Classifications or TAGS

[Ian X Waddington]

Phil

 

This the same as MS-Money so I think you will recognise the specification I
am writing up.

 

Ian

 

From: Phil Longstaff [mailto:plongstaff at rogers.com] 
Sent: 21 December 2010 18:23
To: Ian X Waddington; clanlaw at googlemail.com
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Classifications or TAGS

 

In Quicken, classes allow another way of aggregating or marking a split in a
way which is orthogonal to the account.

Using cars as an example, I might have classes "2010BMW" and "2008Civic".  A
transaction involving gas would be:

Bank           $50.00CR
   Expenses:Auto:Gas/2010BMW     $50.00DB

or

Liabilities:VISA    $60.00CR
   Expenses:Auto:Maintenance/2008Civic       $60.00DB

A summary report could be generated for a time period:

                                        2010BMW            2008Civic
Expenses:Auto:Gas               $50.00                   $0.00
Expenses:Auto:Maintenance    $0.00                  $60.00

I currently use sub-accounts for each account (Expenses:Auto:Gas:2010BMW and
Expenses:Auto:Gas:2008Civic, and same for maintenance), but there is no way
to provide the tabular report Quicken could.

Another example of classes would be if I own rental properties, in which
case both rental income and expenses can have class assigned to splits.

Different accounting programs handle this idea in different ways.  With
Quicken, any split could have "accountName/className" instead of just
"accountName".  With a larger accounting system I've used, each account had
a number and the number was split into segments.  Each segment had numeric
codes.  Given N segments, the account number space was then an N-dimensional
cube, so for a college, for example, they could have segments for
expenseType/department/building if they wanted and could track supplies for
the English Department in the ABC building.  In this case, the account
number might be 410-10-25 where 410=supplies, 10=English Dept and 25=ABC
building.  In most cases, 00 was "general" or "not tracked" so they might
have 410-10-00 if they don't care about the building.  However, if they try
to allocate heating costs to the departments, they might have 420-10-25.
Quicken's use of classes is essentially the same as this, where N=2.  For
personal or small business use, I can't see more than N=2 being required.

 

Phil
---------
I used to be a hypochondriac AND a kleptomaniac. So I took something for it.

 

 

  _____  

From: Ian X Waddington <iwaddox at gmail.com>
To: clanlaw at googlemail.com
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Sent: Tue, December 21, 2010 11:08:28 AM
Subject: RE: Classifications or TAGS

Colin

Sorry but I have never used Quicken.  Can you point me towards some
reference material or better still a link to the Quicken manual that
describes what you are looking for.

Current references and acknowledgements are

http://community.kde.org/KMyMoney/Features/Tags  -In short, tagging is meant
to group different categories together in case when some of the transactions
in the category doesn't logically belong together.  Even if memos can be
used to accomplish this same goal, they aren't designed for this kind of
functionality and since they aren't very convenient to use. 

MS-Money help file - You can use classifications and subclassifications to
organise your finances in more detail. In Money, you can designate two types
of classifications. For example, if you set up a classification for your
properties, within that classification you can assign transactions to
Property 1, Property 2, and so on. You can then set up a second
classification for your family members in order to assign transactions to
yourself, your spouse, and your child.

Ian


-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Law [mailto:clanlaw at googlemail.com] 
Sent: 21 December 2010 15:59
To: Ian X Waddington
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Classifications or TAGS

On 21 December 2010 15:40, Ian X Waddington <iwaddox at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just in case anyone has embarked on the same idea I just wanted to let 
> interested parties know I have started drafting out requirements for 
> adding Classifications or TAGS to GnuCash.

Will that be similar to Classes in Quicken?

Colin

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