Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Ian X Waddington]

I'd be interested to hear from the core development team...

 

From: Daniel Trezub [mailto:daniel3ub at gmail.com] 
Sent: 19 December 2010 05:08
To: Ian Waddington
Cc: stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com; Dennis Brakhane; warlord at mit.edu; Gnucash
User; derek at ihtfp.com; Wayne Bird
Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account

 

I need it/use it as personal finance manager.

BUT, as I see in the splash screen every time I start GC, it's a "Free
Accountant Software". And by what I've seen here in the list, I tend to
think the developers see it as an accountant software, too.

See, sometimes somebody asks something about the reports, for example, the
dev team answers something like "ask your accountant if you really need this
report" or "I am not an accountant, but I think the best way to handle this
is..."

To me, it is clear that GC is an accountant software (from the dev team
point of view).

Just my two cents...

=====
Daniel Trezub
http://www.gameblogs.com.br



On 17 December 2010 19:27, Ian Waddington <iwaddox at gmail.com> wrote:

On 17 Dec 2010, at 16:39, Mike or Penny Novack

<stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> wrote:

>
>> Case 2: you must pay the income tax in 6 month time.
>> Instead of writing a check right away, you decide to
>> get some interest for the money instead and keep it
>> on your savings account. However, you know you have
>> to pay $tax in 6 months time, so you transfer the money to
>> your "income tax" envelope. This way, while your bank statement
>> still shows the full amount, your GC bank account only shows the
>> amount of money you really have.
>>
>> (Another way to handle case 2 - and probably more correct in
>> pure bookkeeping terms - would be to make a transfer from
>> Expenses:Income Tax to Liabilities:Income Tax and in 6 months
>> time, write a check for the tax office and book it as a transfer from
>> your normal Savings account to Liabilites:Income Tax).
>>
> I think that's the issue here. That people don't understand why the normal
bookkeeping method is the second.
>
> In the interim you have the cash (in your checking account) and a
liability for taxes to be paid by some future date. Will you pay them by
check (the reason why you seem to think "less money in the checking account
than the bank thinks" or some other way. For example, suppose you have "pre
tax money available" but can't touch any of that without paying a penalty
tax till you reach a certain age. So maybe you don't (in effect) take the
money directly from your checking account but by a short term loan (trading
liability for liability) that you pay off when that critical date has
passed.
>
> Bookkeeping is about ACTUAL transactions, not transactions that might or
might not occur. For projected transactions (planning) we use a "budget".
>

So this raises an interesting question, do users and the developers
see gnucash as bookkeeping tool or a personal finance manager?

I'd be interested in peoples views

Ian





> Michael
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