having
to dive deeper into the belly of gnucash... doing exports to html, or
copy/paste to text docs, didn't really solve the formatting either, but
in the end, as I might only do a few invoices a year anyway, i put up
with the layout as it is. It was only aesthetics really anyhow ;-)

I'm really chuffed with the prospect of SQL db as backend etc for the
data. I'd got to the point recently of starting to look into e.g.
SQL-Ledger, PostBooks or similar, as a more robust/versatile option for
me.
I think having the info in a db might be more versatile, mainly because
i'm more familiar with db's than, say xml. i can do queries etc on the
db to find stuff, if perchance i'm wanting to find/update things in a
way that a gnucash GUI might not... a rare situation, but it is a good
option to have. I'm also hoping, being able to 'see' how it's all laid
out in a db, where/how I might be able to embellish gnucash options with
other tables/queries etc...

Another aspect of considering other software was the possibility of
better inventory / stock pricelists. currently in gnucash, it seems for
every time i wish to charge a line-item on an invoice as e.g. 'tractor
operator' i have to enter the name and unit price, details, tax status
etc for each line. the idea of having a list of items (e.g. db table of
'services/stock' with unit prices) that could be added via 'lookup' or
'pull-down menu' in the invoice lines seemed both convenient, and a good
way to minimise typing/entry errors. The mechanisms for this seem to
already be in place for e.g. selecting 'action' or 'income account'
fields... I'm hoping, that when I see the version with db backend, i
might be brave enough to have a crack at adding a table and this kind of
option to the system.

There's probably a few other little things i've noted over the time, but
likely they've been upgraded in the whole 2.3.x journey :-)

Anyhow - possibly left this feedback a bit late, as the 2.4 finalisation
must be getting near, but be glad to correspond with people about any of
my 'ideas' etc above, somewhere along the way :-)

Regards and a nod to those putting in the hard yards on this project,
Shane Litherland